What Happens Next on the US Vote on OOXML 82
Andy Updegrove writes "As you may know, V1, the INCITS Technical Committee that had charge of the US vote on Microsoft's OOXML, failed to reach consensus on either approving or disapproving the specification. As expected, Microsoft has turned to the full INCITS Executive Board in an effort to salvage the situation. Between now and Labor Day, a complicated series of fall-back ballots and meetings has been scheduled to see whether the Executive Board can agree to approve or disapprove OOXML, in either case "with comments." A vote to approve would mean that addressing the comments would not be required for the US vote to stand, while a vote to disapprove would hold the possibility of US approval if the comments are satisfactorily addressed. The bottom line is that a vote to approve (either in the US or in many other nations around the world) does not appear likely, due to the sheer number of technical issues that have been raised with OOXML, and the expedited schedule upon which Microsoft has insisted throughout the process."
A friend in need ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting, although unsurprising, to see Apple following the money here.
Re:A friend in need ... (Score:1)
Mod parent up, informative! Apple has as much to gain here as Microsoft does -- after all, Office runs on the Macintosh, and Apple has a vested interest in seeing it say dominate, as that it was one of the major draws of their platform.
Re:A friend in need ... (Score:1)
XML (Score:0, Flamebait)
US vote or ISO vote? (Score:3, Informative)
According to the earlier article, V1 and INCITS were both extensions of the ISO evaluation process. Not just a US agency.
Re:US or ISO? Both. (Score:1)
Obviously, the US isn't the only nation going thru this at this time. MS has been attempting to stack the deck (typically, a working group with half a dozen or a dozen voting members, suddenly has 50 MS partners pay the couple grand to join and vote in the 6 weeks before the national vote), but perhaps surprisingly, even with that sort of stacking, they've been losing votes. Often, they do get the majority, but because this is supposed to be a consensus standard, it requires a 2/3 vote. Several nations have already voted no at the national level, while I believe two had voted yes (in the story I read), and some of those "no"s aren't yet written in stone -- as in the US, MS is playing tricks with the process, adding votes not originally in the scheduled process, etc.
Still, due to the effect of MS' money and the pull they have on their partners to stack the deck, it's really surprising they're having the trouble they are. I'm sure it is to them too, or they'd not have been so insistent on the super-expedited schedule. They are used to getting their way, buying it, skirting the law if necessary, bribing it, whatever, and it's actually surprising them that the whole world isn't simply rolling over for them any more!
The thing is, however, their effort has at least two strikes against it, in addition to the raw politics. One, ODF has already been voted in as a standard, and many of the comments are to the effect that two standards on virtually the same thing will only confuse the situation. They say MS should work to improve and update the existing standard instead, if it's so bad. Two, the MS effort is simply very poor standards material, technically. Many behaviors are defined in terms of how (proprietary) product X did it with version Y (handle wrapping like Word95 did in case Z, etc.). Defining a behavior by reference to a second behavior that itself isn't defined, simply doesn't work well in terms of a standard that everyone is supposed to be able to implement and have all versions interoperable with the standard conformant files written by other implementations. What's interesting, and must be givng MS fits, is that even after they've stacked the deck like they are doing, they're still having a tough time of it, in part because once these partners actually study the thing, enough of them decide it's bad enough they can't vote to approve it as currently speced out regardless. If MS hadn't been so insistent on expediting the process, there's a fair chance enough of these things could be worked out that MS
Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the vote at the international level must be, only that the individual nations need a 2/3 vote, and that all nations' votes count equally at the international level.
Duncan
Is there anything we can do... (Score:0)
Re:Is there anything we can do... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a minor point, sadly. There's nothing requiring Microsoft to follow any standard. They have built their software empire in part on avoiding all such things. The one thing that looks to be shaking the foundations of their dominance is the fact that most of the people I've talked to have looked at Office 2007 and do not like what they see.
Re:Is there anything we can do... (Score:2)
Re:Is there anything we can do... (Score:3, Insightful)
didn't know what OOXML meant (Score:3, Informative)
"Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) formats"
Thought others might want to know.
Re:didn't know what OOXML meant (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:didn't know what OOXML meant (Score:2)
People should start referring to it my it's truthful name, MSOXML: Microsoft Office XML.
