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I encourage everybody to read this article.
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Jan-30.html

I'm not impressed by Miguel's reasoning in that article. He just seems to have lost it a bit more than he already has in view of the Novell/Microsoft deal and the whole .Net replication thing. There are better responses elsewhere, but some highlights:

Some folks have been using a Wiki to keep track of the issues with OOXML. The motivation for tracking these issues seems to be politically inclined, but it manages to pack some important technical issues.

Hmmmm. A community of people get together to point out shortcomings in a proposed specification - and it's somehow politically inclined? As opposed to what, exactly?

By comparison, ODF only references three ISO standards: Relax NG (OOXML also references this one), 639 (language codes) and 3166 (country codes).

So what about all the W3C standards, with a lot of implementations out in the wild, that ODF uses as well as IETF?

It is weak because the complaint is that Windows Metafiles are not specified. It is certainly not in the standard, but the information is publicly available and is hardly "undisclosed information".

Goodness Miguel....... WMF is actually a shadow, if you like, of graphical function calls made by Windows as it renders. It is absolutely specific to the Windows API and maps right on to it. Hell, even Wine suffers from the WMF flaw it's so specific.

Not only it is demanded that OOXML abide by more standards than ISO's own ODF does, but also that the format used for metafiles from 1999 be used.

I also don't understand this, because WMF is ancient, and was cobbled together in the late 80s for Windows 3.0. CGM dates from 1999, so it is somehow bad? Don't get that one.

There is a good case to be made for OOXML to be further fine-tuned before it becomes an ISO standard. But considering that Office 2007 has shipped, I doubt that any significant changes to the file format would be implemented in the short or medium term.

So Office 2007 has shipped, and that's the barometer by which a proposed ISO standard is approved? There is somehow one law for Microsoft and one law for everyone else and we simply have to lump it? I simply don't get that one. Suppose Office 2007, or a later version of Office, differs from what is in the OOXML spec? What the hell does everyone else do then?

The really bizarre thing he then proceeds to do is praise .Net and XAML at the end and call them achievable goals. I can understand that to be honest, because he needs a reason for Mono to exist, but I still find it........bizarre in view of his silly criticisms elsewhere.

There's something even more bizarre at the end though:

Christian Stefan wrote me to point out that the OOXML specification published by ECMA uses 1.5 line spacing, while OASIS uses single spacing.

He then proceeds to do some adding up of the number of pages in the ODF specification, and all the standards and specs ODF uses, and then uses that to apparently defend why the OOXML spec document is 6000 pages long!

Edited 2007-03-07 00:22

So what kind of Kool-Aid you drinking over there?

It's sort of cute how you ignore all his actually comments and points and focus right in on comments that really don't have to do with the ODF specification. You seem to conveniently skip over all his critiques of the ODF.

What about where he said the ODF is a very light weight when it comes to spreadsheet applications? He personally helped write Gnumeric a spreadsheet application, and he said there is no way you can provide the level of functionality that the users need only in the 15 or so pages ODF dedicated to the matter.

What about where he talks about the need for legacy support in a document format. Microsoft took a lot of guff over support Word Perfect formatting. Let me say that again Microsoft took a lot of guff over supporting IBM Lotus Word Perfect formatting. I noticed that IBM decided to ditch all these users. It's sort of nice that ODF is saying screw you to all the legacy documents that will have to be converted as far as formatting goes.

ODF is a light weight standard and the only reason it has gotten as far as it has, is because of personally grudges against Microsoft. OOXML is not supported in OOo, so now the only valid reason that all the pundits actually put forth. That it was going to be too hard to impliment, is now null and void, because Microsoft ponyed up the cash for one of their developers to make it.

You all need to ask your self if this is a personal grudge or do you actually believe the dribble coming out of your mouth. This is the reason I use BSD and support the BSD license whole heartily over GPL. GPL brings too many evangelistic wackos to the table.

Also it is really amazing how easily people in the OOS community leave a person out to dry that has given more than most to the OOS community.

Edited 2007-03-07 01:15