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Office To Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at Last)

Posted by Soulskill on from the super-fast-turnaround dept.

Andy Updegrove writes "Between 2005 and 2008, an unparalleled standards war was waged between Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Google, Oracle and additional companies on the other. At the heart of the battle were two document formats, one called ODF, developed by OASIS, a standards development consortium, and Open XML, a specification developed by Microsoft. Both were submitted to, and adopted by, global standards groups ISO/IEC. But then Microsoft never fully adopted its own standard. Instead, it implemented what it called 'Transitional Open XML,' which was better adapted for use in connection with documents created using older versions of Office. Yesterday, Microsoft announced in a blog entry that it will finally make it possible for Office users to open, edit and save documents in the format that ISO/IEC approved."

40 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Doubtful. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Several of the complaints registered by members of the ISO approval committee (which were ignored by the paid-off chair), involved sections of the specification that caused it to be physically impossible to actually implement.

    1. Re:Doubtful. by Xtifr · · Score: 4, Informative

      I suspect he's referring to the many tags whose only functional definition is by reference to undefined behavior of earlier MS products. Which is not so much impossible to implement (obviously MS can do so) as it is impossible for anyone but MS to verify. Which makes it a little hard to call it a standard.

    2. Re:Doubtful. by gerddie · · Score: 4, Informative

      Several of the complaints registered by members of the ISO approval committee (which were ignored by the paid-off chair), involved sections of the specification that caused it to be physically impossible to actually implement.

      How bizarre! So what exactly is it that makes it impossible to implement?

      He probably meant impossble for anyone not being Microsoft. There is, for example a tag called autoSpaceLikeWord95 standing for Emulate Word 95 Full-Width Character Spacing; and there is more.

    3. Re:Doubtful. by Pope+Raymond+Lama · · Score: 5, Interesting

      To whoever missed the "format wars" they are nicely (And fervently) documented on Jomar Silva's (A.K.A. Homembit) blog -
      ending at 2008-09 entries: http://homembit.com/2008/09/popular-participation-on-international-standardization-process-opening-the-black-box.html

      Jomar, a core contributor to ODF, was one of Brazil's envoy to the ISO group in which Microsoft format were aproved, trying to prevent it from happening as it went.

      --
      -><- no .sig is good sig.
    4. Re:Doubtful. by hAckz0r · · Score: 5, Informative

      How bizarre! So what exactly is it that makes it impossible to implement?

      Well, for one, the OOXML specification allows binary blobs to be imbeded in the XML document, and many of the Microsoft specific blobs they embed are NOT documented anywhere. In fact, when Microsoft paid Novel to implement the OOXML specification for OpenOffice (so that MS could say theirs is not the only implimentation) the Contract dictated that Novell was NOT allowed to touch/render/interpret any binary blobs that Microsoft was currently using in their own implimentation. If you can't interpret or render everything then you can not possibly implement "the standard" in any working product. Complying 100%, with "the standard", without cheating, gives you an unworkable product right out of the gate.

      http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20051216153153504

    5. Re:Doubtful. by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That is disappointing. I was hoping for some amusing inconsistencies in the spec, and it turns out that it is just a few optional elements in there to support ancient packages and which the standard recommends that you don't actually support!

      Is this really the reason that the entire standards organisation is denigrated, and that this format said to be impossible to implement? That is pretty lame. Why does everyone worry about compatibility tags that date back to Windows 3.1 days when the ODF spec neglected to document the spreadsheet functions at all? If you are looking for an impossible to implement standard, then that would be a more likely candidate.

    6. Re:Doubtful. by jvillain · · Score: 2

      It is Microsoft's standard method of corporate operation. Does that help? Bottom line is OOXML was aborted at birth and you would need to be insane to adopt it.

    7. Re:Doubtful. by Dahan · · Score: 2

      He probably meant impossble for anyone not being Microsoft. There is, for example a tag called autoSpaceLikeWord95 standing for Emulate Word 95 Full-Width Character Spacing; and there is more.