No OOXML; Maybe Not ODF (Score:1)
I know government is dog-ass slow, so I am not terribly up in arms, but agreeing to some open standard for government documents (not controlled by MS, but not necessarily ODF) is obviously the best choice for archival storage, transparency, and maintainability.
Re:No OOXML; Maybe Not ODF (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No OOXML; Maybe Not ODF (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No OOXML; Maybe Not ODF (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No OOXML; Maybe Not ODF (Score:2)
Re:No OOXML; Maybe Not ODF (Score:2)
Re:No OOXML; Maybe Not ODF (Score:0)
Re:No OOXML; Maybe Not ODF (Score:0)
And no, they haven't improved any of the technical problems in the standard since it was put in for Ecma. MS will abandon this 'standard' in a few years as they always do, standard or no.
Re:No OOXML; Maybe Not ODF (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is pushing the most important part of OOXML being it's ability to include old Office file data as opaque binary chunks (!). Problem is that their documentation of those binary chunks pretty much consists of 'try reverse-engineering old versions of office.' -- which is against the EULA for old versions of office.
Even if someone manages to figure out how to decode those old chunks properly, Microsoft's patent peace for them doesn't apply because they weren't explicitly described in the ECMA 'standard'. Many of these 'critical' parts of OOXML are also described in the documentation as 'optional', which means that their so-called partners (like Novel and linspire) who are creating readers can create converters that MS can trumpet as 'ecma compliant', but that don't handle the part of OOXML that they are selling to the MA (and other) government as the most usefull aspect of OOXML.
In other words, this 'standard' explicitly does not do what you see as it's most useful aspect.
You could easily end up with documents with critical parts readable only by Microsoft software .... and then find that Microsoft has stopped supporting those critical parts 'because they're optional'.
The specs dead, but is INCITS credibility? (Score:0)
The only thing they're voting on is whether they are a credible organization or not. Whatever happens with this spec, it will still be only implemented by Microsoft and use only by noobs who use Microsoft products without thinking. So it makes scat difference to the real world.
If they're smart they'll boot it out and gain a bit of cred.
Re:The specs dead, but is INCITS credibility? (Score:2, Troll)
Re:The specs dead, but is INCITS credibility? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The specs dead, but is INCITS credibility? (Score:2)
Feds to M$ (Score:1)
I, for one, am for choice (Score:1, Flamebait)
I prefer choice. Having an ODF standard should not exclude an OOXML standard. With both standards published, it is possible then for developers to include support for each. Just like good syndicated news readers have the ability to handle both ATOM and RSS x.x.
In the end, its about choice. With standared, published formats it is possible. Or, would you rather the MS Office document standard to remain closed? (Perhaps that is what those whose goal in life is to bitch endlessy about MS want?)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:5, Insightful)
OOXML doesn't open it.
It just describes it, and incompletely at that.
The sole purpose of OOXML is to torpedo any real standard document format. With Microsoft's machinations in the various ISO committees, it's ridiculous to continue pretending they have any intention of allowing real interoperability.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:3, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=254267&cid=19
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, actually, keeping this particular "standard" as an option in "choice" is a potentially dangerous thing if for no other reason than the fact that Microsoft's "standards" are always moving targets. Invariably their specifications are subject to change or additional documentation. Their format is based on and/or defined by the behavior of specific other software applications or operating systems API code which is also subject to change.
To standardize on something that's not firmly documented is asking for future problems. Further, "standardizing" on something that references proprietary (not openly documented) software is just one step removed from standardizing the operating environment along with it.
And finally, to include OOXML as a required option would require all of the dependencies associated with the need to support the standard... those dependencies would be a MS Windows OS and a MS Office applications suite as I cannot imagine an effective or 100% compatible implementation by competing software when the specs are as nebulous as they are.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:5, Insightful)
OOXML is still closed. When the spec has things like "This element means to parse it like Word97 with all of Word97's obscure bugs", that's not an open standard. What we're opposed to is having garbage like that officially recognized as an open standard.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:3, Informative)
If they weren't in the spec, it wouldn't be the complete OOXML spec used by by Office '07.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
Sure, if they weren't in the spec, it wouldn't be the complete spec (Office '07 would produce non-compliant docs), but if they're in there and there is no available description of their functionality, then it still isn't the complete spec.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
So the specification is flawed either way.
