Office 2007SP2 ODF Interoperability Very Bad

David Gerard writes "Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 claims support for ODF 1.1. With hard work and careful thinking, they have successfully achieved technical compliance but zero interoperability! MSO 2007sp2 won't read ODF 1.1 from any other existing application, and its ODF is only readable by the CleverAge plugin. The post goes into detail as to how it manages this so thoroughly."

Comments

What did we expect?

[TechForensics]

I mean, really?

Re:What did we expect?

[Vanders]

Yes but Microsoft said that it'd be different this time and they've changed, they really have, and they don't mean to hurt you but baby you just don't understand that when you can't keep your pretty little mouth shut then sometimes need a slap for your own good.

I might be confusing Microsoft with a wife beater, but the mentality is roughly the same it seems.

Re:What did we expect?

[rodrigoandrade]

Well, Microsoft did enough to keep the lawyers away.

Not likely that they'll embrace a competing standard antytime soon.

Re:What did we expect?

[impaledsunset]

If it achieves 100% technical compliance with the standard, but zero interoperability, this is certainly a problem with the standard itself.

And the problem in this case is the missing formula specification. It's not in ODF 1.1, and ODF 1.2 is still a draft. While this is Microsoft and we all "know" that this was intentional, ODF is what should be fixed first. We were all bashing OOXML specifications, but ODF 1.1's far from perfect, as we can see.

Did the author of the article test with anything else than a spreadsheet with formulas? Formula breakage was expected and mentioned in the comments to the previous article. The interesting part is are there other flaws with ODF 1.1, are they addressed by 1.2?

Re:What did we expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Say what you will about Microsoft, but I'll start using Linux on my production machines when I want to start losing money. Get the facts, people.

Re:What did we expect?

[drinkypoo]

I might be confusing Microsoft with a wife beater, but the mentality is roughly the same it seems.

What do you tell a user with two black eyes?

(I propose that the answer is "Did you really think Apple was different from Microsoft?" but that might not win me too many points around here. The converse would work almost as well, but nobody would have believed that Microsoft was the good guys.)

Re:What did we expect?

[Vanders]

Did you really think Apple was different from Microsoft?

That's unfair. Apple have never made an iWorks product intentionally produce a broken ODF document! *cough*

Re:What did we expect?

[makomk]

And the problem in this case is the missing formula specification. It's not in ODF 1.1, and ODF 1.2 is still a draft. While this is Microsoft and we all "know" that this was intentional, ODF is what should be fixed first. We were all bashing OOXML specifications, but ODF 1.1's far from perfect, as we can see.

That is, curiously, not quite true. ODF 1.1 doesn't fully specify formulas, but it does specify the general syntax that should be used for them, and Microsoft seems to have ignored this. (Also, in practice, the major spreadsheets are quite similar in terms of what expressions they accept in formulas. This makes it relatively simple to convert between MS Office formulas and OpenOffice.org ones, which are what most ODF-based apps use.)

Re:What did we expect?

[narfspoon]

Well it's just gaming the system.
They follow the letter of the law.
But they go against the spirit of the law.

Re:What did we expect?

[EvilAlphonso]

nobody would have believed that Microsoft was the good guys.

Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.

Re:What did we expect?

[Phreakiture]

What do you tell a user with two black eyes?

Nothing. He's already been told twice.

Re:What did we expect?

[lorenlal]

Well, that depends on who you talk to. Here in the US, that's probably true. Pretty much it's up to Europe to send the lawyers back in.

But, there is a comment at the end of the article to check for an obvious abuse:

The only way for Microsoft to make their legacy ODF documents work and to exclude other vendors would be to specifically look in the document for the name of the application that created the documentThis should be simple to test with a text editor, change the name of the application to match one that works and test that.

Since I don't have access to Office 2007 until I get home tonight, I can't try this out. But if someone feels compelled in the meantime, I'd love to see the results. If the document "magically" works after changing the header, then Microsoft did *not* do enough to keep the lawyers at bay.

Re:What did we expect?

[MrHanky]

You really think so? The EU will probably slap them with a hefty fine yet again. This is just another example of Microsoft being deliberately anti-competitive.

Re:What did we expect?

[Inner_Child]

I use Windows for compatibility, but open-source for everything else: VLC, WinAmp, OpenOffice, Utorrent, et cetera.

I don't think you understand what open source is. Winamp and uTorrent are not open source.

Re:What did we expect?

[click2005]

I dont see why you're comparing MS to congress. Why not compare it to being eaten by a shark (with frikkin laser beams if thats your thing) or abducted by aliens.

Congress doesn't have a history of lying to people... oh hang on
Congress doesn't have a history of screwing the public for money/business interests... wait a minute..
Congress... errr.. never mind

Also... uTorrent isnt open source.

Re:What did we expect?

[FishWithAHammer]

Tried it. Not the case.

Re:What did we expect?

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

People like to continue to whine about how MS must be evil. As you said, ODF 1.2 isn't finished. Who wants to target a moving standard? On the other hand, I've found that SP2's ODT support is quite good, to the point that I find I no longer need OpenOffice to open older files I have in that format. Even some complicated ones with equations and images.

Re:What did we expect?

[Opportunist]

Hey, it is different. Hence not compatible.

Re:What did we expect?

[hoggoth]

> Microsoft said that it'd be different this time and they've changed,

Damn it, I voted for change this time. I want my change.

Re:What did we expect?

[dem0n1]

Microsoft can't suck money directly from my paycheck

At least not until they get that subscription thing down and start charging by the month.

Re:What did we expect?

[just_another_sean]

Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.

Yeah but that was ~twenty years ago, which is like two hundred in do^H^H computer years.

Since then Lancelot has screwed the king's wife and is off in the wilderness slowly going insane.

Re:What did we expect?

[JohnBailey]

You really think so? The EU will probably slap them with a hefty fine yet again. This is just another example of Microsoft being deliberately anti-competitive.

Except if you look a little closer, the EU doesn't just fine them. The fine is trivial, and does nothing but make the news in the computer press. Just money. A fine is like a parking ticket. And if you are rich enough, you can theoretically see a parking ticket as a parking fee.

Forcing them to correct the problem to the satisfaction of a neutral third party acting as a technical "expert witness" however, is a worthwhile activity. And this can really sting. This is more like taking away their car, or revoking their license. Way more than a slap on the wrist and a stern look.

Re:What did we expect?

[mevets]

| Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.

I've heard this said, but somehow I managed to miss it. I started work in the industry in 87, and had first encountered microsoft probably in 84. Outside of ziff-davis style vanity press, everything about MS was about what crap they were technically and ethically. The white knights were DEC, BSD, Borland, Commodore, ...

Re:What did we expect?

[johannesg]

Not only that, but according to the article the formula's of ODF are in fact based on those of Excel in the first place. One might reasonably expect Microsoft to have some idea of how to interpret those...

Re:What did we expect?

[Zero__Kelvin]

We really need a special mod option "Offtopic + Idioitic"

Re:What did we expect?

[mhesd]

From the article:

The irony here is that the formula language used by OpenOffice (and by other vendors) is based on that used by Excel, which itself was not fully documented when OpenOffice implemented it. So an argument, by Microsoft, not to support that language because it is not documented is rather hypocritical. Excel supports 1-2-3 files and formulas and legacy Excel versions (back to Excel 4.0) neither of which have standardized formula languages. Why are these supported? Also, the fact that the Microsoft/CleverAge add-in correctly reads and writes the legacy ODF formula syntax shows not only that it can be done, but that Microsoft already has the code to do it. The inexplicably thing is why that code never made it into Excel 2007 SP2.

Re:What did we expect?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Who wants to target a moving standard?"

Software Engineers. It is what we do for a living.

Re:What did we expect?

[yo_tuco]

"...1 second or so that it took to open the "Save file as" dialog..."

It takes 2 seconds for a menu to appear on my work XP laptop when I click the Start button. It takes forever to open a Word document. Virus scanning is now part of the Office experience and can't be disregarded. And this is on a more modern computer. What is your point.
 

Re:What did we expect?

[jbengt]

Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.

While I certainly remember thinking of IBM as the evil monopolistic overlords in the '80s, I thought of Microsoft as more of the black knight working with IBM, then stabbing them in the back as soon as they got a chance in order to become the new evil overlords.

Re:What did we expect?

