Slashdot Mirror
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.
the Open Document Format? Just curious.
Technical details mean absolutely nothing in this discussion. I thought we established this.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
You just use this conversion tool called Open Office
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Men in Black? What happened to good old megabytes? The article says 17MB!
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!
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.
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.
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
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?
It's not a fast-tracked ISO standard, but HTML and CSS have no conforming implementations. I'm not sure, but links might conform to HTML.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Wha? Valid in what respects? The standard is meant to be the reference for the implementation, not the other way round.
:)
This story is one of the funniest I've seen for a while though
which is totally what she said
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?
For one example where this has worked well, consider vehicle networking. Bosch invented/designed the Control Area Network (CAN). This was standardised by SAE as part of the in vehicle networking specification. ISO then just adopted the SAE stuff and extended it in some new areas. The stuff all works well and is based on proven technology (ie. the technology existed before the standards).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Straight from Microsoft: "Hey......it's better than 122,001 errors"
What most made me smile was that the IBM EGA card was included in the matrix of results, showing a rating of 100% compatibility with itself.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
In other words, if you're validating against the TRANSITIONAL spec, the OOX documents aren't horribly far off. And it's wrong in such a way that's easy to compensate for in code (i.e. check for "true|on" for a truth value). That's a markedly different situation than described by the headline's "'somewhat less' with the transitional OOXML schema" claim.
And in case anyone claims that ODF doesn't have the same sort of problem, I refer you to AbiWord bug 11359/OpenOffice bug 64237. This one is a show-stopper.
> 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.
It would be ironic if it were not completely expected. I think it would be interesting to see M$ try to spin this one, that at least one of two things must be true: 1) OOXML sucks 2) their software sucks because it can't even follow a standard they themselves created. Probably something along the lines of: "the standard is a significant improvement over Office 2007 which we will implement in our new version." or "We tried to make OOXML a great standard but our efforts were thwarted by outside forces" [in other words their new revisions]
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
You need at least one coded reference implementation or else you'll end up with something in the standard which is difficult/impossible to implement. Especially in a 6,000+ page standard.
ISO would be well advised to take the method the IETF uses, which is to have two independent teams implement the standard based on the documentation before an RFC can reach a Draft Standard status. I suspect ODF would have only benefited from this process by cutting down its rough edges, while OOXML would have been so cumbersome that it would be simply dropped.
Not a typewriter
20MB of OOXML contain about 122,000 errors: Muhhaaaah!!!
therefore 50 mega bytes of OOXML contain approximately 250,000 errors: ... Muhhaaaahahhha!!!
continuing: 100 mega bytes of OOXML contain approximately 500,000 errors: ... Muhhaaaahahhhaahhhaaahahaaaaaaaha!!!
therefore, 200 mega bytes of OOXML contain approximately 1,000,000 errors: ... Muhhaaaahahhhaahhhaaahahahhhhhhaaaaahahahahahaahaahahaaaaha!!!
So no, I don't really think that the reasoning is sound.
After the first error, are the remaining errors meaningful (i.e. false positives)? I believe most errors after the first are false positives relative to the first error.
Technically, no. It doesn't have a full implementation of the standard (in fact, nothing has a full implementation).
It is however, quite close.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
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/
We have met the enemy and he is us. -- Pogo (Walt Kelly)
Have gnu, will travel.
So you think widely-adopted standards are generally just pulled out of someone's backside?
I suggest you read BCP 9.
http://outcampaign.org/
We've all pretty much agreed that the standardization of OOXML sucks... why not let the ISO know, instead of discussing amongst ourselves?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
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).
so the ooxml specification they give to their competitors is extremely different from what mso2k7 reads/writes..... this means they intentionally give wrong interface-specifications to their competitors... I don't know how it is with you, but i smell the next fine > $1,000,000,000 by the EU approaching...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
er...it seems i really have no clue what im talking about with this. What i'm trying to say is, if office plays fine with itself, why dont open-source developers conform to it, instead of expecting a for-profit company to pay to make themselves compatible with the competition
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?
What? You didn't say it had to print only 1 or 2.
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.