It doesn't belong (Score:4, Informative)
You don't put something in a specification and not define how it works. It has no place in the specification. That's the whole point.
So here we have Microsoft working backwards. They take what they did and try to create a specification for it instead of creating a specification and then programming to it. Then they leave out parts of what is actually done in Office '07 so that other parties can never be compliant with the "specification". That would be akin to the TCP specification [faqs.org] saying that bit 2 in byte 14 is a flag that says the checksum should be calculated like Windows 95 does it, without specifying how that is. This is just ridiculous. Do you not understand that some documents (probably all docs imported from Word 95 which I know is in the spec, I'm not sure about Word 97) WILL use this tag, and therefore anyone trying to comply with this specification will not be able to make the documents appear as they will in Office 2007? When importing a document from Word 95 or 97, Office 2007 should convert it completely to values defined in the specification, there should be no need for these tags for "backward compatibility".
If the specification has no way to make the spacing look the same, I would say that it is an incomplete specification (although it is 700+ pages). If there are certain quirks of Word 95 and Word 97 that would make the specification hard to understand, it doesn't matter. They should be defined exactly anyway so that ANYONE implementing the specification (and only the specification) will be able to produce documents that look the same.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:1)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-f
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/07/mathemati
http://www.noooxml.org/ [noooxml.org]
http://ooxmlhoaxes.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
http://blog.janik.cz/archives/2007/07/18/T18_02_5
Read these. Then decide if you really, really believe that making this specification a standard will do anything good for the environment. The spec is simply too big and poorly-defined for anyone else to come close to implementing. If it was worth the paper it was printed on (and if you see the last link, that can be quite a lot) Microsoft wouldn't be trying to fast-track it--specifications should speak for themselves in terms of quality. Anything reasonable would have no trouble getting written into an ISO-accepted standard, no matter what company it came from.
Pop quiz: Why the hell is fast tracking with this kind of system possible? Emergency economic situations?
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2, Insightful)
Well thanks for the links, and already having seen them, except for one, I really must compliment you on providing a well rounded set of links that present both sides of the argument. Why, all of those are surprisingly non-slanted. Dammit, why doesn't HTML have a <Sarcasm> tag?
Really, thats alot like saying, "Here, read all about the Mormons at http://www.whymormonismisevil.com/ [whymormonismisevil.com]".
So, you want to find out about Jews? Try reading "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion".
I understand the argument, people are afraid that if the OOXML standard is accepted, even with ODF, that the popularity of the MS Office products will eventually drown out ODF. In an open market of ideas, that's how it works. But, if you mean "Freedom" as in RMS version of Freedom where the choice is made for you so you are Free From Making the Choice.
I like the "Mile of Cars", there are good cars and bad cars. Hummers, Volkswagons, used Yugos and Chevettes. I get to choose and in the MoC, I have thousands of them.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, if you are under the impression that this is equatable to some sort of religious or vi-vs-emacs holy war, you're quite mistaken. Look into these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents [wikipedia.org]
See, Billy G. and Stevie B. really, genuinely are corrupt, horrible monopolist pigs who eat babies. Why do you think that antitrust suit exists?
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:3, Insightful)
See, Billy G. and Stevie B. really, genuinely are corrupt, horrible monopolist pigs who eat babies. Why do you think that antitrust suit exists?
Well, not exactly. Actually, Billy G. and Stevie B. simply have such a low opinion of their own ability to compete on a level playing field that they are desperate to find some way to game the system. And it's clear their problem is endemic-- a fundamental part of the way they've been operating the business for decades.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:4, Informative)
Reality: MS has been found guilty of antitrust violations and leveraging its OS monopoly to support and gain market its shares in other markets.
Check: The only software capable of even competing with the market leader product is being given away for free.
Conclusion: The "desktop computer office suite" market is not an open market.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:1)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:0)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, the current OOXML (The Microsoft format) is so messy it's unmaintainable and unimplementable. Major holes, parts with undocumented binary data, etc. It's all a last-ditch attempt for Microsoft to continue it's office monopoly.
They are being way sneaky with the naming too. Note that the Open Office.org is called ODF (Open Document Format), while Microsoft sneakily called theirs OOXML (Office Open XML) - which confuses everyone, as many people think that OOXML is the "good" format, since they reasonably assume that OOXML means "Open Office XML". But it's not.
