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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?"
This would be a great thread to put some more negative karma in twitter's sock puppets.
If you can change a vote of "no with comments" to "yes" I don't see why you couldn't change "fails with 122,000 errors" to "passes." I mean, when your standard passes through sheer lobbying and politics with little technical analysis, it's going to take a lot to surprise me with how epically it fails.
My work here is dung.
Technical details mean absolutely nothing in this discussion. I thought we established this.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Men in Black? What happened to good old megabytes? The article says 17MB!
Without a reference implementation, how do you know a standard is valid?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
OOXML is such a fraud that it's disgusting that we continue to waste such time on it. If it could win on the merits it wouldn't need such underhanded tactics by its (very few) supporters. It's clearly intended as an ODF-killer by creating an unnecessary parallel "standard".
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
While it's hardly unexpected that Office 2007 document format isn't *cough* ISO compliant, 122k errors for a 60Mb file results into a remarkable ~500 bytes of markup per error.
I really do not understand where Microsoft is heading. They've rammed their miserable OOXML format through - supposedly so they could advertise their product as ISO compliant. But what's their advantage now that their product is shown to be so horribly incompatible?
I don't want to destroy the mood that the slashdot editor wanted to create by posting this sensational peace of propaganda. but this is not 122.000 bugs is it? this is a parser generating 122.000 error results. sure it's bad.. but anyone who has ever tried to make code w3c compatible or debug any piece of code will know that just 1 error can result into many many many error results. thus ( despite my will for it to be so ) does not really give you much insight in microsofts compatibility with it's own standard.
... it's actually worse. We're all agreeing here, it's who comes up with the most ludicrous comparison or the most disturbing details about the case what counts. So, the question is: What can any of us do about this?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
> Wha? Valid in what respects?
Valid as in possible to implement. How could a standard not be possible to implement you ask? Well that is simple. E.g. write a program that follows this standard:
1. It must print "1" on exit
2. It must print "2" on exit
As you can see, it would not be possible to implement a program according to that standard. That is why someone would need to write a reference application implementing the standard to notice errors like this. Before the standard is given to the whole world to be implemented.
It is better that only one has to wonder the errors of the standards, rather than the whole world.
That explains why OSI is such a trainwreck compared to IP.
Not a bottom upSo why was ODF approved, then? Or ISO C?
adopt the lowest common denominator of whats already out there"Lowest common denominator" is not equivalent to bottom-up design.
http://outcampaign.org/
Ha!
Then there are those of us who think the prank is the people who refuse to use it (and who trot out the tired "hard drive manufacturers are stealing my disk space" myth/meme).
Seriously, the one thing we can agree on is that there is often confusion regarding whether someone meant "1000" or "1024" when they used a prefix. The difference in approach between the two camps is:
1. Stick with the status quo (where one tries to guess the convention being used based on context). That is, just accept with the confusion/inaccuracy.
2. Use SI units in the original SI sense (powers of 10) and use new binary prefixes when you really mean it (power of 2). That is, create a convention and adhere to it.
Interesting that in a discussion about standards (and failures thereof) you would argue that a standard meant to reduce confusion is a prank! I agree, by the way, that "mebibyte" sounds kinda silly... but who cares? It gets the job done. ("Quark" was a silly name, but it's now deeply ingrained in science and no one thinks twice about it.)
For what it's worth, many software products now use the binary prefix notation (e.g. Konqueror).
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
And see how well that turned out.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
There's a fundamental difference between the IETF and ISO. IETF makes standards of stuff that has been proven to work (or at least be implementable), whereas ISO wants to write specs to tell people what should work.
A bit like comparing tcp/ip and whatsitsname (x400?). It doesn't really matter how nice something looks on paper if there's no good implementation of it.
microsoft was more than happy to play that game,
until some governments stepped in and said any documents submitted to them in the coming years has to be an open standard.
so they bought their way to one and voila. their documents still dont conform in practice, but in theory it's an open standard
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
The current HTML specs are trainwrecks for the same reason. That's what HTML 5 is attempting to fix.
Incidentally, the W3C specs are actually called "Recommendations". There's probably a reason for that.
http://outcampaign.org/
You've fallen victim to Microsoft's water-muddying strategy -- They gave their new file spec the ridiculous name of "Office Open XML" (abbreviated OOXML) just so it would be conflated with the OpenOffice.org's software and file formats.
So this is not a case of a third-party compliance test like the Acid tests for web browsers; this is Microsoft failing to conform to their own standard.
Oh wait! It wasn't!
The fast-track is for de-facto standards which are already so widespread (i.e. supported by multiple vendors) and consistent that there's little point in trying to push a divergent standard out, even though a divergent standard might be better. Something like TCP/IP would be a good example of the sort of thing where the fast track might be appropriate. ODF wasn't fast-tracked, so the standards committee came up with the best standard, irrespective of what might actually be out there in the wild. Now it's up to the vendors to catch up. That's the usual way this is done (i.e. the C++ standard, where most vendors took a few years to catch up, or the C standard where most vendors took a few months to catch up, and MS took a few years).
