Eric S. Raymond writes on his blog: "There's been a lot of debate in the community about how OSI should properly handle Microsoft's planned submission of some of its licenses for OSD certification. That debate has been been going on within OSI, too. OSI's official position, from the beginning, which I helped formulate and have expressed to any number of reporters and analysts, is that OSI will treat any licenses submitted to Microsoft strictly on their merits, without fear or favor. That remains OSI's position. But I find that my resolve is being sorely tested."
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Member since:2006-07-04
"Well, considering your poor denial of who you are, I consider your actions more important.
You still work as a PR-consultant for Microsoft, right? "
As Burt Reynolds said to Jackie Gleason in Smokey And The Bandit, "Sheriff, do the letters 'F' 'O' mean anything to you?"
"Your statements about ODF and spreadsheet formulas are pure FUD.
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-failure.html "
Did you actually read what you linked to? Once you get past the attack against OOXML, Rob Weir admits that ODF does not support spreadsheet formulas:
"So what is ODF doing about formulas? We're continuing to work on them. Rather than rush, we're doing careful, methodical work. We're documenting the functions in great detail. ..."
And all I was pointing out was that Denmark and the other national bodies didn't object to standardizing a format that purports to support spreadsheets yet can't even support formulas. OO.o supports formulas, but it has to go outside of the ODF 1.0 spec to do so. Seems strange that Denmark wouldn't object to the most basic aspects of spreadsheet functionality being absent, yet complaining about a format not supporting KParts and Bonobo.
"Besides that ODF does support spreadsheet formulas through OLE."
Please elaborate, if you will.
It sounds like you're saying that if you can embed an OLE object that happens to support spreadsheet formulas, then the format of the container app "supports" spreadsheet formulas. Please say that you mean something else. Otherwise, if I make an SVG OLE server dll, then OOXML supports SVG!! If I make an OLE KParts OLE dll, then OOXML supports KParts!! And on, and on. That is an absurd argument. One can make an OLE exe or dll to support any sort of functionality and therefore declare that any format that supports OLE supports that functionality. But we are talking of *native* support. Is there some way to use OLE to provide *native* support for spreadsheet formulas to ODF? I've not heard of this before, please educate me and the rest of the readers here.
"What Mac Office supports is irrelevant in this context."
I was just pointing out that OLE's file format is not Windows-specific since Mac Office also can read and write that format. So the term "Windows OLE" is incorrect.
Edited 2007-09-04 00:08
Member since:2005-07-02
Which is, you know, the sensible thing to do.
The thing to note, however, is that you do not deny Weir's criticism of OOXML, continuing with your well-established tradition of deflection...
Member since:2007-02-17
This statement is pure Microsoft PR spin.
ODF, at any version, does support formulas.
ODF version 1 and version 1.1 (the current approved version) both include a specification of formulas that is too open to allow precise unambiguous interoperability, however. Applications fully compliant with ODF 1.1 can have implementations of formulas but there is room for the possibility that two applications may not have the same interpretation, and hence lack interoperability.
Hence ODF 1.1 formula specification is not good enough. It is NOT absent, it is just not detailed enough for interoperability purposes.
Since unambiguous interoperability is a prime aim of ODF, this situation needed to be rectified, and it has been.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenFormula
The Openformula specification that Rob Weir said was being worked on (started in 2004, first draft in Feb 2005) is now complete. The Openformula specification is part of ODF version 1.2.
ODF version 1.2 is not yet approved. It is still going through the approval process.
Here is where it is at:
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/OpenDocument_v1.2_Action_Items
Nevertheless, as stated in the article linked, for all of the various ODF-compliant applications: "Implementors are already implementing it. Implementors have already made changes to their applications due to the work of this body, such as changing how they handle signed values in MOD, the association of exponentiation, and even implementing new functions to conform to the draft standard."
Even though Openformula and ODF 1.2 is not yet formally approved, Openformula is itself compliant with ODF 1.1. Openformula is backward-compatible. All of the ODF applications that claim compliance with ODF 1.1 now effectively use Openformula, so that spreadsheets can be reliably interchanged.
The real truth of the ODF formula sitation is miles and miles away from the Microsoft-PR claim that
MollyC you should be thouroughly ashamed of yourself for repeating out-and-out lies such as that.
Au contraire, the current version of OO.o supports OpenFormula. OpenFormula is not AFAIK "outside the ODF 1.0 spec", but rather it is the case that the ODF 1.0 spec is not detailed enough to describe all of OpenFormula unambiguously.
Edited 2007-09-04 02:37
Member since:
2005-10-02
Well, considering your poor denial of who you are, I consider your actions more important.
You still work as a PR-consultant for Microsoft, right?
Your statements about ODF and spreadsheet formulas are pure FUD.
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-failure.html
Besides that ODF does support spreadsheet formulas through OLE.
What Mac Office supports is irrelevant in this context.