      That's a pretty old blog post... it's from 2007, but ISO 29500-1 wasn't officially standardized until 2008. IIRC, the issues he's talking about were problems with the draft standard that MS submitted. They were cleaned up for the final spec. The real ISO standards cost $$$ to get, but a quick Google search shows that MS has documented autoSpaceLikeWord95 as:

      9.7.3.4 autoSpaceLikeWord95 (Incorrectly Adjust Text Spacing for Specific Unicode Ranges)

      This element specifies adjustments (detailed below) which should be applied to the spacing between adjoining regions of non-ideographic and ideographic text when the autoSpaceDE (Part 1, 17.3.1.2) and autoSpaceDN (Part 1, 17.3.1.3) elements have a value of true (or equivalent). This algorithm typically results in the following:

      • An increase in the inter-character spacing added between non-ideographic and/or number characters and certain full-width characters
      • No inter-character spacing between non-ideographic and/or number characters and certain half-width characters

      Typically, applications apply additional spacing between ideographic and non-ideographic characters/numeric characters when the autoSpaceDE / autoSpaceDN properties are applied. This element, when present with a val attribute value of true (or equivalent), specifies that applications shall apply the following adjustments to this logic:

      • Characters in the following Unicode ranges should be treated as ideographic, even though those characters are full-width forms of non-ideographic text: U+FF10–U+FF19, U+FF21–U+FF3A, and U+FF41–U+FF5A. [Note: This results in the unnecessary addition of space. end note]

      • Characters in the following Unicode ranges should be treated as non-ideographic, even though those characters are ideographic: U+FF66–U+FF9F. [Note: This results in the omission of the intended additional space. end note]

    8. Re:Doubtful. by Lupu · · Score: 2

      That is disappointing. I was hoping for some amusing inconsistencies in the spec, and it turns out that it is just a few optional elements in there to support ancient packages and which the standard recommends that you don't actually support!

      Is this really the reason that the entire standards organisation is denigrated, and that this format said to be impossible to implement? That is pretty lame. Why does everyone worry about compatibility tags that date back to Windows 3.1 days when the ODF spec neglected to document the spreadsheet functions at all? If you are looking for an impossible to implement standard, then that would be a more likely candidate.

      The whole point in standards is to provide compatibility between different implementations of that standard. If MS Word produces documents that qualify according to the OOXML specification, but rely on the deliberately vague parts referring to older document formats, any other implementation would not be able to process said document properly.

  2. ISO/IEC approved. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But the "standard" still is a travesty.

  3. Re:What the Fuck. by jhoegl · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is called "establishing the history of the story".

  4. It will save them* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Warning:
    Features you have chosen in this document
    are not compatible with OpenXML,
    for best results please save in Microsoft format,
    you may lose work if you continue.

    [save in Word Format ][cancel][continue]

    1. Re:It will save them* by Anpheus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I just tried opening up the most complicated template in Word 2013 that I could find (the annual report template looked pretty busy) and I threw some charts in with data and tried saving as Strict Open XML.

      It saved without any prompt.

    2. Re:It will save them* by casper75 · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can set it as the default in the options dialog if you want. And I'm sure companies that use group policies could set it as the default company wide if they want.

    3. Re:It will save them* by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      Uhhh...so what? LO and OO.o save in over 2 dozen formats so why should anybody care? Most folks don't NEED to have their files in ODF or OXML, all they need is the person they are sending it to to be able to open it. For those that DO need ODF or OXML I'm sure they'll be smart enough to pull down a single list box and choose it or even go into the settings and set it as default.

      If you wanna bitch about the whole ISO mess? Right there with ya pal, and it just shows how useless these "standards" are when they can so easily be bought IMHO. But to bitch that they don't set the default format to be something that nobody but those with the latest version will be able to open? That's just retarded. I've got customers on Office 2K, 2K3, 2K7, and 2K10 and they can all share docs with each other. Switch to OXML as default and that all goes to shit. Most businesses couldn't give a rat's ass about open formats, they just want the doc they sent to be opened easily, that's all.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  5. Sure... Now that it's no longer relevant... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Meanwhile ODF already has a huge seven year foothold, and all of this time the format and its applications have been in production use, and have become more and more robust.

    1. Re:Sure... Now that it's no longer relevant... by bhcompy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To minor effect. The people who give a shit about standards are the people that post here. The people that don't give a shit and just want their spreadsheet to work could care less if there is some industry supported open standard don't. You know, CEOs and grandmas and stuff.