Of course, if MSOOXML had gone through the regular track, it probably would have taken years to finish (since it's so large, complex, and poorly defined), and MS couldn't afford to wait. So instead they bought themselves a standards committee or twelve.
And that's what's been going on. However, a lot of governments and other organizations are now realizing that leveraging all that data they've been gathering for the better part of two decades on a closed, proprietary standard could lead to disaster. That's the whole point of trying to get an internationally recognized open standard that anyone can implement. ODF is supposed to fulfill the function of a published, implementable office document standard so that, theoritically, in 2100AD, when someone needs to open a document created in 2010, it's in a openly available format that, at the very worst, someone has to reimplement, but at least has clear, concise documentation that isn't thousands of pages long and doesn't include references to proprietary standards.
The problem with that is that an open document format standard is a direct threat to Microsoft's near-monopoly in the office app department. If anyone can implement a document format that's cross-compatible, then they can easily implement a competitor to Office, and if they decide to undercut Office or (as with OO.org) give the damn thing away, then Microsoft's monopoly is one breath from collapse, and believe me, if Microsoft loses Office, they're in serious, serious trouble within five years. So, OOXML, a "standard" that not even Microsoft can implement, is pushed through the ISO using all sorts of peculiar and ultimately nefarious methods now means Microsoft and its partners can go around telling Small Town, USA that Office saves in an ISO standard, but in reality, the poor bastard in 2100AD who needs to open this file is going to be spending many months trying to figure out this monster, which is in direct violation of the whole notion of an open standard.
That you have no problems is irrelevant. That's not what the point of an open standard is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I thought the idea behind the fast-track was a have less-fussy way of ratifying standards, when those standards were already widely used.
If that is correct, then how does the MSOOXML standard qualify? This is a "standard" that is used by absolutely nobody, not even the creator of the standard uses this standard.
Do I not understand the idea behind the fast-track process?
The point of the article is that there are no conforming implementations. There never will be a conforming implementation and everyone knows it.
No calls now, I'm
The compat. pack wont install on my BeOS desktop, what am I doing wrong?
I've heard elsewhere in this Slashdot discussion that apparently there is a point where OO.o blatantly violates the specification - using the exact opposite value for hidden text as it's meant to. So it's almost valid.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Bah, why not just print "12"? The standard didn't say the 1 and 2 had to be printed on their own did it? ;)
WTF does the acid3 test have to do with any of this?
However firefox does with the acid3 has nothing to do with ISO corruption, does it?
Okay, help me out here. Do you mean "how well that turned out" in the sense that HTML has been a huge success (you know, what with being the medium that we're using to display our comments right now ...) or in the sense of being a huge disaster?
I mean, I can sympathize with both views. I'm just wondering which one I should sympathize with in the context of your post.
groupthink: It's good for self-esteem.
How long should it have taken for MS to release a version that matched ISO OOXML strict? One hour? One day? One year? More?
Companies dont have the magical ability to instantly create a released product the day that the standards group settles on something. Thats just absurd. A standard that allows non conforming versions is no standard. Standards dont allow or disallow implementations. Thats now how it works. Standards exist. Implementations try to be compliant to them.
According to TFA, Office 2007 OOXML is very conformant to ISO OOXML Transitional. But its not very comformant to ISO OOXML Strict.
This should not be a surprise. For examle, the Strict version removes VML as a vector graphics markup. But MS has a decade or more of investment in VML, and their currently released products use VML. It will take a while for MS to change Office to not use VML (assuming they do choose to). If it would take 2 to 4 years for M$ to properly implement and document their crappy little standard, it should take 2 to 4 years for people to believe they had a standard worthy of ISO approval. I agree that it shouldnt have been fast tracked. That was a bit of an abomination. But lets be clear that MS didnt create a new standard, and then implement it. They just continued to develop their existing implementation, and documented what they already had. The OOXML is not a fresh creation
Standards that come from mature, crufty old de-facto standards (ie, OOXML) are always going to be uglier than standards that were created to be a standard from day one (ie, ODF). Thats just reality. Expecting it to be clean and pretty is not reasonable.
But the world where OOXML and the previous binary
PS, thank you Twitter for being reasonably coherent and making a post that, littered with the M$ nonsense that it is, at least was a reasonable discussion.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
FFS, ODF isn't a fast-track ('multiply implemented and widespread') standard. It's perfectly acceptable for a proposed standard to be ahead of current implementations - it's only proposed after all. Implementations should be expect to be playing catch-up.
OOXML on the other hand is claimed to be already implemented and widespread and thus eligible for fast track. So it is a big deal if it turns out it isn't. Not to mention that you're selectively pointing out that the transitional version nearly works, blithely ignoring the fact (in the same blog) that strict is well fucked. So the strict version of the 'standard' should be thrown out even harder that then the transitional.
I'm beginning to wonder if this concept is just too hard to grasp for many slashdotters or if there're just too many people drinking Norway brand Kool-aid.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.