So then I'd ask what does it mean to be "quite close?" I don't expect you to have all the details but I always wonder if /. postings like the parent slamming MSFT could just as easily be relabled. In this case, the headling might have been: OpenOffice fails ODF Test with 3224 Errors
They could fast track it and say the program must print "12" on exit.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
You need to think outside the box. 2 birds, 1 stone, my program prints 12
Hmmm, ok I'll look at it a slightly different way. If MS own application cannot meet MS's OOXML standard, then perhaps (going out on a limb here), just perhaps this is a viable standard. Before, penguins and chairs come my way here me out. We have a *cough* standard, that right now, nobody is meeting. So in other words, all parties involved (MS and everyone else) at least on the application side, are on equal footing. Has anyone tried (painful as it might sound) to write an application (or file format) that writes to MS (and now ISO's) standard? I mean a standard can't be a standard (at least as I see it) if nobody is using it (or attempting to).
I mean it wouldn't hurt to attempt make a bridge here, would it?
Regards,
MBC1977,
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
People need to be aware of this. So:
If it stays "news for the geeks", nothing will come from it.
-- Sig down
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.
Isn't that what file formats do?
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
The referenced article claims that "the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power", which is bogus.
The English had a major sea trading infrastructure, at a time when improvements in clocks finally made accurate determination of longitude by celestial navigation practical for trans-Atlantic voyages.
They established an observatory at a major port (Grenwich) to provide a time-hack for ships in port (both military and commercial) to set their clocks, and distributed navigational charts with that observatory's latitude as the basis for the coordinate system (thus simplifying navigational calculations).
This quickly became the defacto standard on a voluntary basis among commercial shipping, along with the cities that grew up around major seaports (with multiples-of-an-hour offsets to approximate local noon - typically multiples of an hour, sometimes of a half- or quarter-hour), just as the coordinate system became the standard for shoreline mapping in other locations (to simplify navigation near shores by ships using the Grenwich meridian for their ocean charts). Then when railroads drove time standardization it spread from the seaport cities to inland locations.
Of course the empire's military and government used it internally. But the rest of the world adopted it voluntarily.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
and only someone so perversely flexible will ever be able to confrom to M$XML. The Gnome foundation might get there one day but the ISO spec is doomed to a life of disrespect, much like rich text format before it. There's really no point in trying because the Soft is out of gas.
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.
Who the hell said we want Windows or any of its components, or anything MS releases, to be open source? I don't give a rats ass. However, a supposedly "open" standard should be implementable by anyone with technical capability, and that ought to include the company that developed the standard.
It's pretty clear that you have no idea what any of this is about. I don't know if I'll go as far as to you call you a shill, you seem to ignorant for even that.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
...not as I extend!
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 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
Doesn't OOo use ODF 1.1 or 1.2 while the ISO has approved only ODF 1.0?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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?
> Obligatory: 122,000 errors should be enough for anybody.
Actually, it's more than enough. I have no idea how to handle even a 100th of them. Thanks the problem.
Agreed that Office 2007 not conforming to OOXML is not an issue in and of itself. However, what is an issue for many people is that OOXML was fast-tracked for ISO approval without a working reference implementation. This is contrary to what the ISO fast track is supposed to be used for. It is supposed to be a means of getting a standard that is already working internally for an organization out for approval and general adoption. It is a fair argument that this isn't the case for OOXML if there are no working reference implementations.
ODF is the tip of a very big iceberg. It's an important and public facing tip but it is a small part of both government and business wasting money on the upgrade treadmill and all the intentional waste of M$ Office. It's all downhill from here.
No calls now, I'm
Or, in keeping with what is in there now, it would be:
"Must act like the previous reference program acted, using natural or integer numbers that are rounded up to 12, except where previously mentioned previous reference program dictates otherwise, in theory or in practice. Unless we decide differently at some future point of our choosing for any reason we want."
You know, in all of these anti-Microsoft discussions, I don't think I have read much commentary saying "everyone does this! why should Microsoft take all the heat for it?" or "this is just how business is done! This is not news." types of comments? I may have missed them though. Still it would be interesting to know whether or not Microsoft is the first and only one to have pulled this type of stunt with ISO? Is it actually common and we only noticed because it was Microsoft doing it?
>How many other fast-tracked ISO standards have no conforming implementations?
C++?
Try out the "export" keyword next time you write any C++.
ask OSI people
ISO 25436 describes a version of the Eiffel programming language that has never been fully implemented. The standard contains lots of "blue-sky" "would-be-nice-to-have" sections which are planned to be implemented in the future.
ECMA gives the document author a lot of control, so things can become ECMA standards that would not become ISO standards. But then the fast track ISO process (for existing ECMA standards) makes it easier for them to become ISO standards.
Paid Q&A/Research
I'm aware of at least one - see AbiWord bug 11359/OpenOffice bug 64237.
