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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?"
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
If language is defined by usage, does that mean that copyright infringement now equals theft? ;-)
:-)
You have never seen the confusion of metric users entering the CS field, have you? Ever seen a teacher struggle with the very same point we're having right now?
As I said, in the rest of the world, kilo means 1000, not 1024. And here you're saying it becomes something else because a particular field has abused it for 40 years?
Also note that both hard drive manufacturers and digital telecommunications, in a computing context, use 1000 for kilo.
So your argument becomes "if you're in a computing context BUT not talking about hard drives OR telecommunications, then kilo means 1024"...
I'd rather use KiB=1024, thank you very much.
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.
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