[elrous0]

For posting that link on /. I hereby bow before you and acknowledge that, you sir, indeed have balls of extraordinary magnitude.

Re:What did we expect?

[impaledsunset]

I just skimmed through the ODF 1.1 specs and couldn't find anything about specifying formulas, besides the XML attributes that should be used. Nothing about the formula syntax. Can you be more specific what "general syntax" means and give a pointer to a page in the specs to support your claim?

The specs don't tell me how I should implement a formula. I need to look at OpenOffice.org to make my hypothetical ODF 1.1 compliant application interoperable. The problem is that Microsoft don't care about interoperability, they simply want to support the standard. They have absolutely no incentive to make things any better than they're currently in the specifications.

The standard should be written in such way that you have to "play nice" to be compliant. If it is not, someone known to avoid interoperability will continue to do so, until forced by the standard.

Of course, you can never create perfects specs that can't be purposefully misinterpretted in ways that break everything they intended, but at least if the specs are good enough the malice will be obvious to everyone.

Now even if ODF 1.2 comes out of the draft stage, Microsoft will probably continue to support the "broken" ODF 1.1 as long as possible.

What we have currently failed to force Microsoft adopt anything aimed at interoperability. That's a bad thing, but at least all other office applications are slowly adopting ODF in the place of the gazillion formats we had -- .wpd, .sxw, .kwd, .abw and what not. At least this mess is going away and there is a standard format for everyone (but Microsoft). And even with the incomplete specs, everyone else seems to be getting it right. That speaks for itself.

Re:What did we expect?

[Locutus]

Wanna keep making money? Put Linux on all your computers and migrate the currently installed Windows XP into virtual machines. You've not instantly moved into the 21st century with a far more secure and stable platform to build on and have backwards compatibility.

This pretty much what Microsoft is saying you should do with Windows 7/Vista SP3 except they seem to think the bloated mess called Vista is a solid base. In reality, it's not a solid base, it's a new treadmill and has the same old billing meter tied to it and feeding your profits back to One Microsoft Way.

Get the facts straight. IMO.

LoB

Re:What did we expect?

[Atzanteol]

And a time when Hitler was the savior of Germany.

Godwin'd!

Re:What did we expect?

[TheLink]

> But how do they "force" MS to do anything

Doh, how do Governments force people to do stuff? Just jail the people at the top of MS in the relevant countries. If they refuse to go to jail, send people authorized to inflict force and violence to drag them off to jail.

That's well within the authority of any country which MS operates in.

You don't even have to fine at all. Once you start jailing top executives, they'll start taking things really seriously.

After all, if you're a CEO, the fines don't really come out of your pocket[1].

But time in prison comes out of your lifespan.

[1] They might in theory affect your bonus etc, but in practice just look at the AIGs of the world.

Re:What did we expect?

[Locutus]

Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.

I've heard this said, but somehow I managed to miss it. I started work in the industry in 87, and had first encountered microsoft probably in 84. Outside of ziff-davis style vanity press, everything about MS was about what crap they were technically and ethically. The white knights were DEC, BSD, Borland, Commodore, ...

It was pretty obvious to many techies by the early 90s that Microsoft software was crap. The printed press was one of its tools and perpetuated the myth that companies would be better off with Microsoft. By 1995 it was getting out to a more general crowd how bad Microsoft was but these people still required having their eyes and minds open. Considering where they are today, it's obvious many are still pretty ignorant to their business practices and technology in general. By 1995, even the author, Douglas Adams saw this:

Microsofthttp://www.gksoft.com/a/fun/dna-on-microsoft.html

Here's a quote from the end of that short article:
"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all his customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who by peddling second-hand, second-rate technology, led them all into it in the first place."

Over $200 million in marketing spent on Window 95 and about the same amount the following year pushing NT as _the_ server OS suckered in enough to seal their position in the market. That seal is leaking now but unfortunately, the general population of computer users and IT execs are mostly just as naive as they were in the early 1990s. It's the OEM's who are driving the market now because of very low margins and the high relative cost of Microsoft software.

LoB

Re:What did we expect?

[Zero__Kelvin]

Actually it is not. Trolling and Flamebaiting require intent. Most people don't really get this, so don't feel too bad about it. If someone is making a post in good faith, but it is offtopic and idiotic, that is where my proposed new mod option comes in.

Re:What did we expect?

[vtcodger]

I believe that recent medical research has shown that ball size is inversely proportional to IQ.

Re:What did we expect?

[hairyfeet]

Actually the early 80s. You see, before MSFT started the clone market by selling Compaq MS DOS and thus creating the IBM PC compatible market, things were VERY different. It was 'welcome to proprietary land" where my VIC wouldn't talk to your TRS80 which wouldn't talk to that guy's Apple ][, etc. By creating the IBM PC compatible market it meant that I could be a PC from ANYBODY as long as it was "IBM PC Compatible" all my software would run and my compatible PC could talk to yours and we could share data. This was a big deal at the time because most computers couldn't share squat, creating major lock in and support problems.

So you really have to give credit where credit was due. While MSFT today is one big lumbering clusterfuck, which I blame on a certain marketing drone that needs a good firing, back then they really did help free us from the mess that was proprietary land. Funny now that embrace, extend, extinguish seems to be SOP at MSFT.

And say what you want about Darth Gates, at least the guy knew how to put out a decent business OS. The total bling bling mess that is Vista being dumped onto business users as Vista business is a really bad joke. Which is why there are so many sites showing how to turn 2K3 server into workstation just to get away from that bling bling mess without losing all their apps. MSFT today is just....eeewww. Which is ironic, as that is the noise that my customers make when I tell them Vista is an option on their new PC.

Re:What did we expect?

[arth1]

As opposed to LD_LIBRARY_PATH hell and no codecs at all?

Comparing Windows and Linux feature by feature is always going to be futile. The two are different, and if trying to make Linux a direct replacement for Windows, you'll necessarily have to chop down the things that make Linux great (like the toolbox approach and not being designed from the "one user, one application, one machine" philosophy).
And comparing Linux with Windows is like wrestling a pig. You'll just get dirty, and the pig enjoys it.

Re:What did we expect?

[greenbird]

If it achieves 100% technical compliance with the standard, but zero interoperability, this is certainly a problem with the standard itself.

You obviously didn't RTFA and don't have much experience in this area. I could list half a dozen standards from my experience but I'll just quote the one from article:

Remember, it is not particularly difficult or clever to to take an adverse reading of a standard to make an incompatible, non-interoperable product. Take HTML, for example. It does not define the attributes of unstyled (default) text. So I could create a perfectly conformant browser implementation that makes all default text be 4-point Zapf Dingbats, white text on a white background. It would conform with the standard, but it would be perfectly unusable by anyone. If you try hard enough you can create 100% conformant, but non-interoperable, implementations of almost most standards. Standards are voluntary, written to help coordinate multiple parties in their desires for interoperability. Standards are not written to compell interoperability by parties who do not wish to be interoperable.

Re:What did we expect?

[khellendros1984]

I like smplayer on Windows and Linux....but that's open source. And frankly, I can't think of a single closed source program that I'd rather use for sheer interoperability with different formats and efficiency of the code. Smplayer lets my 7 year old laptop play HD versions of xvid encoded videos, and I haven't seen any other software that would run those vids at full framerate on my laptop.

Re:What did we expect?

[griffjon]

One thing you can say in Microsoft's defense, though -- they've really cut down the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish cycle. Remember when it took like years for them to go through that?

Re:What did we expect?

[digidave]

HALT (Happens All The Time)

Re:What did we expect?

[Kelbear]

How could MS hurt the EU? MS is just a software company dependent upon the protections of the legal infrastructure of the local economy in order to operate.

Worst case scenario, MS stops selling it's software in the EU. Then the EU can just waive copyright protection for MS in the EU so the population can just download it legally from torrent sites. Updates too, since MS would still have to provide updates to the rest of the world which would eventually be downloadable in the EU. The EU will hesitate to make such a precedent, but it's always there on the table since so many businesses rely on MS; they could make an exception for MS.

Or perhaps the businesses in the EU will just be driven to non-MS software, which may induce other businesses around the globe to consider alternative solutions as well.

MS really can't get into a pissing match with the EU. Their best option is to either obey regulation or bribe everyone in sight to prevent things from getting that far.

Re:What did we expect?

