Microsoft has hit back at critics, including IBM, which voted against approving the company's Office OpenXML format as an Ecma standard, claiming it is nothing more than a vendor-dictated specification that documents proprietary products via XML. Ecma International announced the approval of the new standard Dec. 6 following a meeting of its general assembly and said it will begin the fast track process for adoption of the Office OpenXML formats as an ISO international standard in January 2007.
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Member since:2005-11-11
//He conveniently forgets to mention that the "date hack" originated with Lotus 1-2-3, and was adopted by Excel and subsequently every other spreadsheet application that wanted to be compatible with the many Lotus 1-2-3 documents that had been/were being produced. //
You are trying to make it sound like Microsoft support compatibility. Nothing could be further from the truth here.
If Microsoft were truly out to achieve compatibility and interoperability, then why don't they just adopt the open standard formats that are designed to work on every platform?
There are a whole raft of these. SVG, Ogg, ODF, SMIL, Python Perl Java or Ruby, full PNG, full CSS ... and so on and so on. All open standards, all free to be implemented by any party, all unencumbered so no-one gets sued, and all of them promoting true croos-platform interoperability.
Why is it that in every single case, Microsoft refuses to support the perfectly viable suitable and available open standard, but instead tries to insist that its own proprietary, close, patented, single-platform only equivalent format is the only one Microsoft will support?
When Microsoft and Novell announce a deal to improve interoperability, why is it that the avenue to that turns out to be Microsoft's always-proprietary-lower-level-standard-OpenXML format to be implemented in OpenOffice and not the open-all-the-way-down ODF format implemeted instead in MS Office?
When will we see Microsoft announce MS Office for Linux?
Can you say "lock-in"?
Member since:2005-07-06
You are trying to make it sound like Microsoft support compatibility. Nothing could be further from the truth here.
This is exactly the truth. It was compatibility with Lotus that made them (and others) adopt Lotus' date behavior, and it is now compatibility that makes them carry that behavior forward in Open XML.
If Microsoft were truly out to achieve compatibility and interoperability, then why don't they just adopt the open standard formats that are designed to work on every platform?
There are a whole raft of these. SVG, Ogg, ODF, SMIL, Python Perl Java or Ruby, full PNG, full CSS ... and so on and so on. All open standards, all free to be implemented by any party, all unencumbered so no-one gets sued, and all of them promoting true croos-platform interoperability.
None of those, besides ODF, has anything to do with document formats, and none of those can represent the functionality of current Office formats that they need to bring forward with Open XML. Why you're suddenly trying to expand a discussion about legacy document compatibility into a discussion about adopting every technology under the sun is puzzling, though likely a wanted deflection from the actual topic.
Why is it that in every single case, Microsoft refuses to support the perfectly viable suitable and available open standard, but instead tries to insist that its own proprietary, close, patented, single-platform only equivalent format is the only one Microsoft will support?
First, you're wrong. Microsoft has both created and adopted several standards. They, as everyone, are not obligated to support every standard out there just because it's out there, and nothing stops anyone else from implementing support themselves or using what's already out there. PNG is supported by Microsoft in several products, as is SMIL. CSS support in IE is improving, and their various development tools support it. None of the major browsers provide full CSS support. ODF is supported via an open source translator they sponsor and other projects others sponsor. Python, Perl, Java, and Ruby run just fine on Windows. Besides their original implementations, Microsoft directly supports implementations of Python and Ruby on .NET, and has also worked to increase PHP performance on IIS (and given code to the project). There's virtually no demand for Ogg support compared to what their customers already have with WMA/V, and SVG did not fit their needs for usage in WPF, though it still may be supported in a future version of IE (taking lower presedence to other technologies like CSS). Ogg (and many other media formats) support is easily gained via an available DirectShow codec (long the standard media extensibility path for Windows). SVG support has been available via plugins for several years. Windows is extensible for a reason. Microsoft isn't going to support everything everyone wants. Where they lack support for something some people think is important, the path is open for others to fill the need.
Why is it that in every single case, Microsoft refuses to support the perfectly viable suitable and available open standard, but instead tries to insist that its own proprietary, close, patented, single-platform only equivalent format is the only one Microsoft will support?
Why is it you love to exaggerate and act as if Microsoft has never supported any standards? It just isn't true.
When Microsoft and Novell announce a deal to improve interoperability, why is it that the avenue to that turns out to be Microsoft's always-proprietary-lower-level-standard-OpenXML format to be implemented in OpenOffice and not the open-all-the-way-down ODF format implemeted instead in MS Office?
You're again mischaracterizing Open XML, and that wasn't the sum of the deal. IIRC, Novell is also contributing and/or using code from the ODF translator project. Either way, Microsoft isn't blocking support for ODF, unlike IBM and others, don't mind there being several formats available, are supporting ODF translation and have stated their intensions to include it in a future version of Office should there be significant demand for it. Righ now, most customers are satisfied with Open XML and understand the need for it. The most vocal cries for ODF support are coming directly from a minority trying to push the format without concern of the actual customers whose documents cannot be represented by ODF.
When will we see Microsoft announce MS Office for Linux?
When we see a good business case for it. Desktop Linux is an extremely small market, and only a fraction of those running Linux would actually buy Office instead of using OpenOffice or some other free product, and displaying the same narrow-mindedness towards Office or anything MS just as certain people are doing with regard to MS' format standardization.
Can you say "lock-in"?
Can you say "Not Applicable"?
Member since:
2005-07-06
Although I'm no expert, I think Rob (from IBM) has raised several valid criticisms of OOXML (such as the use of bit fields in XML and incorporating date hacks into the standard):
He conveniently forgets to mention that the "date hack" originated with Lotus 1-2-3, and was adopted by Excel and subsequently every other spreadsheet application that wanted to be compatible with the many Lotus 1-2-3 documents that had been/were being produced. It would be more work (and error-prone) to create a new date representation and transform every Lotus and Lotus date-compatible spreadsheet format not only for the new format but also for the internal representation of many existing applications.
The bitmasks define unicode code pages and are documented in the spec. Neither tie the format to Windows nor present barriers to implementation.