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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."

15 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

  2. 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.

  3. 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).

  4. Sure it will by killmenow · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    <![CDATA[...]]>

  5. 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
  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.
  9. 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.