[Bert64]

They took advantage of standard hardware in order to bait and switch people into being locked into nonstandard software...

Re:What did we expect?

[Thinboy00]

Wow, the first link is already Slashdotted. Headers:

HTTP/1.x 404 Not Found
  [wow, that's not what the error page said at all!]
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
  [gee, what a surprise!]
Content-Length: 3855

Content-Type: text/html

Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 19:25:43 GMT
  [GMT? c'mon, this is a computer; say "UTC" or get a real clock!]
Connection: keep-alive

Vary: Accept-Encoding

Maybe (random conspiracy theory). Or perhaps you just messed up the link (Internet archive, Google, et al. have never heard of it).

Re:What did we expect?

[AliasMarlowe]

8 because - Win95, NT4.0, Win98, WinME, Win2K, WinXP, WinVista, Win7

Pedantry: you left out Windows 1.0, 2.0, 286, 386, 3.0, 3.1, and WfW 3.11. That would make the total 15. BTW, the shareware Aporia for Windows 386 gave the sort of object-oriented shell in the late 1980s that Windows 95/98 pretended to have almost a decade later.
I also used DOS 1.0 and Windows 1.0 and both sucked rocks. But then, I had used real operating systems for years beforehand (MS/8, OS/360, TOPS-20, RSX-11, etc.). The PC did not get a real operating system until OS/2 2.1 or Windows NT 3.5, IMHO.

Re:What did we expect?

[Burkin]

Instead of asserting the alleged inconsistencies in my response, why don't you state what you are trying to prove because I somehow fail to see any coherent message

I'm stating that you can still see dll hell in various programs and that .NET does nothing to solve this issue because the programs that you see them with are written in C/C++ not a .NET language. Was that simple enough for you?

Re:What did we expect?

[pohl]

I assume you've heard the expression, "hung like a horse"?

Yes, but for someone even more well endowed I prefer the expression "hung like windows".

Re:What did we expect?

[Vegard]

Yah. The real heros bringing us the PC revolution was the guys reverse engineering the hardware/BIOS, and made cheap clones. The OS was just what became the de facto standard.

As we all know, DOS won over CP/M. CP/M was technically superior at the time, but lost for political and/or contract reasons, whatever.

Digital Research then went on to create a better DOS to compete. MS fought it with all means it could, and it went into oblivition.

At early stages, MS Windows was just a graphical shell on top of DOS. It wasn't particulary good either. There were competing graphical shells, for example Digital Research' GEM. Digital Research lost the patent lawsuit that MS essentially won, and GEM was limited to have only two windows simultaneously...who knows what it could have been.

MS has not had the technical best/superior solutions at any time. It was just better at legal and marketing stuff than anyone else.

The PC revolution would have come with or without MS. We'll never know how much innovation MS have killed on its way where it is, so to hail it as a savior is just plain stupid.

Re:What did we expect?

[hairyfeet]

Uuuhhh.....because the bling bling theme is just a symbol of the app incompatible clusterfuck that lies underneath? I've had a few SMBs attempt the Vista switch, and they went running back to XP so fast it would make you head swim. Pretty much NOTHING worked, including all their mission critical apps they needed to actually get their work done. And from a few friends that have MSFT subscriptions that give them access to server 2K3 with the link I posted above what you get is a REALLY fast and easy to lock down XP. According to them the performance on multicore machines with 2K3 is head and shoulders above XP, and unlike Vista all their apps that worked on XP worked on 2K3.

So if you really wanted to know "why not just kill the theme" and you weren't just trying to troll, it is because Vista seems to be less compatible then Linux when it comes to pre Vista Windows apps and server 2K3 gives you an easy to use, easy to lock down OS that gives better performance than XP but better compatibility than Vista. And there are a lot of us that if the apps don't work all the bling bling in the world ain't gonna make us want to use the POS OS that is Vista. If my apps don't run, I can't do my work. I can't do my work I don't get paid. That is why I run only 2K/XP boxes here. Because unlike Vista they "just work".

Re:What did we expect?

[hairyfeet]

I wish! Nope, whether it was UAC, or protected path, or the new driver model, I don't know, but it seemed like with Vista you were just as likely to get your apps to run in Linux on Wine as you were with an actual MSFT OS!

This is one of the reasons why myself and so many others think Ballmer should be fired. When Allchin was there app compatibility was job #1. There are many stories of Allchin himself furiously coding and debugging before a Windows release because they had found some popular app didn't run in the new OS. Sorry I can't find the link ATM but there was a pretty famous at the time trick he had to do for Win95 that basically detected the older versions of Sim City and would change the memory registers so that the game, which used an old DOS/Win3.1 bug, would run flawless on Win95. Now THAT is dedication.

Now let us think about WinXP. It is one of the most popular OSes in history, and according to Wikipedia over 400 MILLION copies were in use by 2006. Think about that for a second. 400 MILLION copies, all with users depending on its apps and peripherals. With that kind of userbase making sure the new OS is backwards compatible would be pretty damned important, don't you think? Not for Ballmer. He was too busy having the developers bolt on PMP so he could try to out epeen Steve Jobs in the media arena. As you can read here (pretty much anything involving Ballmer dealing with Allchin) pretty much Ballmer's entire plan for "dealing" with Apple and the iPod was to create the nastiest DRM to woo away big media. So what is the problem?

One word....drivers. Every driver written for every piece of hardware BEFORE Vista, including ALL those pieces of hardware sold for the past 8+ years for those 400 million XP users, is written to work with the bare metal, as that is kinda what drivers do. They talk to the bare metal and give the OS a way to deal with said metal. But of course if you are trying to cook up the nastiest DRM ever you CAN'T let drivers talk to bare metal, as those "evil pirates" could come up with a driver that bypasses all your pretty DRM(like they ain't gonna go around it anyway) so you institute all these new drivers rules and force driver signing. But ooopsie, pretty much no driver released for XP was ever signed. So you have just made all that hardware into paperweights, and for what? Are they seriously thinking folks will give up their iPods if the get the *.A.As on board the Vista train?

And that is just ONE of the marketing driven total bonehead stupid mistakes done under Ballmer. Look at rushing the 360 to market knowing of the RROD problem, look at Zune screwing all their "playsforsure"(don't now,huh?) partners, I could go on all day. And I apologize for the length. But as someone who has built and serviced Windows machine for nearly 15 years watching Ballmer fuck up what was once one of the great business desktop builders with his constant bumbling is as painful to me as I'm sure watching the Pepsi guy nearly run Apple into bankruptcy was for the Apple fans. Only I don't think we have much of a chance at luring Darth Gates out of retirement to save the company. Let the wife do the damned philanthropy and come home Bill! We need your evil ass to come kill the Ballmer monkey!

They also claim Windows supports Posix

[dyfet]

As they also claim Microsoft Windows is Posix compliant! It is simply to be able to tic a "mandated" requirement in some government procurement, not as something one would actually use or deploy.

Re:They also claim Windows supports Posix

[Z34107]

Well, Windows is at least somewhat POSIX compliant.

A few semesters ago I took an Operating Systems class; our labs were simple programs involving forking processes, named pipes, sockets, and file I/O, which we were to develop on an old Solaris box.

Not much of a Pico fan, I developed my programs on Vista using Visual Studio 2005. They all compiled and ran on Vista, and then also compiled and ran on gcc and Solaris. These were simple programs, mind you, but it worked.

Now ODF... TFA only looks at spreadsheet compatibility, and evidently there is no way documented in the ODF standard to store spreadsheet formulas. Article claims that they should have reverse engineered it or reused code from some other plug-in, but really I'm surprised they included any ODF support at all - "new markets" be damned.

But, if no-one's satisfied, they also introduced a whole new API for writing file format converters. Go write your own plug-in!

Re:They also claim Windows supports Posix

[wild_quinine]

As they also claim Microsoft Windows is Posix compliant! It is simply to be able to tic a "mandated" requirement in some government procurement, not as something one would actually use or deploy.

Ah, I think you might have misread that one. The latest version of Windows is fully compliant with the ISO's 'Piece of Shit v9' standard. POS IX, not POSIX.

Re:They also claim Windows supports Posix

[drinkypoo]

Microsoft Windows is POSIX.1 compliant, which will not help anyone today but which is nonetheless true.

