Ecma meetings in Toronto

Well we're in the middle of our last face to face meeting for Ecma TC45 before the ISO vote on September 2. Novell is hosting it up in Toronto, and it's actually given us a chance to meet some of the developers who are integrating Open XML into Open Office. They had initially worked with the XSLTs coming out of the ODF to Open XML translator project, but now it looks like they are building the support in at a more native level without the XSLTs. It was a really cool demo. They showed importing a formatted spreadsheet .xlsx file into Calc; a graphic heavy presentation .pptx file into Impress; and a rich wordprocessing .docx into Writer. There is still a ways to go, but there are really making impressive progress.

The main thing we're currently working through is the list of comments that Ecma will submit to ISO as part of the fast trac process. Novell has some they've come across with their latest development effort, and there are also a few that folks presented based on public statements they've seen. Not sure how big the list will be, but there are some pretty good improvements in there that will be dealt with along with all the other national body comments at the ballot resolution meeting (BRM).

It should be a pretty exciting week or two. September 2nd gives us a great checkpoint to see where we are in forming a consensus for approval of DIS 29500 (Open XML). Basically we see who is already in favor of the standard and what fixes they'd like to see before it's finalized, but we'll also see folks who are still hesitant, and what fixes will make them change their mind. I think we'll already be pretty close to the required number of yes votes, meaning that going into the ballot resolution meeting there will be a lot of momentum to get the issues fixed and move towards a final approval of the standard.

There were a couple interesting links from yesterday that I wanted to point out:

• ODF / Open XML – Technical Specifications Mature Over Time - Jason Matusow takes a look at what it means for a standard to be mature, and how that should impact its approval. Clearly all standards continue to evolve and improve, so that should really be taken into account. This is why at Ecma there is now a lot of focus on the future maintenance of the spec.
• Whitepaper on document format adoption - A report from IDC which drills into the current thinking in the industry around Open XML and ODF.
• Last days for the Open XML ballot – Rick Jelliffe talks more about the closure of this stage of the fast track ballot. I'd be interested to hear what other people think of his suggestion to remove much of the informative text from the spec. I think it's useful for implementers, but Rick has more experience in standards than I do.

I hope everyone is having a great week.

-Brian

OpenXMLCommunity.org Quote of the Day:

CEGID – France

"With Open XML formats, office documents easily integrate into enterprise solutions, and management data is found within the files themselves. This format lets us combine structured and nonstructured documents and use office applications to pull information straight from ERP. As long as the content remains open and accessible, the Office Open XML format makes integration and compatibility between Office documents and enterprise applications easier. It is part of our long-term vision, because of its robustness and accessibility"

- Christophe Raymond – CTO

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  argh Have you seen this? http://stupid.domain.name/node/382 "The vote on OOXML looked fairly secured. Most in the Working Group in Sweden was against the vote to approve OOXML. The day of the vote, though, more companies showed up at the door. Some 20 new companies — each one payed about $2500 to be allowed to vote — and vote they did ... for Microsoft. Most of the new companies were partners from Microsoft who suddenly out of the blue joined the Working Group, payed membership fees and voted yes for approval. From the OS2World story: 'The final result was 25 Yes, 6 No and 3 Abs and this would from the start be a done deal of saying No! Jonas Bosson who participated in today's meeting on behalf on FFII said that he left the meeting in protest and so did also IBM's Swedish local representative Johan Westman.'" How can you guys justify this level of corruption?  It's truely awful :(

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  Brian,  You are just dismissing it as FUD?  Which part are you denying?  That 20 new companies joined up on the day, all of which were Microsoft partners, and all of which voted for Microsoft? John

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  Miguel,  I doubt that many people at all have read the 6000 page spec.  You seem to be dismissing the arguments against OOXML just because other people have made them before.

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  Brian heeft vandaag weer een post over OpenXML met daarin een aantal interessante links: ODF / Open...

