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."

Comments

Re:Alex Brown gets heart broken

[levell]

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.