Re:They also claim Windows supports Posix

[OrangeTide]

Well if you just go for the basic level of posix support, then yes it does support it. So does 100 other OSes, including weird embedded OSes that can't even run executables. Everything has to be compiled in, but they are "POSIX" too.

To be far UNIX Services for Windows is pretty decent and gives you a very complete POSIX environment on Windows.

Re:They also claim Windows supports Posix

[ThePhilips]

Last time I was checking, Windows' POSIX doesn't support fork(). Nor does it have to - for declared level of compatibility. (Whatever it is - lazy to check it.)

They also e.g. do not support signals. POSIX doesn't mandate support for all sets of features. All it requires that compatible programs can check - during compile time - which feature sets are supported, which are not.

Windows' POSIX is very similar to some heavily strip-down, *nix based embedded OSs. Few of them support fork() or threads, some support signals/RT extensions. Yet, they are POSIX compliant.

Re:They also claim Windows supports Posix

[ThePhilips]

True.

But to the point. If Windows supports fork(), please show to me its MSDN help page. All crap Windows supports - or supported in past - is on MSDN. But not fork(). I searched - found none.

Problem with the Spec

[Anonymous Coward]

So, this is either a problem with the specification or a problem with other implementations. If MS has made a compliant program, who are we to complain?

Never ascribe to malice...

[Anonymous Coward]

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

That's what I keep telling myself. I simply can't believe that they are brilliant masterminds crafting up BS like this. I'm probably wrong, but it saves me a lot of time (as far as trying to comprehend such stupidity).

Re:Never ascribe to malice...

[jkrise]

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence

Of course, I am not that cynical. I was taught to never assume malice where incompetence would be the simpler explanation. But the degree of incompetence needed to explain SP2's poor ODF support boggles the mind and leads me to further uncharitable thoughts. So I must stop here.

from the referenced article....
http://www.robweir.com/blog/

Re:Never ascribe to malice...

[jank1887]

I'm waiting for the Microsoft Knowledgebase article explaining the incompatibility and showing you how to fix the problem by using the Save As function and selecting the .XLSX type.

Re:Never ascribe to malice...

[UncleTogie]

Am I the only person who reads that extension aloud as "Ex-Lax"?

Actually, the first two times I read it, it parsed as "Excel sucks."

Which means it won't get used....

[syousef]

...which is probably the point of this. The only reason to use ODF instead of MS native formats is for interoperability. When people don't use it, MS can point and say "see people don't want or need it and didn't care when we put it in". Useful at all manner of legal proceeding (antitrust anyone) to show that it's not important.

I'm shocked!

[elrous0]

MS, a for-profit company, refuses to embrace a format that gives an advantage to their open-source free competitors? Surely not!

Re:I'm shocked!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

MS, a for-profit company, refuses to embrace a format that gives an advantage to their open-source free competitors? Surely not!

Coca-Cola, a for-profit company, refuses to stop shooting farmers who want to be paid for their land which would cost them money, giving an advantage to their Pepsi competitors? Surely not!

I think what you're missing here, is MS's actions are ILLEGAL actions to hurt competitors, which normally is news. It's just that MS breaks the law so often and the laws are so poorly understood by the general public that many people aren't as outraged as one might expect. If another company were breaking the law to hurt smaller competitors would your attitude be the same?

Re:Really?

[TechForensics]

Bloody hell. I wonder why they would ever want to ship a software product that did that.

You must be new here. (grin)

Re:I just hope

[arthurpaliden]

They won't. All they will see is the ODF box checked off.

The article speaks about spreadsheets.

[Anonymous Coward]

The article speaks about spreadsheets, which the slashdot blurb neglected to mention.

Re:The article speaks about spreadsheets.

[Sockatume]

Yes, it's worth noting that the article only addresses that one filetype. On the other hand, it removes the formulas from spreadsheets when loading them, and writes formulas back out in an Excel-only syntax that nothing else can read. If that's MS's idea of shippable, consumer-ready interoperability I don't hold out much hope for its compatability with other file types. Its behavior reads like a half-assed homework assignment from a student who didn't give a shit.

Re:The article speaks about spreadsheets.

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

It actually works well with other filetypes. My personal experience (loading odt files with equations in them). Works quite well. It even imports the equations into the shiney new formula editor in Office 2007, which, quite frankly, is worlds ahead of the one in OpenOffice.org

Unfinished sayings

[Bogtha]

This is the trouble with people saying the first half of a saying and then trailing off. The people who know the saying get the point, and the people who don't remember a fragment and repeat it even though it makes no sense on its own.

To the people tagging this "embraceandextend". Embracing and extending is not a particularly bad thing to do. Many formats, including XML (upon which ODF is based), are built with this in mind. The complete saying that is referred to with "embrace and extend" is embrace, extend and extinguish . The extinguishing is the goal here, the former two are merely tools to help them achieve this.

Next stop - customer support

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that'll be good for some fun calls to customer support.

Still no OOXML!!

[jkrise]

Surprisingly MS has decided to implement ODF in their own strange way, but OOXML is still not available.... why??

Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[Blakey Rat]

In the meantime, how the HELL is it possible the spec is so bad that you can be technically-compliant with it, and yet not be read by (almost) any existing implementation?

Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[drinkypoo]

this is how

Kind of looks like the whole thing was a farce to begin with given how they created a bad spec and then went on to support a worse one before imploding.

Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[Vanders]

The current spec doesn't cover spreadsheet formulas: it has a big whole and basically says "Do what OpenOffice.org does for now". ODF 1.2 will cover spreadsheet formulas but it isn't finished yet. So yes, it is valid to say "Well the spec doesn't cover formulas, not Microsofts fault".

Except...Microsoft already have a perfectly good plugin that can read & write ODF documents. It appears they've gone out of their way to break that existing code and do things differently to how everyone else (including themselves) are already doing things. As the author of the blog says "If your business model requires only conformance and not actually achieving interoperability, then I wish you well.".

If Microsoft have put all that effort into adding ODF support without actually achieving interoperability then it's a thinly veiled paper exercise on their part.

Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[hal9000(jr)]

In the meantime, how the HELL is it possible the spec is so bad that you can be technically-compliant with it, and yet not be read by (almost) any existing implementation?

Because specifications are written by people and then read and interpreted by others. While specification creators try to be as complete and thorough as possible, there are still gaps. In something as complex as a document format like spreadsheets, I'd imagine it's an impossible task. Bake-offs where all the stakeholders get into a room, try to get this shit to interoperate, and then decided the proper interpretation, is where the interoperation work gets done. All of the Internet protocols went through a similar cycle. Then, when there is consensus on the interpretations, guidance and reference implementations can be written.

Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[Blakey Rat]

And from the article, the format version 1.1 doesn't even define how spreadsheet formulas should be stored! Which is why Microsoft's implementation, which doesn't bother to store the formulas at all, is compliant with the standard. This is a joke. Gee, I wonder why Microsoft fought a bunch of non-technical government offices from forcing them to use a file format that's woefully insufficient for their (both Microsoft's and the government offices') needs?

Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[clone53421]

Self-replying, I know, but I just thought of something else.

According to TFS, Office fails to load ODF files created by any other application. If those files are compliant with ODF standards, the blame for this lies squarely on Microsoft. They fail to open standards-compliant ODF files.

Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[Sockatume]

If those following the standard act in good faith and cooperate outwith the standard to ensure compatability, a flexible standard allows for innovation and invention. You can always pin things down further as the standard evolves, but you can't really undo excessive constraints further down the line. If one of the players decides to act in bad faith, then it falls apart. In this instance, MS is either only supporting ODF in the most box-checking token manner (as they have a long history of doing with important features), they're deliberately, or they're pulling the old "embrace, extend, extinguish". They're morons or assholes.

Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[makomk]

No, it defines exactly how spreadsheet formulas should be stored. The trouble is, it doesn't standardise them - in particular, there's no standard list of spreadsheet functions and what they should do. The reason for this is that it's a hard problem - so much of what Excel and other spreadsheet software already does is known to be wrong, or makes bad assumptions.

Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[Culture20]

The current spec doesn't cover spreadsheet formulas: it has a big whole and basically says "Do what OpenOffice.org does for now".

The problem with MS's specs saying "Do what Word 97 does" is that no one other than MS knows what Word 97 does. But OpenOffice's source code is... open. Anyone can know what OpenOffice does, and if MS is afraid of GPL, they're big enough for proper cleanroom approach.

Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[drinkypoo]

The reason for this is that it's a hard problem

I don't think you can really use that blog post for that citation, because it's the same source as TFA which is both more relevant, and substantially newer... and which says:

We might [also] hear concerns that supporting other vendors' ODF spreadsheet formulas cannot be done because this formula language is undocumented. The irony here is that the formula language used by OpenOffice (and by other vendors) is based on that used by Excel, which itself was not fully documented when OpenOffice implemented it. So an argument, by Microsoft, not to support that language because it is not documented is rather hypocritical. Also, the fact that the Microsoft/CleverAge add-in correctly reads and writes that legacy formula syntax shows not only that it can be done, but that Microsoft already has the code to do it. The inexplicably (sic) thing is why that code never made it into Excel 2007 SP2.

Editorial [brackets] and note mine.

In summary: Your source, the same person who wrote the article which explains why it isn't hard also says Ecma dropped the ball. (in your link.) Another particular gem, this time from the current FA again: Everyone knows what TODAY() means. Everyone knows what =A1+A2 means. To get this wrong requires more effort than getting it right. So to say "The trouble is, it doesn't standardise them - in particular, there's no standard list of spreadsheet functions and what they should do." is just crazy talk which actually apologizes for Microsoft. In fact, there is such a list; the list documents what Excel does, since there was nothing else available; Microsoft itself had this functionality in a previous version, and now it is gone. Therefore the trouble is that Microsoft has deliberately broken spreadsheet compatibility in Office 2007 SP2. There is really no other way to look at it. It might not have been the goal (an alternate excuse might be to take advantage of another, newer codebase in order to eliminate some old code which is otherwise unnecessary) but it was trivially testable and therefore is inexcusable.

Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft...

[joaobranco]

Self-replying, I know, but I just thought of something else.

According to TFS, Office fails to load ODF files created by any other application. If those files are compliant with ODF standards, the blame for this lies squarely on Microsoft. They fail to open standards-compliant ODF files.

Conversely, if the files produced by MS Office are valid standards-compliant ODF files (which they may be according to the letter of the standard) we should also blame the other apps if they fail to use them, isn't so? They will also fail to open standards-compliant ODF files.

Re:Really?

[plague3106]

Well, from the article: "First, we might hear that ODF 1.1 does not define spreadsheet formulas and therefore it is not necessary for one vendor to use the same formula language that other vendors use."

Seems like a rather large hole in the spec itself. ODF 1.1 doesn't define spreedsheet forumlas? So, what version will? I wouldn't put any effort into guess, nor making my application read various other vendor formats.. when I may well have to recode again when 1.2 comes out.

If anyone's to blame here, it's the ODF people for not having a COMPLETE spec. If formulas are so important to spreadsheets (and they are), why the hell would your spec not include how to store said forumlas?

Well, interoperability wasn't the goal.

[seeker_1us]

Some more enlightened governments are realizing that their electronic documents need to be in an open format so that they don't have to be chained to a vendor, or so that those documents don't die if the single vendor stops supporting it.

Even if MS fails all interoperability (which I would bet they do), at least someone could use ODF with office 2007 and 10-20 years later be able to use the spec to develop an app to recover the documents.

EXCELLENT article

[drinkypoo]

This is one of the best-written articles submitted to slashdot in a long time. Not only is it well-written (at least, it didn't make my brain hurt) but it gives you the technical background AND it tells you in advance how to debunk the stupid arguments which will certainly by coming from M$ trolls and astroturfers. Scrapbook this one, kids. You're going to be referring back to it for months, if not years.

Sun ODF plugin for Microsoft Office

[MrKaos]

Sun's ODF plugin for Office.

holes in the standard

[backwardMechanic]

No surprise that MS has done this. What it does show, however, is that the ODF standard is incomplete. If MS can write out an ODF compliant file that no-one lese can read, ODF has a problem. In an odd sort of a way, MS are doing us a favour here by shaking out the holes. Role on ODF 1.2.

Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft

[golodh]

Seriously, Microsoft has a huge cash-cow to protect in MS Office. And the first layer of defense is lock-in. If MS Office were truly inter-operable, then that would remove an enormous barrier against the introduction of Open Office.

Clearly Microsoft's best interests are served by denying their customers interoperability.

That's what drives Microsoft's policy: cash. Everything else is PR. Which is duly born out by their actions.

Re:Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft

[theaveng]

Oh course. This has always been true with Microsoft, where in the late 80s/early 90s they advertised they could read WordPerfect files from Amigas or Macs, but all it did was strip all the formatting to leave-behind plain text. Yuck. Even later when Word was released for early PowerMacs, I found that Windows Word could not read the Word documents from my Macintosh.

Microsoft does not want interchanging of information. They want everybody using MS Word on an MS operating system. The end.

Re:Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft

[badpazzword]

Ok, let's assume they were malicious and all they worried about was lock-in. Then it would make sense to bork the ODF writing part.

But being able to correctly read ODF files would just be a big plus in an already great product like Excel. Why break the reading part?

Re:Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Microsoft does not want interchanging of information. They want everybody using MS Word on an MS operating system. The end.

Every major vendor would probably like their own product to dominate. The difference is not the motivation, but the methods. Some vendors honestly try to make the best product and win customers by so doing. MS prefers to leverage monopolies to artificially break competing products and prevent users from being able to choose based upon the individual merits of the products in question.

I have no problem with MS wanting their OS and office suite to dominate. I have a problem with their breaking the law and hurting the industry, innovation, and end users to make that happen.

Re:Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

But being able to correctly read ODF files would just be a big plus in an already great product like Excel. Why break the reading part?

Because they don't want to discourage just other products that use ODF, they want to slow and discourage adoption of ODF as a format. Anything that makes more users stick with MS proprietary formats longer, makes MS money. Every user who sends an ODF file from Google docs to an Excel user, then finds it doesn't work is discouraged from using Google docs and encouraged to buy a license for MSOffice so they can interoperate easily with that other person.

Re:Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Ok, let's assume they were malicious and all they worried about was lock-in."

To really add flavor to the discussion, let us further assume that planet Earth is spherical, and space is pretty big.

"Why break the reading part?"

Because you look ridiculous claiming you were able to follow the standard for reading documents, but unable to do so when writing them?

Re:Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft

[Narpak]

From the First of January 2009 all Norwegian Government or Education related sites and services are using the "Open Formats" ODF, PDF and HTML. Also all schools and government institutions are required to accept documents submitted in ODF.

Åpne dokumentstandarder blir obligatoriske i staten.
My rough translation from Norwegian:

- Norway has so far lacked a policy regarding the area of software. This have now changed. This Cabinet has decided that IT-development in the public sector shall be based upon Open Standards. In the future we will not accept that State activities locks users of public information to Locked Formats. - Heidi Grande Røys (Minister of Government Administration and Reform).

Microsoft might play their games to hinder development as much as they can, but at least in this country the turn towards Open Standards seems inevitable.

Re:Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Well, at least it works on OO and MSOffice 97 -2007.

Sigh. That's the point. MS's market share allows them to artificially break other programs by making it really, really hard for those companies to writer interoperable programs, thus costing them money and slowing their ability to work on other aspects of their programs, like making them better or faster.

I also do not know if the "better" ODF works on MS Office prior to 2007 at all (does it have a converter?).

Yes, there are several, but whether it works or not is largely dependent upon MS, who is financially motivated to make it not work. And by that I mean they are motivated by making you pay for more licenses at a higher cost than the free market would normally determine.

Well, if I send a .doc file at least I know that almost everyone will be able to open it.

I strongly disagree. As a professional writer I've been in the position of trying to open old .doc files, and I often ended up setting up multiple VM's with old versions of Windows and MacOS and various versions of word, simply in order to export the files to a more modern format currently sold software can read. There are companies that make big money just taking your old Word files and translating them to PDFs and newer Word formats so they can be used again. Have you tried opening a ten year old Word file? Sometimes they open and sometimes they don't. Sometimes a different version of Wood will open them. Sometimes only OpenOffice will open them. Often they are at least partly garbled.

Moving to ODF doesn't guarantee that a given program will be able to open the ODF file 10 years from now, it just guarantees the information needed to do so will be available to any company that wants to add that functionality. For old .doc files, MS might have the info needed but never completely succeeds and everybody else is just reverse engineering and hoping for "good enough".

