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Office 2007 Fails OOXML Test With 122,000 Errors

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Groklaw is reporting that some people have decided to compare the OOXML schema to actual Microsoft Office 2007 documents. It won't surprise you to know that Office 2007 failed miserably. If you go by the strict OOXML schema, you get a 17 MiB file containing approximately 122,000 errors, and 'somewhat less' with the transitional OOXML schema. Most of the problems reportedly relate to the serialization/deserialization code. How many other fast-tracked ISO standards have no conforming implementations?"

22 of 430 comments (clear)

  1. So are most MS Word files by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 4, Funny

    You just use this conversion tool called Open Office

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  2. A heck of a job, Brownie! by llamafirst · · Score: 5, Funny

    In a blog posting this week, Alex Brown, leader of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) group in charge of maintaining the Office Open XML (OOXML) standard, revealed that Microsoft Office 2007 documents do not meet the latest specifications of the ISO OOXML draft standard. "Word documents generated by today's version of Microsoft Office 2007 do not conform to ISO/IEC 29500," said Brown in a blog post recounting the process of testing a document against the "strict" and "transitional" schema defined in the standard.

    Ahem. Let me be the first to say:
    Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!

    1. Re:A heck of a job, Brownie! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Don't you mean "hack of a job"?

  3. Duh by Arreez · · Score: 4, Funny

    Seriously......anyone not see it coming? Office 2007 being submitted to this test is like submitting to a "Will it float?" test with your hands tied and the good ol' cement shoes strapped on.

    1. Re:Duh by jnik · · Score: 2, Funny

      Great. Now I just want to know...will it blend?

  4. You're missing the point... by voislav98 · · Score: 5, Funny

    which is that it's the standard that's deficient. I'm sure that the standard will soon be "improved" so it conforms with Office 2007

  5. Re:What's the Problem? by Finallyjoined!!! · · Score: 5, Funny

    Repost.
    OOXML: "The best Standard money can buy"

    --
    If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
  6. Re:Stop using MiB by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Men in Black? What happened to good old megabytes? The article says 17MB! Maybe, but I make this shit look GOOD.
  7. Re:Stop using MiB by Richard+Steiner · · Score: 3, Funny

    Shh... The submitter is trying to impose those trendy "base 2" SI prefixes on us in spite of 40+ years of prior art to the contrary. Another case of ivory tower types not being sophisticated enough to grok current industry usage, methinks...

    And don't even get me started on folks who assume a byte is always eight (b) bits. There's a reason folks in the Real World use the term "octet", people. Really.

    Sheesh! :-) :-)

    --
    Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
    The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
  8. Re:Stop using MiB by hardburn · · Score: 2, Funny

    More like fixing 40+ years of hard drive manufacturers lieing to us about storage space.

    --
    Not a typewriter
  9. Re:What's the Problem? by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Funny

    All I have to say is that it's a good thing Microsoft isn't running the 2008 Presidential Election! Diebold voting machines run Windows CE. Please press any key to start voting!

    >> [Enter]

    Are you sure you want to vote today?
    (Allow/Deny)

    >> Allow

    *An anthropomorphic paper clip appears*
    "Hi! I'm Clippy, I see you're trying to vote!"
    "Let me help you with that! Which of these do you enjoy the most:"
    A) Fear Mongering
    B) Economy Stunting Taxation ...

    Yeah, I can't wait to vote this year ...
    --
    My work here is dung.
  10. Re:122,000 errors... by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Funny

    Obligatory: 122,000 errors should be enough for anybody.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  11. Re:You're missing the point of an ISO standard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    write a program that follows this standard:
    1. It must print "1" on exit
    2. It must print "2" on exit onExit() {
          print("1");
          print("2");
    }

    What's so hard about that?
  12. uhhhhh by niteice · · Score: 3, Funny

    Most of the problems reportedly relate to the serialization/deserialization code.
    um

    Isn't that what file formats do?
    --
    ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
  13. Re:You're missing the point of an ISO standard by MountainMan101 · · Score: 5, Funny

    The microsoft implementation would print "1" on Vista Home, "2" on Professional and "12" on Premium. It prints "4" on Linux just to prove it's linux that is broken. On Mac OS X it would print "1" and then "2" if you paid $50 more.

    Actually, what am I saying. A M$ program exiting cleanly.... ha ha

  14. Re:What's the Problem? by SiriusStarr · · Score: 1, Funny

    Please wait a moment while your votes are uploaded...
    AN UNHANDLED EXCEPTION HAS OCCURRED... PRESS CTRL-ALT-DEL TO RESTART YOUR COMPUTER.

    or...

    Please wait a moment while your votes are uploaded...
    That function is a Windows Genuine Advantage (tm) feature only. Please install the ActiveX verification toolbar and click "Verify!" to continue. To learn more about the advantages of genuine Microsoft software, please visit...

    --
    Fear the penguin.
  15. Re:Up with mebibytes! by menace3society · · Score: 4, Funny

    You're forgetting one thing: people have already adapted to the "old" usage. Dictionaries already exist saying that "mega-" can mean a factor of 1048576 units of computer data. If we change the system now, what will not happen is that everything disambiguates itself, and the hard disk companies stop lying to customers. What will happen is that

    1) Seagate et al. will continue to market their products in terms of GB and TB.
    2) Users will be outraged that their 232GiB hard disk only has 231 or so GiBs of usable space due to formatting, thus leaving the problem unsolved.
    3) People will lose good slang abbreviations like Meg and Gig to Kib, Mib, Gib (or Jib), Tib, and Pib, which not only sound stupid but will also be hard to distinguish in normal conversation.
    4) PHBs will misuse the binary-only versions as if they were base ten, especially if it catches on that "mebi-" is more than "mega-".
    Techie: Hey boss we've got new computers with 100 mebibytes of L1 cache.
    PHB: How much is a mebibytes?
    Techie: 1048576 bytes.
    PHB: Oh, so it's about a million then. Cool.
    Next Day
    PHB: Hey guys, we shipped nearly 2 mebi-units of dongles this quarter.
    Board: What's mebi-units?
    PHB: Well, it's.... Proceed into incorrect explanation that convinced Board of Directors that Boss is "with it"
    5) As a corollary to 4), people will start using those prefixes to refer to everything in a computer. The new chip is 3.2 GiHz, it draw 25 kiW of power, it weighs 21 Kig, etc.
    6) People will always think you are a douchebag.

    And that's not even getting into the confusion caused by having two different sets of prefixes for slightly different multipliers, maybe, during the transition.

    Ask any Brit: How much is a trillion?

  16. Only 122,000 proprietary extensions by flyingfsck · · Score: 2, Funny

    I don't see any problem. Under the standard, proprietary extensions are allowed...

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  17. Re:What's the Problem? by Bu11etmagnet · · Score: 5, Funny

    The standards which can actually be implemented and have an open source reference implementation, such as the Open Document Format (ODF), will become the de-facto standards at least for archive and long term storage.
    I find your lack of realism...disturbing
    --
    Life is complex, with real and imaginary parts.
  18. Re:Stop using MiB by hakr89 · · Score: 3, Funny
  19. Re:You're missing the point of an ISO standard by naer_dinsul · · Score: 2, Funny

    Or even better... We could spawn two threads, one to handle each print. That way we could never be quite sure what order they'd appear in!

  20. Re:Technical Details by Iamthecheese · · Score: 2, Funny

    122,000 Errors? Thats, what, one error per 100,000 lines of the standard? I'd say they did a damn good job!

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.