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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."
"But Microsoft said it would respect me in the morning! And call me later!"
The best bit of this gushing fountain of schadenfreude is the comments. Rob Weir pointing out that they were entirely fucked over precisely as Tim Bray predicted, and Alex and Rick Jelliffe still insisting that Microsoft will love them really once it sees just how pure and worthy their love is.
Guys. You got fucked over. Ballmer had his sweaty way with you and got his ISO number. He deleted your number on his way back home. He is never going to light up your phone.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
... because he was sure full on in favour of his masters work and blind to its faults when the ballot took place.
Why is this news? Microsoft doesn't follow any standards, and never has. It's part of their strategy. Since they're bigger than everyone else, everyone has to adhere to their (non) standards, which means everyone else is always playing catchup, and can never get ahead. This way implementation is never judged on speed or size, but instead judged on "how Microsoft-like" it is. Microsoft always wins that comparison.
Really? End of subject.
thanks to the average user, who does not care about these kinds of things.
That and more from my 2009 blog post
Every one of these has come to pass. If the scales are falling from Alex's eyes, then great. But the rest of us saw this coming a long time ago. In fact, Microsoft told us at the SC34 meeting in Seattle last year that the "Strict" conformance class would not be supported until Office 16. Alex knows that. So it is odd that he is pretending that this is something unexpected.
Wow.... What a surprise. Just when I thought Microsoft was starting to get better. We really need to get away from these binary formats anyway... A LOT of security vulnerabilities come from binary formats.
even if you were born 2500 years ago:
http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?4&TheScorpionandtheFrog
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Many previous posts said it was unrealistic to expect microsoft to implement proper support in Office 2010. I think what is unrealistic is expecting microsoft to implement any kind of standards.
The only time they will implement anything that is standards compliant is when they have no choice. Think about IE. It took 15 years to get them to implement standards in IE (In IE9) and they only did so because Mozilla, Apple, Opera and Google forced them. Only after they lost significant marketshare against this companies that they implemented HTML5. And, remember, embrace, extend, extinguish. IE9 is only phase1 (Embrace). In a year or so, we'll see IE9 marketshare grow, and the proprietary extensions will start rolling. In a few years, It'll be 2001 all over again. IE15 will be as incompatible as IE6 was.
This is microsoft. That's what they do. They won't change. They are the most hostile company I've ever seen. They blatantly attack the rest of the industry, and as long as people put up with it and buy their products, they have no reason to change their tactics. They've worked well for them for almost 3 decades.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Fool me 48 times, shame on you, fool me the 49th... Shit! You did it again!
But you won't fool me 50 times. I'm sure you wouldn't do that.
The requirements need to be set by purchasing and strictly followed.
Buy only Software that meets OOXML-Strict or OpenDocument. If no supplier is able to meet OOXML-Strict then no purchases will be made.
For each and every project that specified that a standardized format should be used, they can now be hold liable. Lets hope that they get sued to bits over it. I'm not holding my breath though, the EU seems to have some random rights and wrongs they pursue.
Is this person for real?
Yes, what really is the difference between 'office app space' and 'internet browser space'? Let's not forget Microsoft's swift rush to Internet standard conformance! They were like frolicing collies running over the meadows, busy herding eager to please!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The article says
Microsoft employs many eminent and standards-aware people of unimpeachable record – they also obviously “get it”
Actually, Microsoft employs many people who were previously of unimpeachable record. When these obviously intelligent and "eminent" persons get in bed with Microsoft and then don't cry foul at the first, second, third, or fourth time that Microsoft willfully and intentionally manipulates standards bodies, then how can we possibly consider their record anything but stained?
I know several people who work for Microsoft, and while I am happy that these friends still have work, especially in this time of massive layoffs, I wish that they had an opportunity to apply their skills at a company not so unbelievably hostile to standards groups.
coding is life
Too bad we're just preaching to the choir here...
coding is life
Go ahead. Tell me "I told you so" if you must. But I, for one, am SHOCKED. Utterly and stupefyingly shocked and dismayed by this move from the new kinder, gentler Microsoft. I refuse to believe this is on purpose. They turned over a new leaf and this can ONLY be described as a minor mistake, a hiccup, a bump on the road to reform, so to speak.
... Guys?
Microsoft is just kind of like my wife. She promised me after I found out about her cheating on me all those times that she'd stop. She's turned over a new leaf. She never MEANT to hurt me. And she's really trying to mend her ways but it's hard to change all those years of learned behavior, you know. It's not her fault she has needs I can't fulfill. And she loves me, I know she does. She says so every time I text her to ask her where she is. So I know it's true. And when she comes home smelling of some other man's junk I know it was just an accident. She would never intentionally take advantage of my naivete after all these years I've been with her. And neither would Microsoft.
Right?
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
I stopped reading when I got to this nugget - "It is also a worrying commentary on the standards-savvyness of the Office developers that the first amateur attempts of part-time outsiders find problems with documents which Redmond's internal QA processes have missed." Is the author really this naive? If so, how did this guy become involved in the process in the first place?
Doesn't anybody appreciate the delicious irony of TFA's URL: "www.adjb.net/post/Microsoft-Fails-the-Standards-Test.aspx"?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I have to disagree with Alex. Not with his summary of what happened, but with his conclusions. The OOXML standards project hasn't failed, and isn't heading for failure. It's been wildly successful. Remember that Microsoft's goal with it wasn't to produce a standard document format. It was to get an ISO standard passed with OOXML in the name so Microsoft could provide the correct tick-list item to sell to governments, while still keeping MS Office using a format that only Microsoft could reliably read and write. In fact, a document format that conformed strictly to a published standard that was completely and correctly specified was for MS an explicit non-goal, something to be kept from happening.
And if Alex expected anything else from Microsoft, I have to think he's deluded. There's nothing in Microsoft's history to suggest they'd do otherwise if they have any alternative open to them.
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.
Office produces 100% compliant ODF files that Open Office can't properly handle.
Microsoft? Credible? On what planet? They didn't even write the DOS that was their reason for being. IBM helped them out with W32, and suffered from it when they killed OS/2. Dave Cutler took the features they needed from VMS to create NT - and today he's filing the serial numbers off of EC2 to complete their cloud offerring. They have been a sham this whole time and no change from that paradigm is anticipated.
Help stamp out iliturcy.