Spreadsheets, people, spreadsheets

[hal9000(jr)]

TFN talks ONLY about spread sheet interoperability. It's important to note that. Has interoperability testing been done with documents?

Re:Really?

[Benanov]

Because apparently it's really difficult:

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-failure.html

Oasis and ODF committees would rather get it right than have something busted and broken like competing suites.

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

This article focuses very specifically on formula support in OpenDocument Spreadsheet. The problem with that is that ODF 1.x does not provide ANY specification for formulas whatsoever. This article claims that the standard be damned and that Microsoft should go and reverse engineer the implementation by OpenOffice. This is only demonstrative of how incomplete and irrelevant the ODF specification really is. There are massive gaping holes in it that implementers are filling on their own which will invariably lead to incompatibilities. The ISO OOXML specification may be absolutely massive, but that's because it's complete, and very specific (I'm referring specifically to the one that did pass ISO, not the first few iterations).

This is like bitching that Internet Explorer can't be CSS compliant because it doesn't implement the moz-* CSS extensions.

Either fix the spec, or get used to this.

Re:Bullshit

[maugle]

On the other hand, open source coders have been reverse-engineering Microsoft document formats for years. Couldn't Microsoft, just this once, return the favor in the name of interopability?

Re:Bullshit

[clone53421]

Microsoft should go and reverse engineer the implementation by OpenOffice

Reverse-engineer it? You have the source code. You don't have to reverse-engineer anything.

Re:Bullshit

[Palestrina]

The point is that Microsoft has already reverse-engineered this legacy OpenOffice formula syntax. They did it in their ODF Add-in for Office. So it is already there and already works. They could support that syntax, be compatible with other ODF spreadsheets (and their own ODF Add-in) and still be 100% conformant to the ODF standard.

The problem is formulas.

[characterZer0]

ODF does not specify the a language for formulas. Everybody but MS uses one language, MS uses another. Of course there are incompatibilities.

Why did ODF not specify a spreadsheet formula language?

Re:The problem is formulas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's bloody hard to do.

Microsoft's spreadsheet formula language in OOXML is actually a copy-and-paste job from the Excel help files. It doesn't provide nearly enough information to re-implement. It was only added as an afterthought, when Microsoft started complaining that ODF didn't have a spec for spreadsheet formulas, made a big deal about it, and then realised that OOXML didn't either.

ODF does have a formula language specification. It specifies something like 400 functions in precise detail, loosely based on what OOo, Gnumeric, and others (including Excel) already do. This has been a work-in-progress since 2005 (before Microsoft started complaining about ODF), and is basically finished (for now). It's to be included in OpenDocument 1.2 (the next version), but most other OpenDocument-capable spreadsheet apps already use these formula specifications on OpenDocument 1.1 documents.

Microsoft just chose to ignore it, and roll their own. As usual.

Good point!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I was thinking exactly the same thing. If MS have made a compliant implementation but it isn't compatible with anyone else's, doesn't that mean that ODF is broken? Isn't this exactly the sort of complaint certain people around here have made against Microsoft's own formats in the past: just because there's a standard that officially states what the document format is, it's no use if other people can't realistically implement it and then trust that interoperability will work?

Re:Good point!

[Dan Ost]

Not necessarily broken, but certainly incomplete.

Re:Good point!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Sure, it might be "incomplete" rather than "incorrect", but if we're talking about a standard for interoperability, doesn't "incomplete" pretty much imply "broken"? That sort of standard only has one job, and it isn't going to do it...

Re:Really?

[rekoil]

In order to claim (in a legalistic sense) technical compliance with the spec in order to be able to sell Office to companies/governments who have adopted policies requiring this, while at the same time making it virtually impossible for those organizations to actually USE a competing office product.

Badly Specified Standard

[SwashbucklingCowboy]

If you have a standard where there are implementations that are 100% compliant and yet are totally non-interoperable then you have a badly specified standard.

Re:Badly Specified Standard

[Rakshasa Taisab]

"We recommend your implementation does not set fire to the user's house, rape his dog nor feed chicken to the fish."

- Oh, but boss, that's just a _recommendation_. So technically we could do the latter three and still be compliant with the letter of the specification!

Re:Badly Specified Standard

[Shados]

This. Same issue with Html/CSS, actually. The XHTML/CSS specs leave a lot to the implementation, so that even for parts where IE8 is fully compliants, you have to test between other browsers. The only thing that makes it seem like Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc all use the "same standard", is because they push it a notch further, and on top of the standard, they synchronize their custom implementations on the parts that are not in the standard, while IE8 does not (that includes part where Firefox, etc are NOT standard, yet IE8 is, which makes it seem like its the other way around).

This is no different. The standard sucks, and instead of implementing the standard, people implement the "convention". "Oh, this is exactly what the standard dictates, but it doesnt work in suite XYZ..so lets fix it".

Of course, I'm not going to claim OOXML is any better, its really not, and the 2003 doc format is a million times worse... but these standard specifications are simply not fit to be used as the end all be all. If we lost overnight all of the current implementations, we'd have one hell of a hard time reimplementing them as is from only the specs. Which totally kill the points.

Re:Really?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

If Microsoft is ODF 1.1 compliant, and other ODF 1.1 compliant software can't use the software, then it looks like the ODF committee didn't get it right and has something busted and broken.

I think the ODF committee was more concerned about getting their standard approved quickly than having a complete specification.

Re:Really?

[Sockatume]

One could argue that MS could've chosen any formula spec it wanted and naturally went with Excel, leading to the incompatability, but the existing Cleverage ODF add-in was perfectly happy to read and write other ODF spreadsheet formula systems. There was no need for them to spend time and money creating a less compatible version of that bit of software, except with incompatability as a goal.

Re:Really?

[weicco]

Interesting. According the article referenced in the Wikipedia even OpenOffice and KOffice don't get along.

Pigs

[xouumalperxe]

Seems the pigs took a trip to the airport, but then failed to achieve take off

Counter-adage

[SteveFoerster]

There's another saying, and one that I think better applies here: "Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a conspiracy."

And with Microsoft we're way past three times.

Now, ODF == .doc and .xls

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Almost overnight, Microsoft becomes the market leader in ODF-compliant office suites. So now, OracleOffice.org and KOffice will have to code up all sorts of ugly hacks and reverse engineering tricks to maintain compatibility with Microsoft Office ODF documents. Exactly as they had to do to get compatible with .doc and .xls documents.

Microsoft plays dirty. All the time. This was totally expected, of course.

It's ok though; we're still in better shape than we were just a few years ago. A Microsoft ODF document, or even a Microsoft OOXML document, is still at least roughly following a standard that has some documentation somewhere. The free world can develop Microsoft Office compatibility in this space a lot easier than in the .doc and .xls space.

Re:Really?

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

But... But... That's what microsoft did with OOXML. How dare you compare us to the vagabonds!

Re:Chickens are coming home to roost

[Rakshasa Taisab]

"One the one hand we require Microsoft to follow specs to the letter, and now we somehow fault them for doing so?"

If you're following a specification to the letter, you're already breaking the spirit of the specfication.

Hypocrisy

[benjymouse]

I'd say that it had a bad smell of Hypocrisy. If the standard doesn't cover important(I dare say) areas such as the friggin formula language, what good is the standard?

No, the author is trying to preempt the obvious and very valid argument that if the standard didn't cover this and implementers need to reverse engineer a specific implementation (OpenOffice), maybe the standard wasn't good enough?

The author is making silly analogies with someone willfully going through hoops (investing time) to sabotage interoperability with an implementation in which the implementor has chosen not to invest time and effort reverse engineering and testing functionality which is clearly outside the specification.

Re:Hypocrisy

[perryizgr8]

especially when every other damn document which is not a spreadsheet with formulas will be read and written with perfect interoperability.

Re:Really?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Clever Age's stuff is released under a BSD-like licence.

Re:Really?

[Sockatume]

You fail at reading the licence.

The pertinent point in the article

[phoebe]

Sun is just as bad or worse than Microsoft by implementing incomplete standards leading to the same incompatibility that ODF is supposed to resolve.

