Slashdot Log In
Microsoft Releases Specs for Binary Formats
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jan 17, 2008 11:21 AM
from the thanks-for-the-hand-up dept.
from the thanks-for-the-hand-up dept.
skolima writes "In response to requests for even easier access to the Binary Formats, Microsoft has agreed to remove any intermediate steps necessary to get the documentation. They're going to just post it, making it directly available as a download on the Microsoft web site. Microsoft will also make the Binary Formats subject to its Open Specification Promise by February 15, 2008. They're even planning to include an Open Source converter implementation."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
The important stuff (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The important stuff (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
.LOG file format... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:The important stuff (Score:5, Funny)
Not to fear. I'm 9eveloping my own open so4rce reverse-engineere9 implementation of the NotePa9 format, calle9 OpenPa9. I estimate that I've got abo4t 96% of the format fig4re9 o4t. As a matter of fact, my post here was compose9 originally in OpenPa9 then copie9 an9 paste9 into the Slash9ot comment s4bmission page.
* * * * *
Oh, squi9beaks!
Parent
Re:The important stuff (Score:5, Funny)
"Decoding MS binary formats - it's better than death!"
Parent
Re:No, they want to influence the ISO meeting (Score:5, Insightful)
Meaning there won't be enough time to fully investigate whether these specs are actually useful or just PR BS like every other "Open" thing MS has done. Forgive me for preemptively assuming the latter.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The important stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
But then there is probably a document or two inside Microsoft which shows the many paths to limit and/or destroy ODF support and to gain back any lost market due to MS-OOXML spec acceptance. For over 20 years Microsofts business model has been to beat the competition by attacking their revenue stream(s) by leveraging the 100's of millions of systems sold annually with pre-loaded Windows. Seldom has it ever used superior product attributes to win the market. I see no reason to think some switch has magically been thrown and now Microsoft wants to compete for customers in an open and level playing field. I don't think they would even know how to do this because without a complete management replacement, it's in their blood to go after the business and not the customers. Destroy the business and the customers will go to the shinny light that is Microsoft. IMO.
Regarding those new formats, there is a nice 6,000 page document that tells you how simple the new formats are so it should be very easy to implement an application which can read and display everything the spec covers. Why would you ever need code from Microsoft to help you access files based on that spec? If they can do it, anybody can. FYI, so far, there is one vendor who has applications with high levels of support of the spec and that is Microsoft.
Just look at how many apps now have a high level of support for the ODF spec:
http://opendocumentfellowship.com/applications [opendocume...owship.com]
LoB
Parent
Re:I CALL FUCKING BULLSHIT!! (Score:5, Interesting)
As you said, there is no level playing field and businesses need to understand this. Microsoft has for 20 something years prevented many many other companies from providing solutions to businesses using these monster crushing tactics. Unfortunately most don't even know this. They just think that Microsoft got where it is because it had/has the best product(s). Regardless of how it got its size, its use of that size has destroyed many companies who attempted to get products into the desktop computer market place. Same goes for handhelds.
Oh, and if Goliath was in a race to the moon with someone else, they'd just make sure the others in the race couldn't get the parts for their rocket or materials to build the launch pad. Goliath would probably not make it to the moon either. Instead, he would build something which couldn't even escape out atmosphere but since he was the only one in the race, all observers think he is an amazing genius and vastly skilled.
So if the whining somehow opens someones eyes to how bad for everyone Goliath is, then the whining is being productive. People need to know the beast they are funding, the beast they are enabling, the beast they are almost glued to because of their choices in a partnership.
I do agree that there is way too much time wasted in discussions when it would be better spent supporting valid opposition. Talking with fresh college graduates exposed me to the naivety(?) of Microsofts business tactics and what it means to dictating how businesses leverage the IT toolbox. Since showing off better technology seldom gets accepted because of the "everyone else is using Windows" mentality, explaining why their success is limited by Microsoft's market control sometimes opens them up to what all these other tools are and the 'other' value they bring to the table.
LoB
Parent
Re:I CALL FUCKING BULLSHIT!! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not Microsoft's competitors who want open document formats.
It's their customers.
Microsoft is bitterly fighting the entire world's demands to adopt formats that will allow businesses, governments and private individuals choice in their software. Customers want to be able to choose lower priced tools or tools which are more focused on their specific needs, not just one bulky, expensive, rarely updated suite.
Microsoft is fighting to keep them locked in to high prices and minimal improvement.
Parent
Re:The important stuff (Score:4, Funny)
You don't seriously think that what MS Office 2007 puts out in
Parent
One month to reconfigure firewalls (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One month to reconfigure firewalls (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:One month to reconfigure firewalls (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Whoops (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, I'm they will!
Re:Whoops (Score:4, Funny)
Are you Miss Teen South Carolina's brother? [thevideospace.com]
Parent
in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Intermediate steps (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope these intermediate steps that they're eliminating include packaging the documents in an .exe file, and requiring MS Office to be installed. I'm looking at you, Word format!
--Rob
last sentence of summary (Score:4, Funny)
i find myself doing this all the time at work now, and it's embarrassing. I leave entire words out of emails, IMs, etc. I never used to do that. I must be getting old.
Many times, I'll leave out a negating word, like "not", causing me to communicate the wrong idea.
Re:last sentence of summary (Score:5, Funny)
LoB
Parent
This has to be good. Right ? (Score:3, Insightful)
footnotes like Word 95... (Score:4, Interesting)
As covered in this link [xmlguru.cz], it appears that most of these specifications have either been removed or documented. What this does mean is that perhaps it will be possible to truly understand what these formatting hooks refer to, not what MS have documented them as referring to...