    2. Re:Sure... Now that it's no longer relevant... by supercrisp · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, I may be no true Scotsman, but I care about the standards because it means my students can use many more word processors, and it levels the playing field for students whose parents are wealthy and for those who are not.

  6. Vendor lock-in now ISO-approved by denis-The-menace · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yay, another format change.

    Bought for you by Microsoft.

    **History lesson: How MS got Office Open XML approved**
    MS paid the ISO membership fees for a bunch of new ISO members for that one critical ISO vote.
    The new members were so happy, they voted to approve Open XML.

    This way, the secretive and patent laden file format could be used in government bids where ISO file formats where required.

    Soon after this outrageous manoeuvre,
    ISO lost it's reputation and became known as I Sold Out.

    --
    Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
    1. Re:Vendor lock-in now ISO-approved by HappyHead · · Score: 5, Informative

      Soon after this outrageous manoeuvre,

      ISO lost it's reputation and became known as I Sold Out.

      Not only that, but soon after this outrageous manoeuvre, the vast majority of these new ISO members Microsoft had bought never showed up for another meeting - meetings requiring of course, a minimum percentage in attendance to actually approve anything, which then, due to the bulk of members having no interest in the committee except for casting their pro-MS vote in order to receive their bribes, did not have enough members present to actually do anything.

      And this is the story of how Microsoft broke the ISO, so they could fake their way into government contracts by falsely claiming that their office software supported an ISO standard (which even Microsoft didn't actually support).

    2. Re:Vendor lock-in now ISO-approved by CAIMLAS · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What this story doesn't tell you is that Office 2012 is going to be cloud-centric. Remember, they're trying to compete with Google (which, oddly, does not support ODF format on Drive). They are pushing Office Online pretty hard, and even Exchange wants to act as an auxiliary source to Office 365 now.

      Microsoft very much wants to control your data in the way that desktop apps and "personal computing" prohibit - and that Google is now able to do through Drive/Gmail/etc. They previously attempted doing so by locking down the file formats to maintain your continued purchases - the stick approach.

      Now they're trying the carrot approach to control. They've been interested in this model for at least 14 years (I remember reading it in PC Magazine prior to Windows 2000 coming out). They want their products to be SaaS. They noticed early on what a fiscal bonanza SaaS was for antivirus companies, in contrast to Microsoft's constant need to upsell their latest and greatest candy dispenser. With the iStore, iTunes, Steam, Android Market/Play, et cetera, this has become all the more apparent - particularly in light of many previous customers migrating from things like in-house Exchange systems to Gmail.

      Never underestimate the buying power of a free lunch.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
  7. Sure it will by killmenow · · Score: 5, Funny

    It'll be fully compatible. It'll just be one big block like this:

    <![CDATA[...]]>

  8. Re:the thought of involving by ichthus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, this is why both Google Docs and Open/LiberOffice utilize and support ODF. Sure, it's just hand-waving.

    Please.

    --
    sig: sauer
  9. Strangely Google Docs does not accept ODF by Shompol · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google Documents (Drive) happily accepts .doc and .ppt and converts them to a Google Doc format, but not ODF. So to create a presentation in Libre Office I need to "Save as Office 2003 ppt", followed by import into Google Docs, for the obvious reason that no computer in a typical conference room can open an ODF presenation.

    1. Re:Strangely Google Docs does not accept ODF by mx+b · · Score: 2

      This has baffled me as well. Actually ODT is reasonable (can export ODT with decent success), but Google Presentation has no idea wtf an ODP is. I do not get it. Any googlers out there, please add support asap!

    2. Re:Strangely Google Docs does not accept ODF by fa2k · · Score: 2

      Well, OpenOffice is a competitor to Google Docs. There would be no surprise if Microsoft chose not to support a format for competitive reasons (partially what TFA is about)

    3. Re:Strangely Google Docs does not accept ODF by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ironically, Office Web Apps (the thing that lets you open/edit Word and Excel documents on SkyDrive), does support ODF, though I'm not sure about the version.

      Also, I don't get the story. MS Office was able to open, edit and save ODF 1.1 docs since 2007 SP 1. Yeah, it was an interop mess vis a vis OO.org for spreadsheets because the formulas weren't covered by the spec, and they implemented that differently. But it was still technically an ISO/IEC format.