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  John, regarding the Swedish vote, according to a slashdot comment regarding it, there is no problem because all members that voted were already members of SIS.   http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=281505&cid=20383407 "Any Swedish company can become a member of SIS buy paying somewhere around $300-$500 per year. To be allowed to vote in this particular issue an extra 15 000 Sek ($2500) was needed. So yeah, it is open for anyone with cash (but they had to be members of SIS since before." I guess IBM's allies would prefer that members of SIS be denied the right to vote on matters that are before their own organization unless they vote IBM's way. What I was in college, I was a member of a student union, but only attended meetings when matters were being voted on (e.g. electing office holders).  Although I didn't attend the other meetings, I had every right to vote, and it's the same thing with SIS. These companies were already members of SIS, they paid the required fee to vote on a particular matter, and did so.  The article presents zero evidence of any malfeasance.  That it implies that malfeasance occurred without any evidence shows that the article is FUD, by definition. BTW, the final vote was 25 Yes, 6 No and 3 Abs.  Supposedly the "suddenly out of the blue" companies numbered "20".  According to another slashdot post, one of the 20 new companies was Google, which voted NO.  Now, assuming that the other 19 of the "out of the blue" companies voted yes (which might not be the case), then if you take away the votes of the 20 "out of the blue" companies, the tally is 6 YES, 5 No, and 3 Abs.  So it's not like there was some overwhelming mandate to reject OOXML to begin with.

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  Bruno,  4 companies, including IBM, left in disgust without voting.  It was most certainly originally overwhelmingly against OOXML.

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  John, Since when do companies have "feelings"?   They are just godless profit making machines, when did they become sisters of charity?

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  Follow-up here: http://stupid.domain.name/node/385 Now it's SIS system that is broken. Given that you have to be a member of SIS to vote, I don't see how - after all $2500 is token money in case like this. Anyway, does anyone have a list of company names and votes in English? I cannot find one.

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  By the way, just what is "Farance, Incorporated" entity on US vote? I cannot google up anything about it that is not related to voting "no" on OOXML standartization. And Doug doesn't seem to know this either.

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  Brian: Blocking comments as in Sweden is evil and you know that it happened. OOXML is as bad as that.

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  Brian, I'm afraid your "reality check" has bounced for lack of sufficient facts. Let's review. You say that OASIS won't allow talk about interoperability?  Funny, we were just talking about it on today's TC call. Also, note that the ODF Adoption TC is hosting an "ODF Interoperability Camp" in Barcelona in around 3 weeks, at the OpenOffice.org conference, with 8 or so ODF vendors planning on attending.  I know that Microsoft knows about this conference.  Your Stephen McGibbon is registered to attend. Gary Edwards booted out?  That's also news to me.  You can see the membership roster right here:  http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/membership.php?wg_abbrev=office  Gary remains a dues-paying representative of the Open Document Foundation. We ignored suggestions from Novell?  I think if you check the minutes, you'll find that we debated Florian's proposal for a month, with a lot of list traffic and meeting time spent on this.  His proposal was voted down 2-7 in favor of an alternative list enhancement proposal proposed by KOffice.  We discuss, we let everyone talk and then we vote. Is there something wrong with this?  Does Ecma do it differently?  I honestly don't know, since their meeting minutes and discussion list archives are private. Comments on OOXML constitutes a "denial of service attack" on ISO?  Give me a break.  The question should, be why Ecma's TC45 did not find these errors during their review?  Submitting a 6,000 page specification full of defects under Fast Track pretenses -- that is the Denial of Service.  

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  Doug, I did find many of these bugs during the time OOXML was under review by Ecma.  I've been posting about these problems since last July, well before the specification was approved by Ecma. I'll make no apologies for my technical comments.  They were reviewed and approved in the US by a committee that included yourself and over a dozen MS partners.  Hundreds of these comments were accepted by the US NB.  You had your chance to object to them, but you didn't.  Soon will be your chance to actually address them.  This is progress, yes? Brian, you are responsible for the FUD you post, not Gary.  You need to verify your facts yourself, not rely on others. It is enough that you rely on me to debug your OOXML specification.  I'm not going to be fact checker for your blog as well. As for whether IBM is an implementor or not, let's just say that IBM, and Lotus before that, have a long history of attempting to support the numerous poorly documented and flawed Microsoft Office file formats.  I doubt it will end just because Microsoft has put angle brackets around their binary formats.

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Lotus is responsible for some of the flaws in the MS' formats, and it's not like there was open documentation available when Lotus, WordPerfect, and others were market leaders and MS had to add compatibility for their respective formats. Competitors conveniently act as if MS is the only one to ever have proprietary formats. IBM and others in the industry have created (and still create) proprietary software and hardware, and MS could likewise argue about some of IBM's boneheaded hardware decisions that they've had to support over the years.

