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Wictor Wilén

SharePoint Server MVP / Author / MCT / MCTS / MCP / MSc writing about SharePoint and other interesting Microsoft technologies

The final countdown of OOXML

Posted at 2008-03-29 01:07 by Wictor Wilén in Office Open XML with 7 comments.

Abacus Today is the last day that the national bodies can change/update the votes on the Office Open Xml, DIS 29500, approval as an ISO standard.

I really hope that enough NB's change their votes so we can have OOXML as an ISO standard - I know we will all gain on this.

To get a hint in which direction the result is going Andy Updegrove has set up a Vote Tracker, which he will continuously update until we have the final result.

Comments and trackbacks

#  How will we all gain? by Peter Seebach
Screenshot from websnpr I see no gain at all to committing everyone to a six-thousand page standard full of features they are directed not to implement. A bad enough standard can, in fact, be worse than no standard at all. OOXML is such a standard. It serves no purpose except to let Microsoft claim to be "standard" while raising even higher barriers than they have previously had to genuine interoperability or competition. Shame!
#  Seconding Peter's comments ... by Arlen Cuss
Screenshot from websnpr In what manner do we gain? I read your post "Does the size matter?" - you say the OOXML document is much more `rich' in its description, it uses more whitespace, and it doesn't make external references to other documents as ODF does. In what way is it a good thing that Microsoft there re-invent MathML and SVG, rather than referring to standard tools? Someone implementing a document editor for OOXML must then implement OOXML's own replacements for MathML and SVG (or wait for a library - wait a while, I assume - and even then we need debugging...), whereas someone implementing ODF more likely than not already has time-tested libraries and code to use for MathML and SVG. Where is the benefit of another conflicting standard, laden with IP and patent issues?
#  Re: How will we all gain? by Wictor Wilén
Screenshot from websnpr Hello Peter and Arlen, I can't agree with you. I think we all will gain in having OOXML as an ISO standard. We will then have an opportunity to affect the standard, which we otherwise will not have. You, me and everyone can then make suggestions to the standard and improve it or approve or reject suggestions from others. It will also gain interoperability between ODF and OOXML, since we know how it should be implemented. About the MAthML and SVG; please read this by Jesper Lund Stockholm: http://idippedut.dk/post/2008/01/Embrace-and-extend---SVG-revisited.aspx.
#  This will kill the ISO by Jason
Screenshot from websnpr ISO standards matter because people believe that the ISO process ensures both quality and consensus. Neither have been achieved, and the future EU investigation in Microsoft's tactics will only serve to highlight this. The result of this process will not be increased acceptance of OOXML, it will be decreased acceptance of the ISO. It is hard for me to see how Microsoft has benefited. Every detail of this process is going to be scrutinized during the EU's investigation. Approval by the ISO may well turn out to be a worst case scenario for Microsoft.
#  Re: This will kill the ISO by Wictor
Screenshot from websnpr The process has not been nice, from any side, and I agree that the ISO process has been hurt and that was not what anyone was aiming for. But we can't just sit down and bitch about that the process is wrong (no matter which direction the vote took) - we have to act throught our NB's and make the "system" better.
#  2 standards equals to no standard by Avi Alkalay
Screenshot from websnpr Are you kidding? We all gain? Microsoft is the single winner here. You actually loose. The world doesn't need to ways to say "Helvetica 12pt, left aligned, red, in a Leter page"
#  Re: 2 standards by Wictor
Screenshot from websnpr I'm not kidding :-) I think there is room for another standard in this area. I like the freedom to choose the format that suits the needs, just like I can choose which programming language to use. If only one document format was allowed, why not use HTML/CSS then?
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