BetaNews | Microsoft's Matusow and Mahugh on Office's move to open format support

Tue, 27 May 2008 07:01:19 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

DOUG MAHUGH, program manager for ISO 29500-based products, Microsoft: One thing to be very clear about here is this: When we say, "support for ODF in [Office] SP2," we intend to write very compliant ODF documents when you save a document. However, it's not a given that everything you can do in the Office UI is savable under ODF. As you're alluding to, there are things -- SmartArt, conditional formatting, things like that -- that we have in Office and that are popular features, where there is no way to save those in ODF, currently.

The way we're approaching that, I can share a little bit with you: We're not throttling the UI, as you describe, where certain things are disabled. Rather, at the time you save, we're telling you, "Hey, you're saving in this other format; some information in this document may be lost." That sort of thing. And let me tell you why we made the decision to do it in that particular way: There are situations where some of that functionality may be very useful to the user, even though it can't be serialized out to the format that they're saving in.

One might suppose that the new API discussed on the following page will similarly not allow developers to set a compatability mode in Office apps. Note that the existing APIs do allow that, so one might suspect that disabling the ability to set a compatibility mode is one of the reasons for the new API. posted by marbux

The engineering decisions that were made in the original creation of ODF represent the engineering pathway and the innovations that were happening in the OpenOffice space. The engineering decisions and development pathway for Open XML represents that which was happening in [Microsoft] Office, and the feature sets are not in parity. In fact, there's a superset of features within the Microsoft Office set, but there are certainly features that are exclusive to OpenOffice that do not get covered in Microsoft Office.

We really hope to see ODF move to JTC 1 / SC 34 maintenance

Tags: compatibility mode mahugh matusow microsoft native file support apis odf

Posted by: marbux

OOXML: MSOffice Open XML - Where The Rubber Meets The Road | Matusow's Blog

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:06:22 -0000

Comments:

ISO NB's approved MS-OOXML not because it meets ISO Interoperability Requirements. It doesn't. OOXML doesn't even come close. They approved OOXML because it's the best deal they can get given the MSOffice predicament their governments are caught in.

Governments got the binary blueprints they have been insisting on, but didn't get the mapping of those binaries to OOXML.

Governemnts also took control of OOXML, with Patrick Durusau and the JTC-1 now in copmplete control of the specifications future. Sadly though, Durusau and company will not be able to make the interop changes they know are required by ISO and related World Trade Agreements. The OOXML charter prevents any changes that would degrade in any way compatibility with MSOffice! This charter lock was on full display in the Microsoft - Ecma response to Geneva BRM comment resolutions, with Microsoft refusing to address any comments that would alter compliance with MSOffice.

Durusau has always believed that a one to one mapping between OOXML and ODF is possible. Just prior to the Geneva BRM though, the EU DIN Workgroup released their preliminary report on harmonization, which they found to be a next to impossible task given the applicaiton specific nature of both ODF and OOXML.

The DIN Report no doubt left the mapping-harmonization crowd (lead by Durusau) with few choices other than to take control of OOXML and figure out the binary to OOXML mappings for themselves, wih the hope that somewhere down the road OpenOffice will provide OOXML documents. Meaning, governments are not looking at open standards for XML documents as much as they are looking to crack the economic hammer lock Microsoft has on the desktop.
posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

There can be no doubt that OOXML, as a standard, has severe flaws. It is incomplete, platform specific, application specific, full of contradictions, fails to adhere to existing standards, untestable, and presents a moving target for any IT worker. There is not an organization in existence, including Microsoft, that promises to actually implement the full standard. Much of this is due to the fact the final version doesn't actually exist on paper yet, but a large fraction is also do to the patchwork nature of the product.

The reason governments and companies wanted a 'office apps' standard in the first place was to release an avalanche of data from aging applications. OOXML shows every appearance of being created to prevent this escape, not enable it. The immaturity of the standard means that it remains a gamble to see if older documents will remain readable or not. The lack of testing means there is no way to determine what docs actually adhere to it or not. The ignoring of existing standards guarantees compatibility problems. All of these factors are handy for the owner of the biggest share of existing documents, as it forces users to continue to use only _their_ application or risk danger from every other quarter.

Tags: iso matusow msoffice ooxml open-standards

Posted by: garyedwards

OpenDocument's feed | Diigo Group

BetaNews | Microsoft's Matusow and Mahugh on Office's move to open format support

OOXML: MSOffice Open XML - Where The Rubber Meets The Road | Matusow's Blog