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  Rob,  Ah, I had suspected that the whole thing about Gary Edwards being kicked out was being made up.  I asked for some evidence in another thread but nobody replied. John

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  Rob and John, I've linked to the Gary Edwards posts before, and I guess I should have again as clearly anytime something doesn't back up your position you assume it's made up... I won't make tha mistake again Stephen has some links and quotes from Gary here: http://notes2self.net/archive/2007/07/24/much-ado-about-nothing.aspx Rob, thanks for the other comments as well. I think the ODF guys would rather you spent more of your time helping to improve their spec rather than "debugging" Open XML. I think the Open Office guys would rather IBM contribute it's work back to the project rather than taking an early fork of Open Office into workplace and then keeping any changes proprietary. You're motiviations are clear, and it's entertaining to watch the drama. -Brian

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  Hi Brian, I posted this early this morning but perhaps it didn't submit. You wrote, re Sweden: "In Sweden, the IBM side started bringing in people who hadn't even read the spec and just wanted to vote "no". Google joined at the last minute with the sole plan of blocking it. We asked a number of the companies we knew who want to see Open XML adopted if they would also participate and show their support." My comment was, the list of companies that voted in the SIS is public, referenced in comment #1 here. Other than Google, all the late joiners were Microsoft partners, and it's not like Google is some kind of IBM stooge, either. So, where were all the people "the IBM side started bringing in"?

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  I found that little back-and-forth with Rob Weir to be more enlightening than ten blog posts from any of the people involved.  There's been a tendency for people on both sides not to directly address the arguments of those that disagree with them, so that discussion was a real breath of fresh air. I'm sure it feels awkward to be talk to people that have so little faith in you, but those of us listening from the sidelines get a great deal out of it.  Some more of the same would be hugely appreciated.

  • Andrew

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  [quote]Doug, I did find many of these bugs during the time OOXML was under review by Ecma.  I've been posting about these problems since last July, well before the specification was approved by Ecma[/quote] As IBM being a long time member of Ecma can I ask you how many comments did you or IBM submit to the Ecma TC45 during Office Open XML developement within Ecma ?

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  There's a rumor about a memo to Swedish developers. Anyone care to post a copy?

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  There is no point in denying the facts about Sweden. I get reports about committee stuffing and irregularities on a daily basis. Its big news over here, really no orchestrated campaign behind, few blogposts and many journalists investigate it. This is what betanews write http://www.betanews.com/article/Evidence_of_Microsoft_Influencing_OOXML_Votes_in_Nordic_States/1188335569 As you know betanews is your inoffical press agency that always takes the utmost spin. "Illuminet CEO Jonas Bosson was one SIS member who was urged to join at the last minute by one of the leaders of the Foundation for Free Information Infrastructure, to help balance an anticipated Microsoft-driven surge of five to seven members." No one had to "urge" Jonas. After all he is the Swedish president. Betanews tries to sell a different reality but the story is out. We understand that you try to depict opponents as fanatics. However, the safest method to survive the storm for Microsoft would be to let ECMA retract fast-track, and then use a normal ISO standard review process for OOXML to gets its ISO approval and resolve the problems. Bona fide, that is all. I don't mind a Committee of neutral experts which reviews comments that were submitted by all parties. Your problem is that neutral review would ultimately lead to disapproval.

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  @Bruno A short while ago the swedish members of the SIS committee totalled only 9 incuding MS, Sun and IBM. Of those 9 they actually voted 5-4 for the approval Of Office Open XML.

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  Brian,  Just to be clear - you had gotten mixed up before, and Gary Edwards was not at all kicked off the technical team? John

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  John, I think it's clear he was taken off the technical team.  What is your point?

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  @Ben: Have you seen Rob Weir's blog, or Bob Sutor's lately?  They are IBM representatives and neither of them seems to have a day job other than bashing OOXML these days.  I think it's pretty transparent what some folks at IBM are up to.  

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  Andrew,  Sorry that I'm being really dumb here, but what is your source that he was taken off the technical team please? John

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  Nksingh,  There aren't that many geeky people that aren't bashing OOXML these days.  Have you seen slashdot or osnews recently?  (A skewed demograph I'll admit) John

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  He is back!! Ben Langhinrichs, the IBM partner, is here again spreading FUD. "I think the sense is that this has gone beyond that level to include Microsoft either paying for memberships or promising some sort of quid pro quo in exchange for votes.  I have absolutely no idea whether that is happening... I don't see IBM or Sun doing that" Classic!