Both AbiWord and OpenOffice.org support hidden text. According to the ODF spec, if you say 'text:display="true"', you're supposed to see the text. However, OpenOffice.org uses "true" to mean "hide the text" and "none" to mean "show the text". Or, the inverse of its correct meaning (or what you'd expect from the CSS && specs). This will supposedly be corrected in OO.o 3.0, which is due out soonish. However, this leaves a problem with a bunch of documents that won't render "as intended" (either by the user or by the ODF spec).
I don't see any problem. Under the standard, proprietary extensions are allowed...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
it's a good thing that we thought this out so no mistakes were made and in the end the product was fair and equitable for everybody involved.... no wait... oh well.
As far as I know, Open Office produces valid ODF documents (with the odd extension for things like spelling and grammar checker options that are application-dependent), but it doesn't necessarily implement 100% of the latest version of the ODF spec. (In fact, IIRC sometimes other word processors add support for new ODF features before it does.) Since ODF is a committee-developed standard not based on what any one word processor does, this really shouldn't be surprising.
Of course, I bet that if they modified Office to produce conformant output, they'd break the ability to read the documents in non-patched versions of Office that are expecting the older non-conformant format. (In fact, I reckon it's almost a certainty - with the changes that have been made, it's unlikely that existing Office versions will be able to read conformant documents either.) It possibly wasn't wise to add support for it to Office before the standard was finalised.
the truth is almost no software passes standards tests, but hey don't let facts get in your way....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
So why was ODF approved, then? Or ISO C?
// comments, free positioning of variable declarations were allowed in C++, and allowed in some C implementations. restrict was known good for optimization (from FORTRAN). Variable length arrayswere also around here and there, and I believe that some implementations had some complex number support as well. C99 worked out OK, since it was in many ways rather conservative.
Well, C99 took known working parts from a bunch of places, including existing C and C-like languages. For instance
And then there was C++. export never had a working implementation, and sounded good on paper. And the result was a disaster. It took years before anyone successfully implemented, amssively increased the complexity of the compilers and was of dubious benefit. Since it's has such poor support it is barely used in practice. Sadly, it is not being expunged from C++0x. And it's a perfect example of why it's useful to have a reference implementation.
GCC is now doing a very good job of tracking the draft C++0x standard, so the parts that aren't obvious (as in have workalike features in major compilers already) will be tested before actual standardisation.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Facts? Try this fact: this is not an external standard that Microsoft is supposed to bring their software into line with, this standard was presented by Microsoft as accurately describing what their software actually did. That's the whole reason it was "fast tracked", because it was supposed to be a description of a conforming implementation.
If it's not, then it shouldn't have been "fast tracked", it should have gone through the same process as current HTML standards... you know, the ones Acid3 are testing...
That is, the issue is not whether Office conforms to the standard, but that Microsoft lied about its status.
I wasn't saying that the standard had to come first, but I didn't see how one could be 'invalid' per se. Others have helpfully pointed out that the standard could have paradoxical or otherwise impossible requirements though, which I s'pose makes sense. I didn't consider that at all, but in a sufficiently complex standard with different parts defined by different people, I guess it could happen pretty easily..
which is totally what she said
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".
It certainly didn't when the standard was first out, for example the ODF standard references in the whole MathML standard. It's pretty huge and detailed for being in an office document and neither OpenOffice or KOffice supported it fully (not sure if they 100% do still). Still, ODF wasn't fast tracked and it means a bunch of smart guys come together and agree on how things *should* work best, then they write it up in a standard and all parties try to work towards it. I don't think anyone has a 100% CSS3 implementation either, for example.
Thing is, I haven't heard of anyone else in these discussions, it's just Microsoft and their standard. The standard is full of things that aren't properly resolved and so they'll continue to be that way now that the standard is approved. I've heard the bullshit that ISO will not steer the direction of OOXML but I figure Microsoft will just drop an updated version on their heads from time to time. What threats does ISO have to influence anything? They could revoke the standard, but that just wouldn't happen. They'll just be all talk.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Bah, why not just print "12"? The standard didn't say the 1 and 2 had to be printed on their own did it? ;)
My, my, aren't we touchy? Tell me, when was the approved standard widely used? Ever?
Was the original standard widely used?
And why did they change the spec during the BRM?
So please explain how OOXML qualified for the fast-track process?
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?
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!