(Thanks to zmotula [slashdot.org] for the link)
Parent
Re:This has to be good. Right ? (Score:5, Insightful)
How will this work with specifications that say "render text like Word 98?" Will Microsoft now document how Word 98 renders ?"
I'm sure there'll be some nice documents to tell you exactly how each of these statements work. You know, things like:
1)open file
2)scan for 0x06660666
3)take the next 128 bytes and pass them to winRulesAll(*DWORD) in
4)take the resulting array of 8bit vectors and sequentially call winConvertToBlob[0-255](LoByte(DWORD)) in
5)concatenate the results from those calls and send to sysDecryptWord95Text(URL,*DWORD) in mplayer.dll with URL=http://microsoft.com/secretdoor.asp
6)replace those 128 bytes with the results from the call or, if failed, render text like Word 95.
Easy as pie.
LoB
Parent
carrot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:carrot (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Woohoo! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Woohoo! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
This is a VERY good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
APRIL FOOL! (Score:5, Insightful)
OSP: Might ba a trap for GPL license software (Score:5, Insightful)
The docs are released under MS' own "Open Specification Promise" *cringes*
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx [microsoft.com]
If you do a search on GPL you get:
Q: Is this Promise consistent with open source licensing, namely the GPL? And can anyone implement the specification(s) without any concerns about Microsoft patents?
A: The Open Specification Promise is a simple and clear way to assure that the broadest audience of developers and customers working with commercial or open source software can implement the covered specification(s). We leave it to those implementing these technologies to understand the legal environments in which they operate. This includes people operating in a GPL environment. Because the General Public License (GPL) is not universally interpreted the same way by everyone, we can't give anyone a legal opinion about how our language relates to the GPL or other OSS licenses, but based on feedback from the open source community we believe that a broad audience of developers can implement the specification(s).
I don't get warm and fuzzy feelings reading this and I think that's the idea...
Re:OSP: Might ba a trap for GPL license software (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't get warm and fuzzy feelings reading this and I think that's the idea...
Because never in all its history has a geek's interpretation of the GPL ignited a flamewar on Slashdot
Parent
Re:OSP: Might ba a trap for GPL license software (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, first post on /. and it's actually defending Microsoft. As someone stated above, satan _must_ be freezing.
Enough of that and to my point:
I'm quite fond of the GPL and open source licenses in general. But actually, the open source licenses that microsoft has created (Ms-PL [opensource.org] and Ms-RL) are a lot less restrictive then the GPL and a great deal easier to read. If Microsoft will use theese licenses then there should be no problem with GPL-compatability as far as I can tell. [opensource.org]
The "disclaimer" in that FAQ is just saying that they wont promise anything, and it is probably the smartest thing to do so that they won't get sued.
Parent
I'm definitely trolling this time (Score:5, Funny)
1. refunded all money earned through use of these formats
2. allow people to fork them and then demand that their idiot-forks get recombined into the trunk and incorporated into MS Office 09
3. #2 isn't good enough, Microsoft must even make sure that they are in the next release of OO even though they have nothing to do with that product
4. Clipart of Steve Ballmer throwing chairs is included
5. it is released under the GPLv3 license
6. the EU gets to fine them another trillion euros (with a lower-case e) for every day since 1980 that the formats have not been open
7. none of the above points matter because Microsoft sucks anyway and no one @ slashdot uses MS Office, they all use OO (yea, right!)
so go ahead, mod me down you fuckers.
Re:I'm definitely trolling this time (Score:4, Funny)
?????
Profit!
Parent
Re:I'm definitely trolling this time (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I'm definitely trolling this time (Score:5, Funny)
I would mod you down, but then you would become more powerful than I could possibly imagine.
Parent
so humor is now reality? (Score:3, Funny)
Useful if you're a programmer and can't send e-mai (Score:4, Informative)
The only interesting thing here is the converter they're proposing, assuming nobody beats them to it with a better one.
A gift from Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
ODF must be some kind of threat (Score:5, Insightful)
But what is really probably happening here is that ODF is getting adopted around the world by governments and once you go ODF, it's going to be a tough sell back to the pull-the-rug-out-from-under-your-feet Microsoft way. Anyways, if Microsoft really sees ODF as a credible threat, getting MS Office OXML through ISO is important, very important. But, once they can do that and gain back credibility, there is NOTHING to stop them from releasing software which others are not privy too. ie, change the format and keep everyone else chasing them.
Remember, ISO will not be in control of the changes to the spec, Microsoft will be.
So watch out for this good-guy mask being applied. We've seen nothing to say there isn't anything but the same old Microsoft hiding behind it. And no, I would not accept this as a first step and something to trust. ODF and open access to your own created data is too important to let a simple trick undermine it all. IMO.
LoB
Exchange (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Exchange (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
In another news... (Score:4, Informative)
Binary Format spoiler (Score:3, Funny)
Re:seeing as its all binary formats (Score:5, Funny)
Even plain ini/text/xml etc. is eventually stored as ones and zeros. And I think I saw a 2...
Parent
Re:seeing as its all binary formats (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:seeing as its all binary formats (Score:5, Informative)
I've had an occasion or two where a word document got corrupted and office wouldn't fix it. Out of curiosity, I opened it in notepad. I cut out all the formatting bytes, and cleaned up some areas where spaces were added between characters in a section of text (WTF?), and saved the plain text. Nothing of my document was missing (since I didn't have pictures in it or anything like that).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)