Sun should write out formulas in ODF 1.1 format, using the legacy "oooc" namespace prefix that the other vendors are using. Remember, the other vendors are using that namespace specifically for compatibility with OO's ODF documents. This is the current convention. To unilaterally switch, without notice or coordination, to a new namespace, is not cool. When ODF 1.2 is an approved standard, then we all can move there in a coordinated fashion, to cause users minimal inconvenience. But the above table clearly shows the confusion that results if this move is not coordinated. I know OO 3.01 has an option to save in ODF 1.0/1.1 format. IMHO, this should setting should be the default. I'm not sure if the Sun Plugin has a similar configuration option, but I hope it does.

Re:The pertinent point in the article

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Sun is just as bad or worse than Microsoft by implementing incomplete standards leading to the same incompatibility that ODF is supposed to resolve.

Sun fully implements the very latest version of the spec. Maybe they should not use that as the default (probably a poor decision at this point) but that does not make them "just as bad as MS". Unlike MS Office, OpenOffice reads in all versions of ODF spreadsheets just fine. The fact that they write to the newer version has caused one incompatibility issue with the current version of Koffice which will soon be fixed and their documents work fine in everything else (except of course MS Office). Koffice gracefully fails using the fallback method.

MS Office, on the other hand, uses the failback method for everything, be it old or new versions of ODF. They are incompatible with every other implementation in this regard. Trying to equate the two is either very misguided or very disingenuous.

Re:Really?

[Mr Z]

Microsoft put all their Excel formulas into a private namespace. This is almost as bad as, say, writing a compiler that claims to be a C compiler, but really, all it does is validate the syntax of the C program and then look for C comments containing Pascal code, then compiling the Pascal code instead.

/*
BEGIN
writeln("Microsoft rules!");
END
*/
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
printf("This is standard C code.\n")
}

Is it a problem with the C standard that I can embed Pascal in a C comment?

Re:It doesn't give an advantage

[elrous0]

Actually it does give an advantage to the OSS, because it allows the OSS to do something that it was never able to do before--share documents flawlessly with Word. So, right now let's say I'm looking for a software suite for home. I need to exchange complex files back and forth between work (which uses Office) and home. As the situation stands now, I *have* to buy Word (the Office file support in most OSS stuff like OpenOffice is still wonky, particularly with complex documents). But if there were a open format, able to handle complex documents the same in both Office and OSS, then I could just save all my files in THAT format and choose OSS software (which already has the big advantage of being free) for my home. MS looses a sale, OSS gains a new supporter, etc.

The same logic could apply to my office. If they can create complex documents that anyone can read in odf, why use the Office proprietary formats at all? They could start saving ALL their stuff in odf, which would lead logically to the question "Why not use free OSS in the office and save some money?" MS loses again.

So, of course MS doesn't support odf. Why would they unzip their flies and give up defacto control of the "office standard" formats to those who they see as competitors? It's giving up their biggest advantage to a competition that already has the big advantage of being free.

Self-defense, perhaps?

[thethibs]

It looks like Microsoft has learned from its IE experience. Instead of chasing an "anything but Microsoft" standard put together by a community that's actively hostile to Microsoft, they've decided to wait them out. Microsoft is refusing to give them a target and telling them to get off the pot.

What Microsoft has done should speed up the ODF standards process. We should thank them for that.

Re:I tried as well

[Burkin]

The problem isn't that you can't open a Word 2007 ODF document in another ODF compliant program, it's that it refuses to open to other program's ODF documents. Hence why the summary says they are compliant but not being interoperable. Interoperability is a two-way street.

Excel, not Word

[InvisiBill]

If you RTFA (yeah, yeah, I know...), the problem is with spreadsheet formulas.

Re:Chickens are coming home to roost

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

One the one hand we require Microsoft to follow specs to the letter, and now we somehow fault them for doing so?

No, we're faulting them for following the specs to the letter and at the same time going out of their way to make sure their technically compliant implementation still doesn't work with all the other, existing implementations.

What is wrong about asking OpenOffice to follow the specs?

ODF does, for the most part, follow the specs. The problems between OpenOffice and MSOffice's implementations are that ODF implements a newer version of the spec and MS hasn't caught up to that, and MS decided the suggested (but not required) formulas, which use the same syntax as Excel and for which their is already BSD licensed code that works in MS Office as a plug-in, were "too hard to understand" so they just strip all the formulas out.

MS may, technically, be minimally compliant with the spec, but it is clear they went out of their way to be as minimally compliant as possible to make their version as incompatible and unfriendly as they could manage while still being within the spec. This was not an honest attempt at being compatible, despite MS's claims that they were making an honest attempt.

What goes around comes around. ODF was initially just a clever assault launched by Sun and IBM.

Yeah, but it was an attempt to level the playing field and let products win based upon merits instead of criminal leveraging of monopolies. I don't understand why people have such a hard time understanding antitrust laws and how they work and why we have them.

OpenOffice and derivatives, Sun and IBM just have to eat their own dogfood. Admit that the "perfect" ODF was at least partly a hype.

No one claimed ODF was perfect and the early spec MS is using left room for ambiguity... which is why they also provided several open source reference implementations which everyone else has had no real problem implementing. Aside from MS, the only real problems are bugs between the stable and draft versions of the spec. MS is just playing dumb. "Oh they say if we can't understand Excel formula's, we can fail back to just reading the value the formula would produce. We're so stupid we can't understand formulas identical to the one we already use, har har, and we're too stupid to use the free BSD licensed implementation that already works with MSOffice, har har."

The "problem" with the ODF spec in this case is that they wrote it as a spec assuming it would be used to make interoperable implementations, instead of as an ironclad legal contract with no loopholes for dishonest companies that wanted to try to be compliant but as non-interoperable as possible. After all, only one company had motivation to do that, and for them to attempt it would be criminal. That doesn't seem to have stopped MS though, as usual.

The chickens are coming home to roost. Suck it up. Fix it instead of point fingers.

Please. They already have a draft that removes the ambiguity and it is already implemented by several companies. If MS were interested in being honest or even obeying the law, there would be no issue. There is room for more than finger pointing, MS should be prosecuted for one more criminal antitrust violation. Why do you hate free market competition so much?

Re:It doesn't give an advantage

[InvisiBill]

It works the other way too. MS Office is now able to share documents flawlessly with other suites. While most people think this is a win for FOSS, it can be a win for MS too. Picture a small organization that can't afford MS Office. Regardless of anything else, they are not using MS Office. MS Office supporting ODF allows them to interact with this organization's OpenOffice (or whatever alternative suite they use) ODF files. Yes, this is not the most common situation, but it does happen. In some cases, MS supporting ODF will actually be an advantage for MS.

As AC said, it's more that MS is giving up their proprietary format advantage, than ODF providing an advantage for others. ODF is a level playing field. MS proprietary formats are advantageous to MS for lock-in reasons, and supporting ODF well may negatively impact that.

Re:Really?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Interesting. According the article referenced in the Wikipedia even OpenOffice and KOffice don't get along.

The difference is OpenOffice reads everything fine. KOffice fails to read the latest OpenOffice docs perfectly because OpenOffice uses the new draft version of the spec as the default... and it is perfectly appropriate for KOffice to fall back to reading those formulas as the last value until they release a new version of KOffice that supports the new spec. That is why there is a failback mode in the spec.

MSOffice, however, fails back even when reading the old version of the spec, because they seem to have decided understanding Excel style formulas in Excel was too hard, despite the existence of several open source implementations and the spec being the formulas they already use. The difference is huge. Koffice is doing the right thing and being reasonable. MS is going out of their way to be as poor at interoperability as the spec allows by feigning extreme incompetence. I mean, did you look at the chart in the article. Why is it even small, unfunded projects seem to work interoperably pretty well, while MS can't manage to work with anyone else's implementation. Do you truly believe they are that incompetent?

Now this makes sense

[ilo.v]

I was puzzled by Microsoft's decision to imbed ODF compatibility in their current Office program so quickly. Now I understand why. They realized that if they hurried they could release BEFORE the spec was usable for spreadsheets. Now they will stall as long as possible. Their lobbyists are happy because they can say "we support ODF." Their marketers are happy because there is something labeled ODF in the program that is utterly useless. Pointy haired bosses will never understand the distinction between version 1.1 vs. 1.2, and will conclude forever that ODF is broken.

Re:"ODF is what should be fixed first"- by whom?