Our best attack right now is to make as many people as we can knowledgable of this name game.
ODF: Good and Open
OOXML: Bad and Closed by Microsoft. (It's not truly open when it comes to the details of the format)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2, Interesting)
MS'OO'XML
Sure, it's a little longer, but it says who, in truth, the format belongs to, and the quotes around OO would indicate some falsity to the naming of the format, much in the same way that the CIA should have their middle initial surrounded by quotes as the sarcastic little bit of bullcrap that it is.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:3, Insightful)
There are two arguments here:
The first is that, independently of the existence of any other standards covering the same subject matter, OOXML is a poorly described, non-implementable, and otherwise bad proposed standard, and should be rejected.
The second is that that the existence of one standard covering a topic makes additional standards covering the topic less valuable, potentially redundant, and in some cases contradictory to the purpose of standardization, particularly when adopted by the same standards body.
Debate over the second seems to only make sense in a context where it is assumed or concluded that OOXML would be a desirable standard on its own in the first place.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
Then you're back at square one with everyone using a different standard.
Hell lets go further and just let Microsoft put any propitiatory crap that will only work with their programs and call that a standard. Oh look now we're back again with everyone using different standards but this time they're closed source so only Microsoft can use them and around, and around, and around we go.
One file format to rule them all and in the XML spec bind them!
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
Then the states and countries could say that microsoft had to be compatible with the general standard in addition to their internal standard.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:3, Insightful)
There is nothing preventing MS from publishing their format. That is very different from being ratified as an ISO standard. I could publish my very own file format. But if I have shoddy documentation for the file format, it is useless. No one, besides myself, could effectively use the format.
Ratification is when a group (of people, states, etc) approve of something (a constitution, a file format). In the case of my file format, they wouldn't ratify my format because it is useless to them.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
But having OOXML might near exclude ODF
Yes, but what MS says in the computer world is Law
From what I read, it isn't opening very much, or at least enough to consider it "open"
Do you really find that makes sense
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
Oh, please, you know that you mention MS in an article on /. that there are tons of calls to bone doctors because knees jerk so hard they jam them under desks. Some of these people should read /. standing up because it would entertain others with their funny walks.
If MS were to fold up and get sucked into the near-by "Mel's Hole", 10% of /. readers would go insane because they had nothing more to bitch about, another 10% would have to enter monastaries, Buddhist or otherwise, because that's what they promised (g)God(s) they would do, and 20% would start looking around for a good lawyer to see if a pact signed with the Evil One (aka RMS) signed in blood was binding.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really want both Betamax and VHS? Do you really want both DVD and Laserdisk? Come on. Demand real open standards. It is not about free software. It is not about open software. It is not about non-commercial software. It is perfectly OK to have two or three proprietary closed software supporting ODF and one or two Open Source but not-free software and a couple of Open Source and free software all supporting one document standard with perfect portability across them.
Only when users demand the ability to switch from one software to another without any loss of functionality they will have the power in negotiation. In the present situation, they have to buy whatever MSFT charges. Did you really think people will be forking over 150$ for a spreadsheet and word processor 10 years ago? The whole MS Office was selling for 50$. Now it is supposed to be 500$. Dont you see where the customers lost the ability to negotiate better prices because of vendor lock in?
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:0)
And why limit this matter to word processors and spread sheets? It would be real handy to use these document formats with reporting tools, statistics software, email, computer-generated correspondence for clients, tools optimized for writing legal documents, research papers (grammar checker lets you know your source isn't cited to APA standards), and so on.
Or imagine these documents being integrated into other tools. Teachers could have tools optimized to help them generate test questions and they could save the test in ODF. Business analysts could have tools integrate the object dictionary into a larger document and output the object dictionary in ODF.
Re:I, for one, am for choice (Score:2)
With well documented published formats, interoperability is increased.
However, that does not mean that OOXML needs to become an international *standard*.
If OOXML wasn't so crap, rushed or poor-quality, it might eventually make a decent standard. But it is crap. It is rushed. It is of piss-poor quality. It has obviously never been given a detailed review by anyone. No-one has ever built a product from the spec. (MS didn't write Office 2007's support from the spec, they wrote the spec from Office 2007's format). As it stands, it is not technically adequate to be a recommended standard.
