Microsoft: ‘Office Format War Over’

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

Evidently not as strong as what you’re drinking.

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.

Dude. Those comments in my post are exact quotes from Miguel’s article that focus right in on what he believes to be problems with ODF and why he’s defending OOXML, and I’ve given my response as to why not a great deal of it stands up to any kind of logic.

If you are able to do that in response rather than skirting around with ‘it’s sort of cute’ meaningless replies, I’m all ears.

What about where he said the ODF is a very light weight when it comes to spreadsheet applications?

Because it’s not. KOffice, Open Office, Google, Lotus Workspace etc. are all doing it. That’s just a very lightweight comment without any argument apart from “Oh, it’s ten pages long so there’s no way I could implement that”.

What about where he talks about the need for legacy support in a document format.

The legacy support arguments, that Microsoft have come out with, are utter rubbish as well. OOXML is a totally new format that is simply not backwards compatible with the previous binary format (you can’t read and write them without an add on) – and yet Microsoft has felt the need to dump all the elements from the binary format into the XML one.

The way to handle this was to create a new and independent format built for the purpose, much like ODF, and then use Microsoft Office to do the awful heavy lifting of getting the old formats and all their quirks into a new and clean format without the overhead of historical problems. The ludicrous situation where OOXML replicates the Excel date problem is a case in point.

Microsoft took a lot of guff over support Word Perfect formatting.

No they didn’t. They supported it at a time when they really wanted and needed to get into the office suite market, and they were not number one. That format has suddenly gone right down the pecking order at Microsoft. What flack did Microsoft take, exactly, in supporting WordPerfect’s formats – or was this pulled out of the wind?

What kind of feeble argument are you trying to make here?

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.

Converting to a new format is up to an application to do. It is not up to the format itself, and the notion that a new format can be responsible for converting the old format to the new by itself is just so stupid it isn’t even funny.

The backwards compatibility claims with regard to OOXML are non-existent. Think about it. The only way OOXML would be backwards compatible is if I could open a document in that format in Office 97, 2000, 2003 and Open Office without any add ons or modifications. I can’t – because it’s a new format!

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.

There’s no evidence that ODF is a lightweight standard at all in view of the people and projects that are currently implementing it. That’s a wonderfully well reasoned argument, which dovetails well with Miguel’s apparent view that the objections people have come together to create with regard to OOXML are politically motivated and how Microsoft is consistently whinging that it’s all a big IBM conspiracy. Go figure.

ODF was created first, and has been in existence for years without any trouble whatsoever. Microsoft clearly didn’t have to create a new format, but they did and it has some serious problems if it is ever to be considered an open format. I refer you back to the Groklaw objections page for information. That’s all that matters. Anything else is just pointless whinging.

OOXML is not supported in OOo, so now the only valid reason that all the pundits actually put forth.

ODF existed years before OOXML, and ODF is not supported in Microsoft Office. The point here being?

That it was going to be too hard to impliment, is now null and void

The implementations outside of Microsoft Office are so incomplete it isn’t even funny, and they would never be practically useful in exchanging documents with Office 2007. Given the usage of back end implementations such as WMF, Microsoft’s own vector drawing and math libraries (which will have to have their own implementations on other platforms rather than re-using existing standards) there are solid technical reasons for suggesting that full implementation of OOXML will never be practically possible – which is the point.

You did read my comment rather than jumping up and down, right?

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.

Whatever. That’s a sour grapes, emotional statement by any stretch of the imagination and a pointless waste of time – something you and many people defending OOXML claim everyone else is doing!

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.

Goodness me. That’s a tangent if ever I saw one.

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.

No one is hanging Miguel out to dry. I’m afraid that he needs no help from anyone whatsoever in doing that, sadly. All people are doing is responding to some of the things he is coming out with, and the confused message he has always given regarding open source software in relation to Microsoft.

It just shows how sad Novell have become when they release a totally incomplete OOXML translator plugin, and then a Microsoft employee immediately bangs on his blog that this is evidence that OOXML is open and everything is OK.

Maybe you should know your history before you go blabbing that you know everything.

Never did any such thing.

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/05/0041212

From the article – “so not only must an interoperable OOXML implementation first acquire and reverse-engineer a 14-year old version of Microsoft Word, it must also do the same thing with a 16-year old version of WordPerfect.” referring to suppressTopSpacingWP

How you have come to believe that is relevant to what I had written is anyone’s guess. Just because Microsoft have some WP elements and behaviour dumped into their own format as a result of some long lost (and now pointless) older support, it doesn’t mean that they support WordPerfect today.

I think you need to read what you’ve quoted. The paragraph you are quoting is asking what on Earth the point is of referring to unspecified WordPerfect behaviour from 16 years ago and replicating it, rather than converting it over. I quite agree.