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Ben, Please notice one key difference in IBM's approach and Microsoft. IBM is spending much of their time trying to find ways to block Open XML (not make it better). If they really wanted to make it better they would have joined Ecma. They are spending far more time doing this than they are in doing anything good for ODF. It's basically Rob's full time job, and he has a bunch of other folks researching and sending in info to him. The only time we've ever said anything bad about ODF is when people complained about Open XML's existance. I explained how ODF and Open XML were both developed in parallel, and also pulled together a couple basic examples of why ODF just wouldn't work as a default format in Office. This was just something I did on the side though. I lead a team that works on Office 14, I still serve on Ecma working on Open XML, and I try to manage this blog. I have no time (and Microsoft hasn't asked me) to look for all the glaring holes in ODF. I was talking with some folks who have worked on Open Office and document translations the other day about the two formats and they wondered why I didn't rip on ODF more in my blog. They started listing off a bunch of weak points (no definition for list styles; major holes of underspecification; tables; spreadsheets; functions; interop; etc.). I said that I just didn't really think it was worthwhile to rip on ODF as I'm not really opposed to it. I care more about Open XML, and as long as people have a choice between the two I'm happy. -Brian

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Also for folks who are worried about any type of shenanigans, here is a post from Jason explaining more about the articles on Sweden's vote: http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonmatusow/archive/2007/08/29/open-xml-the-vote-in-sweden.aspx -Brian

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Brian,  When you talk about people being able to chose between the two, does that mean MS Office will support ODF as well?  It would be great to one day be able to send a file from koffice (so an ODF file) to my professor and know that he can read it in MS Office, without downloading new software, plugins, etc (He's not that great at computers heh). John

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Brian,  Remember in the second post you dismissed the whole Swedish thing as being just FUD, and that you didn't believe the story for a moment?  Apparently Microsoft have now admitted that: -In a letter from Microsoft, our business partners were informed that they were "expected" to participate in the SIS meeting and vote yes. As a compensation they would get "market benefits" and extra support in terms of Microsoft resources. -This was a mistake and the letter was sent by a single employee on his own initiative without sanctions from Microsoft. He also quickly realised his mistake and tried to recall the letter. (Translated from Swedish, here: http://www.nyteknik.se/art/52026 )  I know you'll just say that you don't believe this either and that this is just FUD as well, but the evidence is looking interesting. John  

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Just another report http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9033701&intsrc=news_ts_head

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Brian, I am not personally very worried about the deprecated elements - they just happened to be the first item I found from my blog.  I can also find posts pointing out positive things about Open XML and negative things about ODF.  Neither is the point.  The reality is that Open XML is difficult to read programmatically, not terribly hard to create from scratch, but virtually impossible to modify with any degree of certainty.  The developers you are talking about are all reading, or perhaps creating, but few are modifying in any meaningful way.  The dependency chains, or whatever you want to call them, are horrible and inadequately documented.  Therefore, applications which are simple with ODF, where the dependency chains are extremely straightforward, become almost impossible with Open XML.  As you may know, I have been working on a product called OpenSesame, which was originally meant to handle both ODF and Open XML in separate but parallel versions.  ODF has been very easy to work with, with the only limitations being issues with the implementations of merged table cells and that sort of thing.  Even formulas in spreadsheets have been fairly easy to work with, given what we are doing.  Open XML was a non-stop nightmare until I put that implementation on hold due to the issues involved.  I have stopped and started the effort a couple of times since, depending on how fed up I have been.  As of now, it is on hold until further notice.  The resistance by Microsoft to address the complexity issues earlier, and the strong impression of future resistance to change as shown in this push towards ratification recently, do not give me much hope that a reasonable compromise will be reached at a BRM.  These are not minor issues, but major issues, and the specs can't just be tweaked, they need to be rethought.  In much the way AT&T couldn't seem to shake its background as a monopoly when it tried to go into the PC business, Microsoft is having trouble shaking its comfortable proprietary stranglehold on office documents.  But remember what happened when Lotus couldn't handle the transition to Windows?  Right, Microsoft took advantage and charged into the gap with a better Windows spreadsheet.  Microsoft is looking to duplicate Lotus' failure by assuming that past monopoly would ensure future success, and is similarly practically guaranteeing that result by not stopping and doing this right.  It is like Microsoft is saying, "Nobody tells us what to do", which is just exactly what Lotus did.  Have you used Lotus 123 recently?  Have you used WordPerfect recently?  Why not?  Both thought they could shove their old successful and dominant product into a new paradigm, without adequately taking the new paradigm into account.  Microsoft is following that playbook perfectly.  You own the market now, so why not simply shove your old formats into this new XML paradigm without really understanding it?  Because the market doesn't leave time for failure.  Even if you delay and delay and fix Open XML eventually and inadequately and then fix Microsoft Office to work with the revised Open XML in, say , Office 2009 or Office 2010, it will be too late.  Making this a standard won't make it right.  WordPerfect for Windows was still a DOS product kludged into a Windows product.  Lotus 123 for Windows didn't "get" the paradigm until way, way too late, and is now relegated to a has been.  Both products had similar dominance at one time.  So what do you know that they didn't? If that thought doesn't shake your confidence one iota, it should.  It is that unshakable confidence that leads people astray.  Do really think Open XML is the right XML standard?  Do you really think it is built to take advantage of the new paradigm?  I am not asking if you think ODF is perfect, or whether you would prefer to see Open XML win, but just whether you really look at that huge, complex mess of a spec and think, "Yup, we really got this new paradigm better than anybody else."  I certainly don't think so.