So does MS Internet Explorer fails many ISO test. MS wants to create "de facto" standards without a standards body and they have been doing that since the beginning.
However standards bodies are not perfect either, remember the DVD- versus the DVD+ which we had to get either DVD- or DVD+ disk for the proper drive.
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that's x500, right?
Sig: Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
How many other fast-tracked ISO standards have no conforming implementations?
I dunno about ISO, but there are entire economies built around XHTML + CSS, neither of which has a reference implementation.
Comment of the year
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.
What's the difference? What is significant about a standard that no one implements being standardized fast or slow?
Based on the actual root article, the results from the transitional version was nearly perfect, with 84 instances of the same (very minor) class of error.
From TFA: The TRANSITIONAL conformance model is quite a bit closer to the original Ecma 376. Countries at the BRM (rather more than Ecma, as it happened) were very keen to keep compatibilty with Ecma 376 and to preserve XML structures at which legacy Office features could be targetted. The expectation is therefore that an MS Office 2007 document should be pretty close to valid according to the TRANSITIONAL schema.
Sure enough (again) the result is as expected: relatively few messages (84) are emitted and they are all of the same type complaining e.g. of the element: since the allowed attribute values for val are now "true", "false", etc. this was one of the many tidying-up exercices performed at the BRM. This is a simple (and very common in this sort of thing) error, and not too surprising or worrisome. It's basically a very minor errata.
This is actually quite impressive, given that the transitional version is not the same as what MS originally proposed, and so there was also little expectation that a document format created in the past would be conformant. It looks like the groups went to some effort to make sure that the transitional version was nearly 100% compatible with what MS Office 2007 actually emits.
And it shouldnt be surprising to anyone that Office 2007 doesnt conform to the strict version. The strict version was semi-major surgery on what MS proposed. And it was developed long after Office 2007 was released.
More from TFA: Validating against the STRICT model
The STRICT conformance model is quite a bit different from Ecma 376, essentially because most of that format's most notorious features (non ISO dates, compatibility settings like autospacewotnot, VML, etc.) have been removed. Thus the expectation is that existing Office 2007 documents might be some distance away from being valid according to the strict schemas.
Sure enough, jing emitted 17MB (around 122,000) of invalidity messages when validating in this scenario. Most of them seem to involve unrecognised attributes or attribute values: I would expect a document which exercised a wider range of features to generate a more diverse set of error message. Again, to restate. The strict version of ISO OOXML (what causes all the errors in validation) is NOT based on the current version of MS Office 2007. Therefore there is no reason to expect that Office 2007 docs would be fully compliant. The strict version did not exist when Office 2007 was created, therefore it was not possible for them to be conformant to it.
To do so would have required them to predict into the future the path that ISO would take.
Now the interesting question will be whether MS aligns with the strict ISO OOXML in a future Office 2007 Service Pack, or even if they clean up that one minor issue found here (on/off vs. true/false in attributes).
The strict version breaks alot of backwards compatibility with legacy documents that were created in much older versions of office and forward converted. Given that, I'll be interested to see what MS does with this over the next year or two as their releases catch up to the ISO standards.
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You created this account as a clever variation on westlake, just like your Mactrope troll account was intended to be confused with Macthorpe.
That makes it six sockpuppet accounts so far. To repeat what I've been asking you, how long do you figure this can go on?
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
I admit that this is potentially off-topic. I'll take the negative karma. I am amazed and grateful for your words. Amazed because you weren't automatically marked down and grateful because you took the words out of my mouth. In a prior conversation about this I mentioned how even if Microsoft had done it properly the first time there would still have been complaints. The reality is that they *may* be doing just fine with this. They may be... Right now we're all just looking on and guessing.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Since we are having so many problesm with ones and twos, may I ask whether this make us constipated or incontinent.
Yeah,
But I thought the whole point of a fast track was to pass standards that are already in widespread use?
Clearly this is not the case with OOXML yet it was fast tracked anyway.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
You'll get no argument from me on the Fast Track issue. It shouldnt have been done that way.
I can already hear it.....
Steve Ballmer: "Office 2007 is a work in progress....."
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
... didn't exist when the document used for the test was saved, this should not really be much of a surprise.
http://osrin.net/2008/04/22/office-2007-is29500-conformance/
I agree, I find all this whining extremely irritating. If they have something to say about the actual post they should say it or otherwise shut up. Jackasses.
That's the purpose, but remember it whas all those National Bodies that demanded changes be made to the standard before it could be ratified. As such, it was ISO itself that mandated that it be different.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
> A "500 GB" hard drive still means 500,000,000,000 bytes.
