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Microsoft Promises To Fully Support OOXML ... Later
Raul654 writes "OOXML is the Word document format that Microsoft rammed through the ISO last year. Last week, we discussed a blog post by Alex Brown, who was instrumental in getting OOXML approved by the ISO. Brown criticized Microsoft for reneging on its promise to support OOXML in the upcoming release of Office 2010, and for its lackadaisical approach to fixing the many bugs which still remain in the specification. Now, Doug Mahugh has responded to Brown's post, promising that Microsoft will support OOXML 'no later than the initial release of Office 15.'"
Uh...is that a typo or something? Office FIFTEEN???
Living With a Nerd
OOXML is the word document format that Microsoft
No it's not. It's the document format for representing all supported document types within the Office suite.
Yeah, OK, we all know what he's talking about. But still... is it really that hard to get the basics right in a summary?
*Alex brown shakes his fist at MS* "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
The enemies of Democracy are
Implement first, standardize later.
I'm still amazed how many times people shoot themselves in the foot by trying to do it backwards.
All of my software bugs get fixed in the "next" version.
There is no Office 13 - But Why? – a video produced by Microsft on MSDN Channel 9 – explains why there is no Office 13.
I will gladly support your standards on Tuesday for the 'standards compliant' checkbox I need to continue my lucrative market dominance today...
And Microsoft promised to support OS/2 after it sold 2 million copies.
Never happened.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
So since the promises under which premise the 'standard' was adopted have utterly been not met, Shouldn't the committee revoking their approval of OOXML as a "Standard"? Of course, that puts MS back in the hotseat of no longer offering a "Open Standard" compliant product for governments, etc which REQUIRE such "Open Standard" functionality.... Meaning MS either makes ODF standard or gives up these markets. :-)
Wow. I can't believe that MS wasted three years and $millions on this. MS really needs to take a look at what is going on and do something about it:
* MS Tablet PCs fail
* Windows Mobile fails
* MS ISO Standard file format fails
* Windows Live fails
* Zune fails
The bodies are getting stacked deep, there MS. Time to get back to what made you great and become hacker friendly again... and not in the sense that your OS and software have lots of security holes.
-- $G
Microsoft's definition of "support" differs from that of mortals.
Table-ized A.I.
They're responsible for this abortion of a standard and yet even they can't implement the thing. So much for eating your own dog food. They should be *MADE* to use it or the ISO should simply kill the standard since clearly it can't work.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Office 13 existed as a skunkworks project within MS. It fully supported the ODF 1.1 standard, and was crossplatform to Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and BeOS (which MS also had plans to revive). It had clean, standards compliant HTML output. Even more surprisingly, it was decided that the project would be released as open source. Everything was going great until orders from the top led them to try and include Clippy. During the initial commit of the Office 2007 Clippy source there was a large bitsplosion leaving the GIT repository in waste. Forensic analysis concluded that the disaster was the result of the collision of evil bits and non-evil bits, which annihilated one another on contact, releasing huge reserves of pure information, scrambling anything in proximity. Furthermore, due to quantum entanglement, all backup copies of the promising office suite also disappeared, along with any instances of Clippy in Office 2007.
After this incident, MS abandoned any attempts at supporting open source and open standards projects. Ms Gates still bitches about the loss of Clippy in Office 2010.
as to how MS doesnt support their own file format, it because they're using a transitional version instead of the proper "strict" version. Wiki:
All they need is to offer the Microsofties a way around the "But ODF is ISO approved" argument. Doesn't need to work or even make sense.
Not this story.... again!!!!
Doug Mahugh has responded to Brown's post, promising that Microsoft will support OOXML 'no later than the initial release of Office 15.'
When Microsoft follows through with a promise like this, I can't help but lol. How can one of the most rich and powerful software companies in the world not have the resources to do something like this HERE and NOW?
I smell fish - and it's not coming from Ballmer's underwear, for once.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
A truly open XML-based file format would result in a level playing field. Without the shell game of Office file formats, businesses would be quick to dump MS Office and pocket the savings. So instead, MS can play "delay and deny" in an action to thwart open document long enough for people to forget about it. Look at the great job they did screwing up IMAP in Outlook, long enough for them to push their own proprietary IMAP-style technology in Exchange.
MS is the Verizon of software. Features that don't fit the business model are to be crippled in such a way that nobody wants them.
"representatives from Microsoft attempted to argue that Sun Microsystems, the creators and supporters of the competing OpenDocument format (ODF), could not be given a seat at the conference table because there was a lack of chairs."
in the first paragraph of Mahugh's blog entry ? That one sentence seems to describe it all...
>>That’s why we’ve been looking into the issues and options for Strict support for quite some time.
So, the Frankenstein monster is disowned by its creator. Excellent.
Encourage your clients, friends and families to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
Fully supported by all the major office suites, including of course Oo.
Nobody but boring technogeeks are going to understand the importance of the distinction between "strict OOXML" and "transitional OOXML." It's all very well for Alex Brown to say transitional OOXML was "not the format 'approved by ISO/IEC', it is the format that was rejected," but it sure doesn't _sound_ that way.
It wouldn't even take much dishonesty for a salesperson to say "supports OOXML," and the top-level managers who make the purchasing decisions will nod and smile. What are the chances they will know the importance of asking the question "is that transitional OOXML or strict OOXML?" And any top-level manager, approached by some intense young technogeek, is going to wonder if it's really all that important, and whether transitional OOXML isn't really good enough.
Within Microsoft, how many high-level managers are going to think it is urgently important for Office to support "strict OOXML" rather than "transitional OOXML?"
The battle was probably lost when they allowed those names to be used. Now nobody can ever mention the matter to any lay outsider without prefixing it with a couple of minutes of exposition.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I don't care if Microsoft supports their own format or not. Same goes for every other entity. What I care about is if they will support standards. IIRC, Office 2007 has support for ODF, so that's definitely a step in the right direction. What other formats decides to support beyond the ones that enable interoperability is their own choice.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
...when they do.
I was scrolling down and at first thought it said "Microsoft Promises To Fully Support 'OO-Mox'".
If ISO is a corporate standards body, then they are the Industry Standards Organization.
IOW: ISO as an institution has failed the ISO purpose for existence, not the purpose of standards.
ISO relevance in todays world is called into question as a corporate stooge, much like the US Congress, EU Parliament, and RU Kremlin governance bodies.
US, EU, and RU (unlike China) support feudal world governance of Corporate-Socialism and Corporate-Welfare for the entitled elitist of the world.
What ever happened to the French and Russian Revolutions, I know the USA Revolution was bought and paid for with IOU-$-paper.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
And for Microsoft to fix internet security.
for Office 14.999999999999999