No, I don't want it to be closed. I do want it to be open so that people can
I also want published, open, complete documentation for old Wordperfect formats, Ami Pro formats, 1-2-3 formats, etc., etc., etc., but I do not want any of *these* to become international standards either.
However, even if MS did take the 2-3 years that might be required for them to put OOXML into a good enough shape for it to be considered a standard, I'd probably *still* prefer it not to be. Having multiple standards for the same thing does not offer *useful* choice.
I don't particularly care about choice in word-processing file formats, but I *do* care about choice in word-processing *applications*. If I receive a word-processing file from someone, I want to be able to view/edit it on a device of my choice, with an application of my choice. Having multiple file formats makes this *harder* for application writers, as time spent getting the basics of 2 file formats implemented takes time away from perfecting support for 1 of them.
Do you like it when you go to another country and the plug sockets are different? Or the TV signals? How would having a choice of standard electrical connector help you at home? Or a choice of TV signal? NO! A single standard encourages multiple implementations.
If you're still unsure, give me one example of people who benefitted from having ASCII and EBCDIC as multiple standard ways of encoding plain text. Or one example of people who benefitted from VHS and Betamax. Or one example of a group of people who will benefit from having HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Aside from the people who are trying to lock you in to their standard, and who are happy to sell you "solutions" to work around the problems that the existence of multiple standards creates, you will find no-one. No *user* of electrical appliances, of heterogenous ASCII/EBCDIC systems, of Betamax VCRs has ever benefitted from the existence of overlapping standards.
I seek clarification (Score:2)
Re:I seek clarification (Score:2)
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooxml#Criticism [wikipedia.org] (2nd last bullet):
Legacy document rendering compatibility is identified using (deprecated) tags. For example, book 4 section 2.15.3.6, "autoSpaceLikeWord95", "useWord97LineBreakRules", "useWord2002TableStyleRules", and book 4 section 2.15.3.31, "lineWrapLikeWord6", and "suppressTopSpacingWP" for a 16-year-old version of WordPerfect.[44]. These items should only occur in OOXML documents that were converted from predecessor Microsoft Office documents.
How do you "autoSpaceLikeWord95"? only MS does.
Re:I seek clarification (Score:3, Insightful)
Which, for those who haven't extrapolated it yet, means "About 90% of them in any organisation which has decided to use OOXML as their standard file format".
5 years down the line and other suites are coming out with the "Supports OOXML" box ticked, but further investigation reveals that the organisation still has a huge number of files which haven't had much attention paid to them since the conversion process, are still relevant and don't open properly in anything other than MS Office, regardless of whether or not the product they're testing claims to support OOXML.
Not possible for ODF to have the feature MS wants (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the problem here is NOT technical, it's ideological. The feature that Microsoft wants is user lock-in. The essential feature for MS is that THEY control the standard document format, and exclude all others from adequately rendering that format, keeping essentially all users as a captive market. This is more than adequately demonstrated by an objective examination of MS' public comments, their corporate conduct during this debate, and their private intentions as evidenced by the Halloween memos. For that matter, simply look at their corporate conduct over their whole history, and ask if it's ever changed for the better.
Re:I seek clarification (Score:-1, Troll)
Don't accuse me of sexualizing this. As their CEO demonstrates, it IMPOSSIBLE to discuss Microsoft without referring to semen, fellatio, rape and repeated rape and also mouth rape and ejaculation into pieholes via mouth rape and jamcrackers spread with the blood of nubile virgins being raped by Steve Ballmer as he keeps coming and coming and coming with a boner in his mouth. [youtube.com]
Res ipsa loquitur.
Re:I seek clarification (Score:2, Informative)
Is it possible to implement with relative ease into ODF, all the features that Microsoft sees lacking in ODF?
With the behaviour and errors that Microsot insists on including, no. It is possible to convert such gems as 1900 is a leap year in an application that reads/writes MSO file formats. To make that behaviour mandatory is absurd.
Most of the other complaints that Microsoft has are trivial/non-existent.
Furthermore, OOXML can not correctly render most of the world's writing systems, or languages.