Yes, but that's not because of any standards or morals or beliefs. That's because a 500,000,000,000 bytes drive is cheaper than a 500G(i)B drive and can still legally be named 500 GB.
Shady business practices aren't a good argument.
Other than that, carry on.
"How many other fast-tracked ISO standards have no conforming implementations?"
ISO changed the standard as part of the process. Of course Office 2007 doesn't meet it. Microsoft have said there's a patch coming that reflects the changes ISO made.
This is pure sensationalism
Muppet Show > Monty Python
Hey, children! Let's sing a happy little song!
If your standard is full of shit, clap your hands.
If your standard is full of shit, clap your hands.
If your standard is full of shit and you really want to show it,
If your standard is full of shit clap your hands.
If you can't implement the damn thing, clap your hands.
If you can't implement the damn thing, clap your hands.
If you can't implement the damn thing and the mere thought sends you crying,
If you can't implement the damn thing, clap your hands.
If the developers are dying, clap your hands.
If the developers are dying, clap your hands.
If the developers are dying 'cause Steve Ballmer's chairs are flying
If the developers are dying, clap your hands.
That was fun, kids! And next up is an exciting new episode of Billy Rich! Today, Billy buys Norway!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
We just use the extension .docx for the legacy format and .docy for the new one. The next revision of the OOXML standard will then use .docz and the one after that .docaa...
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
There are complete implementations of X.500, however it would be better compared to LDAP, which is a stripped down version of the protocol that can be understood and implemented by mere mortals. Perhaps you meant OSI V's TCP/IP DISCLAIMER: I work for a Co. that has a complete X.500 capable/LDAP server (Depending on how you call the directoryrc)
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
twitter, you are reaching new heights of bullshit and dishonesty. This entire thread is basically you agreeing with yourself. And two new sockpuppets? Wow. Just wow.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
... and that's a load of apologist nonsense. It's not a working standard even in the "transitional" sense and does not deserve ISO approval. I'm not sure what you're reading into that sentence you quoted. It's a fairly simple factual statement. I'm not sure what about it is 'apologist nonsense'. Since the transitional version of the ISO OOXML is almost exactly the same as what Office 2007 emits, it will be very easy to get Office inline. Thats a pretty straightforward concept. If M$ cared about playing nice, they would have devoted their effort to ODF translators for their legacy binary formats and continued along with those formats. Microsoft's "separate purpose" of OOXML is better suited by them continuing along legacy lines. The purpose of anywhere implementable formatting is best done with ODF. I'm not sure what you mean by 'playing nice', but the idea that they should have just moved immediately to ODF is nonsense. The two formats are not isomorphic. Specifically the MS formats have a ton more features that just dont exist in ODF, and many that are implemented in completely different ways (equations, vector graphics, etc). And in any case, no one uses ODF. If you were to send ODF documents to people nowadays, the vast vast majority wouldnt be able to open them or have a clue what they were.It would make no sense whatsoever for a business to dumb down their products to fit into ODF. Maybe one with a brand new Office suite, that doesnt have 10-15 years of features (and quirks and bugs) floating around. And it wouldnt serve their customers, except possibly in the very long run, and even that is a gamble. M$ moved along with OOXML because the rest of the world figured out their binary formats. They don't want to use ODF for the same reason their browsers consistently fail simple W3C format tests - Thats a very questionable statement about why they moved off binary formats. I'm sure both their customers and their internal developers have been clamoring for years to do so, and they finally did.
They dont want to use ODF because it makes zero business sense for them to do so. It doesnt have to be made any more complicated than that. they don't want to play nice, they want to continue their obscene late 80's format game. Their actions speak a different story.
OOXML is in the hands of ISO, and has already evolved to be different from what MS Office 2007 emits.
Both the OOXML and the binary versions have publicly available documentation now.
Yes, they're complicated. But despite what the M$-is-teh-devil crowd will tell you, its because they are complicated. They are basically a snapshot of the internal memory representation inside the office apps. They have evolved over 10-15 years to what they are now. There is going to naturally be alot of cruft and bloat. This should not have come as a surprise to anyone.
Both from a business and engineering standpoint, it would have been a monumentally huge task to try to convert Office to emit ODF natively. And it would have had very little return on the investment.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dude, somebody wasted a mod point downmodding a post that started at -1. That should give you some idea of how unpopular you are.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.