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Standards Expert — "Microsoft Fails the Standards Test"
levell writes "Alex Brown, Convenor of the Ballot Resolution Meeting on OOXML, has written a blog post saying that Microsoft is failing the standards test. Mr. Brown notes: 'In its pre-release form Office 2010 supports not the approved Strict variant of OOXML, but the very format the global community rejected in September 2007, and subsequently marked as not for use in new documents — the Transitional variant. Microsoft are behaving as if the JTC 1 standardisation process never happened, and using technologies (like VML) in a new product which even the text of the Standard itself describes as "deprecated" and "included... for legacy reasons only"...' He also says that defects are being fixed very slowly and that 'Looking at the text, I reckon it is more like 95% that remains to be done, as it is still lousy with defects.' It's an insightful look at what has happened with OOXML since ISO approved it from someone who was not opposed to its becoming a standard."
What's especially interesting is that if Microsoft hadn't stopped working on IE for years, probably there would be no market reason for them to do anything involving web standards today.
You can't legitimately bash IE6 for being incompatible, though -- in its day, it had so much of the browser market (largely by default) that whatever IE6 did was the standard for anyone with a pragmatic bone in their body.
Too bad we're just preaching to the choir here...
coding is life
[quote]This annex is normative for the current edition of the Standard, but not guaranteed to be part of the Standard in future revisions. The intent is to enable the future DIS 29500 maintenance group to choose, at a later date, to remove this set of features from a revised version of DIS 29500.
Read more: http://www.adjb.net/post/Microsoft-Fails-the-Standards-Test.aspx#ixzz0jxg6R5sd[/quote]
seriously, they have been taken for a ride and i hope they recognize this before office 2010 comes out and they market it as being standards compliant.
You have no understanding of the browser wars.
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_war
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Lets hope that they get sued to bits over it.
Not a problem for them. Usually when they get sued for big $$ they usually pay it off with vouchers for over expensive microsoft products right? That's one thing that needs to stop across the board - no company should be allowed to pay off any fines it receives for anti-market practices with it's own products and/or services.
I believe that in one of the last suits, Samba (and thus the rest of us) had a pretty big win in which Microsoft agreed to hand over a lot of technical documentation. I believe that there was even some part of the agreement that basically defused a number of patents that might have been brought to bear against Samba and other FOSS, but I can't remember the particulars off the top of my head.
So sometimes the EU's suits do bear good fruits.
Which we can pick up for Free and enjoy deliciously!
coding is life
Parent is not a troll. Idiot moderator should try and recognize popular SNL lines before proving they are an idiot.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
It gets better. In the comments Jeremy Allison provided Mr. Brown with a reality check. Yet he still defends Microsoft with this response via the Ike Turner defense:
Don't you think corporations change? Google from wide-eyed startup to the new Big Brother megacorp; Sun from centre of the technical solar system to bin-end bargain; IBM from evil monopolist market-abuser to ... no, wait ...
Microsoft: Promise, baby. I won't hit ya no more, I love you, you know that.
Mr. Brown: I know it baby. It just hurts that you love me so much. Let's make love.
Microsoft: Yeah baby let's make some sweet love. But don't be dissing my technique or you know what'll happen.
Mr. Brown: Sorry baby it's all my fault...
[smack]
I think that you have to give Alex Brown a lot of credit for this article. He effectively "sided" with Microsoft in the massive controversy that was the OOXML standardisation. In that position many people would convince themselves they had done the right thing and turn a blind eye to Microsoft's failings.
That he's prepared to publicly do what he has make me have a little more respect for him and people like him (Rick Jelliffe) for the part they played in the mess that was the initial standardisation.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
Microsoft worked with industry partners and standards organizations to create the RTF standard for document interchange. The first version of Word that could save RTF saved a badly broken non-standard version of RTF. WordPerfect and other competitors who tried to implement the standard for document import were screwed because they couldn't faithfully import MS Word documents. Users blamed WordPerfect.
Who knows whether MSWord's buggy RTF export was deliberate or merely incompetent. The point is that history once again repeats itself.
You missed the point. GP was complaining that a certain solution didn't work, but wasn't willing to put forth the care or effort to find out if this solution was compatible before purchase. I know if I'm spending $1000 on something I check to make sure it works first, using any of the available online tools such as Google.
Another example of this type of fail would be buying a car that required diesel, then putting unleaded in it instead, and complaining that it didn't work. PEBKAC.
In other words, use whatever OS you want -- really, I don't care -- but don't complain later when you didn't bother to check for basic compatibility before purchase, only to discover it's incompatible or lacking features when used with the OS or accessories you selected.
That's retarded and just shows blatant ignorance. There is no standard ASP.NET could adhere to. It's a server side programming platform. Please, show me the standard a PERL CGI script adheres to, or a PHP site. Any of these, including ASP.NET, can generate compliant HTML.