Amber
Re:I seek clarification (Score:1, Insightful)
So - to demand a ISO standard has to include vendor specific closed non-interchangeable parts is idiotic. A standard is a standard. And a standard has to be open, understandable and usable for every vendor, company or person without any problem. Demanding Microsoft-only closed -non-usable for other vendors- parts in a ISO standard is completely insane..
For instance - the metric screw thread for screws and bolts is normalized and standardized an can be used by any factory, person or otherwise. If however a factory uses a special screw tread of their own an patented it so nobody can use it, it is not a standard and cannot be used as such. If that factory tries to make a international standard out of it - they would be laughed at and the proposal would be rejected. And exactly this last thing is what Microsoft tries to do!
Shit!? (Score:-1, Offtopic)
This is so petty I can't believe it. (Score:2, Insightful)
What does this have to do with anything? Last I checked, OpenOffice can save in xml and Microsoft Word can save in ODF (with a plugin). This is like a cock-flexing match between the FSF and Microsoft and it's basically irrelevant to 99.99% of users and government employees.
If ODF, as it stands, were released by Microsoft and called Microsoft ODF, we'd have the same level of FSF, GNU, etc pushback.
Isn't mainstream software development about adaptation and matching and supporting standards- not massive legal battles for complete control?
Re:This is so petty I can't believe it. (Score:3, Informative)
Oh there would be MUCH much more.
Check the "Criticism" section of the ODF wikipedia article for a good starting point.
Re:This is so petty I can't believe it. (Score:2)
I just did. All the issues seem relatively small (or at least, not fundamental problems) and about half have fixes in progress.
Just take a look yourself:
The second one looks like it could have come from alt.sysadmin.recovery [wikipedia.org].
Re:This is so petty I can't believe it. (Score:2)
And of course I can use the same cop out for criticism to OOXML. There are fixes in progress (and yes, there are. MS knows there will be "with comments" votes and that for ratification many of the mentioned flaws will have to be addressed.
Re:This is so petty I can't believe it. (Score:2)
But their so-called standard really isn't a standard. Within the definition of OOXML are statements that are basically "implement this like Office 95 did", without any additional detail. The only company in the world that can implement these sorts of things is Microsoft themselves since Office 95 isn't open source. The only companies they're likely to share this information with, if any, are partners who sign NDA's with them, which means anything that has the possibility of ever implementing this is likely to be available for Windows only. That certainly does NOT qualify as an "open standard". To be an open standard it needs to be defined in such a manner that the standard can be implemented on any existing platform without any dependencies on Windows or Microsoft.
Re:This is so petty I can't believe it. (Score:2)
No.
I am a programmer. I have looked at enough of Microsoft's proposed specification to competently comment on it. The proposal Microsoft has put forward is incomplete and unimplementable by anyone other than Microsoft themselves. One can argue whether that is deliberate or merely an honest failure by Microsoft's specification team, but that point is immaterial. Either way the simple fact is that it is unusable.
Publishing a document that effectively says "Use formats that Microsoft products use" without actually providing a *specification* for those formats is not open, is not a standard, is not a specification. Typing the word "specification" on the cover page of a document does not mean it actually *is* a specification.
Microsoft obviously can and does *use* closed, nonstandard, undocumented formats. However is laughable for Microsoft to take a closed nonstandard nonspecification and attempt to relabel as an "open standard specification". Moreover it is outrageous to attempt to pass a closed nonstandard nonspecification as a government established open standard specification.
-
You really don't understand do you. (Score:0)
explain the difference if you can!
Microsoft Word 95 - This is weird crap
&*56&*(65876&%^%$£^%*)623870^"378^"65536523675232
Microsoft Office Open XML - Proprietary tags they call a an open standard
&*56&*(65876&%^%$£^%*)623870^"378^"65536523675232
Open Document Format
Stand up anyone who doesn't understand this!
The lines above are using my proprietary encryption/format to state the text in the last example.
Now your task is to write "The fat brown cat sat on the mat!" in the formats from above.
rgds
In a nutshell (Score:0)
I got your document format... RTF (Score:1)
Standard Defined (Score:2)
Don't bet that OOXML is dead, just yet. (Score:2)
Watch this situation closely, and if you can put your hand into the process to make sure that it flows properly, I'd suggest that you consider doing just that.