[KiltedKnight]

The problem is that if Microsoft can't drive the bus, it won't get on. And if they're forced to get on, they'll be like the schoolyard bully and just do whatever they want to anyway while maintaining a modicum of compliance. They want to control where it goes. They don't want to let others dictate to them what should and shouldn't be done. In some aspects, this would make sense... but in the world of open documents, this is not the case.

Re:Really?

[clone53421]

It's more like embedded assembly language. You transport the C code to a different chipset or OS, and maybe it doesn't work any more... the hardware and system calls are different. The formulas are "system calls", in effect: They reference code that's part of the spreadsheet application; it isn't embedded in the spreadsheet document.

Problem is, formulas are an integral part of spreadsheets and thus they need to be portable from application to application if the document format is supposedly going to be supported by both. There needs to be some standard to achieve this.

No, that's not it.

[InvisiBill]

The problem isn't that you can't open a Word 2007 ODF document in another ODF compliant program, it's that it refuses to open to other program's ODF documents.

If you actually read the article, you'll find that Google, KSpread, Symphony, OpenOffice, and the Sun plugin are all unable to open documents created in Excel 2007. The issue here is not that it's one way, it's that the MS interpretation is different from what everyone else uses (though the actual specification leaves it open). And it's also about spreadsheets (Excel), not word-processor documents (Word).

The Microsoft formulas aren't actually conformant

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's supposed ODF 1.1 spreadsheet output is not compliant with the ODF 1.1 specification.

From 8.1.3 (emphasis mine):

Typically, the formula itself begins with an equal (=) sign and can include the following components:
[...]
Addresses of cells that contain numbers. The addresses can be relative or absolute, see section 8.3.1. Addresses in formulas start with a "[" and end with a "]".

From 8.3.1 Referencing Table Cells (emphasis mine):

For example, in a table with the name SampleTable the cell in column 34 and row 16 is referenced by the cell address SampleTable.AH16. In some cases it is not necessary to provide the name of the table. However, the dot must be present. When the table name is not required, the address in the previous example is .AH16.

Now look at a Microsoft formula in their ODF 1.1 spreadsheets. You'll see a formula attribute value of "msoxl:=B4-B3". For that to be correct per the ODF 1.1 specification, that should be "msoxl:=[.B4]-[.B3]". Compare this to the OpenOffice.org and OpenFormula syntax:

msoxl:=[.B4]-[.B3]
  oooc:=[.B4]-[.B3]
      of:=[.B4]-[.B3]

Ignoring the prefix, they're identical. Furthermore, the formula functions used by OpenOffice.org are generally based on the functions in Excel to begin with (such as "TODAY", for example), so I can only conclude that Microsoft is intentionally sabotaging interoperability to keep people from using ODF while still claiming conformance.

Not true

[BrentH]

This announcement came as such a big surprise to me I had to see it with my own eyes. So I specifically downloaded (ahem) Office 2007 and SP2 for this purpose to see how it actually performs. Now I only tested odt (text docs), so the spreadsheets and presentations may be different, but I opened some docs I made with OpenOffice, which were not very complex, but has some tables, images with subscripts, OOo fomulae and not completely run off the mill markup, and I was surprised to see Word showed it pixelperfect to me. I could even edit the formulae I inserted with OOo. Only at the back of the document we're some quirks with positioning of images. I havent done much further testing, but from a first glance it looks like MS did it right for once. I was impressed, and I hate Microsoft as much as the next /.'er... But it seems this blurb just isnt true. I hope I can get the Microsofties in my circles to use at least this service pack so that I can just email files I made with OOo.

Re:Not true

[spitzak]

The complaint is about Spreadsheet formulas.

The fact that they do so well with text actually makes this even more suspicious. I think they took the thing that they know people will test and that PDF has also made MS lockin much less relevant anyway.

But they purposly broke the thing that keeps MSOffice locked into office and business settings.

I am also very suspicious of the huge amount of astroturfing a few months ago that kept harping on how "ODF does not define the formula language". I'm sure ODF does not define something about superscripts or something as well, but that was ignored. The continued hitting on this tiny specific thing may indicate that they were planning on this incompatibility for quite a while.

The contents of the formula are text and should be interpreted just as well. This is like rejecting all text blocks containing non-english words when it is pretty obvious from the standard that there was no intention to make the language english only.

Furthermore the formala are basically defined as "what Excel does" so Microsoft is in a much better position than anybody else to really do this correctly. And this also is why there cannot ever be a standard, because Microsoft itself refuses to publish one!

ODF 1.2 still not due?

[testerus]

Is there a reason other than Microsoft's damage done to ISO that ODF 1.2 with OpenFormula is still not released?

The spec assumes good faith.

[Rob Y.]

If the spec assumes that all implementers are doing it with the intention of achieving interoperability, then there's not as much need to nail down every byte of the syntax.

If, however, one of your implementers is Microsoft, and you can more or less assume that one of their goals is to assure *incomplete* interoperability, then you've got a whole other thing.

The folks designing ODF were building a standard that they thought all implementers would treat as a standard. Yes, things were left out, and I guess the OOo implementation was assumed as a reference implementation to go to for the details. But it's not quite incompetence to assume people are approaching implementing your standard in good faith.

By the way, wasn't there a Sun-generated plugin for MSOffice to handle ODF? Does that work better?

Re:Really?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Is it a problem with the C standard that I can embed Pascal in a C comment?

YES! If the C standard considered compilers that executed arbitrary code within comments to be compliant and the goals of the C standard was to allow any compiler that met the C standard make the same resultant object code.

The problem is not that you could put any text within a comment. It's a problem if your Pascal code is required to produce the desired object code.

If the goals of the ODF was to make file formats readable by other office suites then they technically succeeded, but if they intended to have a format that enforce rules that made the file interoperable with other office suites then they obviously didn't meet that goal.

I know a lot a people here on Slashdot feel personally invested in ODF, but that only makes it uncomfortable to point out the obvious.

All I'm saying is that you can't just fault Microsoft for having the ability to produce a file that other software can't use and still be ODF 1.1 compliant.

That wasn't MS

[Xtifr]

Actually the early 80s. You see, before MSFT started the clone market by selling Compaq MS DOS and thus creating the IBM PC compatible market, things were VERY different. It was 'welcome to proprietary land" where my VIC wouldn't talk to your TRS80 [...]

Actually, it was Digital Research's CP/M (and AT&T's UNIX) that were leading the charge against "proprietary land". Bill Gates just got lucky when DR's Gary Kildall was out the day IBM came calling, and managed to steal DR's thunder with a hastily-purchased CP/M clone and IBM's marketing power. BG doesn't deserve credit for anything except dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time. The market was already headed in the direction of platform-independent OSes as fast as it could go.

Re:This is a REQUIREMENT so that Excel can be read

[mrchaotica]

It would be silly to alter them, as this would risk breaking them, and there really is nothing wrong with Microsoft's formulas.

On the contrary, it does make sense to alter them because there is something wrong with Microsoft's formulas. For example, consider the MAX() function in Excel:

MAX(2.5,6.4,2.1,5.8)

Now consider the OO.o (and forthcoming ODF 1.2 standard) equivalent:

MAX(2.5;6.4;2.1;5.8)

OO.o uses semicolons instead of commas to separate parameters; so what? Well, let's what would happen if you were European, and tried to do the same thing in Excel:

MAX(2,5,6,4,2,1,5,8)

Uh-oh! Now, since Europeans use commas instead of periods to indicate decimals, Excel suddenly thinks that there are 8 integer parameters instead of 4 decimal ones! Excel is wrong! In contrast, here's how it looks in OO.o:

MAX(2,5;6,4;2,1;5,8)

Hey, whaddya know: still four decimal numbers! It works!

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you read previous posts in the linked blog, the guy points out how (for example) most of Excel's date and financial functions are wrong (not just because of syntax, but because they implement the wrong algorithms).

OOXML does not define a formula language either, you know.

Actually, it does -- 300-odd pages worth of one, in fact. But Excel doesn't follow that either!

In fact, those date and financial functions tend to give answers different from both the OOXML standard and the original financial standards they are supposed to be based on!

Re:This is a REQUIREMENT so that Excel can be read

[clone53421]

Excel uses semicolons to separate arguments when the decimal punctuator is the comma in the Windows regional settings.

MAX(2,5,6,4,2,1,5,8)

gives an error.

Oh, and if you open an Excel spreadsheet containing that formula on a PC with European regional settings, the commas are automatically changed to semicolons.