Also lets not forget – “Possible legacy MS Office rendering compatibility issues are identified using (deprecated) tags: For example, book 4 section 2.15.3.6, autoSpaceLikeWord95, book 4 section 2.15.3.31, lineWrapLikeWord6.”

Yer. And? What the hell is that doing in there? It is up to an application to work out what to do with that in terms of converting it to a new format. Additionally, those tags mean nothing simply because their behaviour isn’t defined.

I thought ODF was going to be the savior where all these documents could be suddenly read and available to the masses?

No. Whether you use ODF or OOXML, it’s the job of these things called office suites to convert the old format into the new. Quite what universe you or Microsoft live in where a new format can automatically convert older formats itself isn’t quite clear.

All that you need is a translator to convert it in to OOXML.

Ergo, it isn’t backwards compatible with older formats, therefore the Microsoft Office specific elements to OOXML are pointless. All I need is a translator to convert a document to ODF. So what?

In ODF most of these legacy documents are going to have to be totally rewritten to perserve the formatting that was originally available.

No. There’s simply no reason why several thousand elements from the older Microsoft Office binary format needed to be dumped into an open format to preserve some form of non-existant backward compatibility. In reality, it’s exactly the same format in different packaging with all the same old problems.

It only looks forward and says forget about everything that came before me.

That’s because it’s a new format.

And forgetting about your past is a luxury that a document format does not have.

Yes it does have that luxury, because it is the applications that do the heavy lifting of conversion, and not the formats. There’s simply no reason for a new format to have several thousand elements from an old format dumped, literally, into it from an older binary format in the name of backwards compatibility.

You make the mistake that even Microsoft employees have made, which is to view the format and the application as the same thing. Easy mistake to make I suppose.

The famous saying comes to mind, “those who don’t know history or doomed to relive it.” or in this case only a bunch of purist evangelical fanatics

I refer you to your first comment above:

Blah, Blah, Blah

Try the Cherry flavor.

because the masses still have documents that are 5+ years old in their original format.

So what? You get an office suite that can open your older Microsoft Office documents and then ‘Save As…’ ODF. That has absolutely nothing to do with the new format that you’ve created, and there’s simply no reason for your new format to simply dump every element of the old format into a new one just because it uses XML. In reality, it’s still exactly the same format!

Mind you, that was the whole point. Microsoft just decided to change the Emperor’s clothing just so they could say “Oh, it’s XML!”

Because both are Open.

Define open for me. There is a list as long as both your arms and ample evidence that OOXML cannot be implemented outside of Microsoft Office. I suggest you read it.

It is honestly very juvenile to ignore something a company brings to the table just because you don’t like the company. If Microsoft invented a cure for cancer, and gave it away for free, all you guys would be arguing over if the process for the cure of cancer was open.

Bo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo. Everybody hates Microsoft! That’s the argument that gets used when people run low on anything useful to say. Sorry, but I suggest you look at the actual objections against OOXML and respond to those.

I think your bus is leaving.

I have seen the OOS community totally ignore .NET because it came from Microsoft, even though it is more open and more standardized than Java.

No, it isn’t. .Net is just a wrapper around various Windows specific implementations, just as OOXML is, and it is patented one at that. There is nothing defined within .Net that gives you a functioning and Microsoft .Net compatible environment environment at all (or even a complete bloody CLR), unless you come up with your own underlying implementations and reverse engineer Microsoft’s own.

Something tells me that guy is going to be extremely surprised when OXML is ISO certified.

I see no evidence that that is going to happen, and I’ve seen no point by point addressing of the objections made.

MS has emphasized legislation that defines guidelines for using open formats in general, rather than legislation that mandates specific formats, as the latter is short-sighted

Oh right. So an application that uses only one format, and not a multitude of open ones, is OK, but it’s not OK to mandate anything to the apparent detriment of Microsoft?

Texas wants XML period

No actually. They’re looking into what that format would be, and it’s likely to be ODF. You can always tell an MS shill when they write in terms where filling a paragraph full of XML somehow equates to an open format.

1. interoperable among diverse internal and external platforms and applications;

OpenXML doesn’t qualify. The only application it is compatible with today is Office 2007. It is chock full of references to specific behaviour in specific versions of Microsoft Office and doesn’t make use of existing ISO and other industry standards. Ergo, not only does it have a very, very short list of compatible applications apart from MS Office, there are solid technical reasons as to why that list is highly unlikely to grow.

2. published without restrictions or royalties;

That’s debatable. It is a format invented, and directed, by Microsoft.

3. fully and independently implemented by multiple software providers on multiple platforms without any intellectual property reservations for necessary technology;

See point 1. The list of software vendors that have implemented OpenXML, fully, and are likely to be able to implement it fully, for multiple applications on multiple platforms stands currently at zero.

4. controlled by an open industry organization with a well-defined inclusive process for evolution of the standard.

Since the format was invented by Microsoft and is full of references to specific behaviour in specific versions of Microsoft Office, then it clearly doesn’t qualify there either.