      The real news here is that Office 2013 supports ODF 1.2 (there is a table in the blog post linked from TFA). Which means that spreadsheets should now be fully portable between MSOffice and other ODF implementations. With that there, who cares about ISO OpenXML?

  10. In a related move... by camperdave · · Score: 2

    In a related move, Microsoft has removed Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, and Publisher from its Office suite, and is replacing them with the more popular Notepad, Calc, and Paint software.

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  11. Re:the thought of involving by characterZer0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    IBM, Oracle, and Google all have a vested interest in an interoperable format. IBM and Oracle are professional services companies. Interoperable formats means it is easier for them to implement custom services and provides more surfaces for them to provide integration services. Google wants to know everything so it can advertise everything, and a better format is easier to get information from.

    Microsoft is a vendor-lock-in company. OpenXML is designed to lock you in to their platform. They are they ONLY company that benefits.

    --
    Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
  12. Re:the thought of involving by jimicus · · Score: 2

    You'd better tell all the members of 3GPP. Most of them are companies that make equipment used in the mobile phone industry.

    Allowing a single multinational corporation to draft the standard all by themselves, however - yeah, I'd agree with you there.

  13. Re:Another hobbled MS implementation by jimicus · · Score: 2

    Quite the reverse - this isn't the format used by OpenOffice natively, this is Microsoft's own format. The problem is that for all practical purposes, it's virtually impossible for anyone who isn't Microsoft to implement.

  14. Promises, promises by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

    Words are cheap. Should these words translate into verifiable fact then I will care. Otherwise, considering the history of this particular bad actor I must regard this announcement as just so much wide eyed spin aimed at slowing the exodus of potential customers to free, open and trustworthy alternatives.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  15. Re:the thought of involving by gstoddart · · Score: 2

    the thought of involving any major multinational corporation in drafting a standard is preposterous

    Ummm ... most standards I've ever seen have come out of industry groups all working to arrive at a workable solution -- IEEE 802 group being a fine example of this. Do you think a bunch of guys in academia come up with a reference standard that people actually adopt?

    Now, in this case, this should never have really been called a "standard" in any way shape or form, since Microsoft had never actually implemented it, and the spec basically had loads of "should behave the same as this old format we never documented" in it. So nobody but Microsoft could ever really adhere to it, making it a complete joke. But Microsoft isn't really interested in interoperability, and haven't really ever been.

    Telephones, cell phones, networks ... most of the things we think of as standards were hashed out by a bunch of multi-nationals.

    The joke with standards has always been that if you don't like one, create (or use) another one, there's plenty.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  16. Re:What the Fuck. by Tough+Love · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MS got an ISO standard by buying it about 2 years after ODF was the approved.

    Destroying ISO as a credible organization in the process.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  17. Why? by kwerle · · Score: 2

    What country/large organization is refusing to use their products without this stamp on it?

  18. Re:Tangent: Is open office really stable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Switching the conversation to be something offtopic: check.
    Switching the conversation to be something that makes competing software look bad: check.
    Not specifying concrete time frames: check.
    Comparing an obviously old version of software instead of the new fork (LibreOffice): check.
    Asking about trustworthiness of open source software: check.

    I'm sorry, but your post looks like a complete troll. If not, please check out the latest version (3.4, if memory serves me correctly) for Mac, Windows, or Linux, and give us all an update as to its stability for you. There was quite a lot of work done on LibreOffice that OpenOffice didn't include in their codebase.

  19. Re:have you ever given a presentation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are a number of helpful apps for that, one of which is called open-pdf-presenter:
    https://code.google.com/p/open-pdf-presenter/

    Especially useful for latex beamer presentations :)

  20. Re:fear of dictator by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

    MS used standardization organizations to keep it's monopoly by stoppig real open standar ODF to spread and develop.

    MS is stopping the real open standard ODF - by implementing support for ODF (now 1.2) in MS Office?

  21. Re:Another hobbled MS implementation by KingMotley · · Score: 2

    What standard has a reference implementation?
    Does HTML 5 have a reference implementation? No.
    Does HTML 4 have a reference implementation? No.
    Does CSS x.x have a reference implementation? No.
    Does ODF have a reference implementation? No.

  22. Correction by rueger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Office To Become Fully Open XML Compliant (allegedly)

    There, fixed that for you.

    I'll believe it when I see it.

    --
    Three Squirrels