• Ben Langhinrichs

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Brian,  I'm not saying that Gary and Sam are lying, I'm just simply asking for a link to where they said that.  I followed the link you gave before, but I couldn't find a mention of it there.  I've honestly tried to phrase my question for a source in the most neutral way possible.  I don't understand how we are getting lost in communication here. John

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Ben, This is now becoming a very good discussion. There are a couple things in your last comment that are important to deal with. The first is the issue you have around over confidence and whether or not Office will fail. I have differing views on this, and I think that the Open XML work we've done, and more importantly the work we've done around custom defined schema is very powerful and will take us a long way. We're heavily focused on how we can redefine what an Office document is, and what kind of a role it plays in business. Integration of custom business data into Office documents is huge. Your second issue is more general around whether or not Open XML is the right format. I think there is a need for multiple formats. Open XML was necessary for the majority of our customers, as many of them don't yet care about XML, and we absolutely need to meet their expectations in terms of how documents will work. I would have loved the opportunity to design an XML format from scratch without having to account for legacy behaviors, but that just wasn't an option. The last point is the one I'm most interested in though. What is the application you’re building and what are the problems you’re having? From the short description I get the feeling you’re working with SpreadsheetML. I think that consuming SpreadsheetML isn't too bad, and I think generating it actually rocks. The more difficult pieces come in trying to do specific modifications to an existing file. Is that the issue you’re dealing with? What are the areas you're finding most problematic? Do you have some blog posts or discussion somewhere else where I can go read about them? I would love to have these discussions. It's much more interesting than the typical "leap year bug" or compat settings stuff. -Brian

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Brian,  THanks. John

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Ben, calculation chain in OOXML is load-time optimization. If you don't write it, or don't write parts of it, it will still work - the only thing you will lose is time spent when recomputing calculation chain after your document is loaded. That means you either spend effort to learn how to write optimized files, or you don't and output less-than-optimal files. Writing software is not an easy task and it never was. Just deal with it, ok? :)

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Why is it that even Microsoft Certified Gold Partners, some of whom have businesses dependent on Microsoft Office, won't naturally vote in favour of MOOXML without 'market benefits'? Anyway, my Swedish isn't great but it looks like the SIS has been annulled as certain parties tried to multiple vote. http://www.os2world.com/content/view/14874/2/

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Ben--I would also be interested in examples of the "dependency chains" that are tripping you up in OOXML (and not in ODF.)

1. Are they complex internal structures (i.e., within a file, that are difficult to parse, interpret, and encode correctly?)
2. Are they dependencies on the applications themselves (i.e., logic inherent in and only privy to Office?)
3. Or are they dependencies on the operating system and associated APIs (e.g. on Windows GDI and spooler.) Where the dependencies originate matters--it means that different solutions are in order. (E.G., #1 -> change the actual file formats, #2 -> make necessary information public, #3 -> modify the applications.)

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  Ben - "So what do you know that they didn't?" I think they know three things.

1. They know they can communicate between the apps group and the OS group so that any rich advantage needed from the other group can get done.
2. They know they can afford really awesome lobbyists to ensure that any resistance is quickly met by a fast education on what the fallout would be if Microsoft lost local support.
3. They know how much it costs a municipality which is considering an alternative to go through every single publicly owned computer and see if there is any unlicensed MS software on it, though I may have read too much into articles such as - www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-01-21-simdesk-cover_x.htm For some reason Lotus just didn't know they should do this.

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  I'm still pondering this - if the legacy formats were fully documented and adopted by ECMA then couldn't the MS-XML format be compared to those to see if there was complete correspondence? It would also provide reference for those pesky likeWord_usta_do problems as one could just look at the way Word usta do it. It would also allow organizations to retrieve from the legacy documents the information they were looking for without forcing them to convert via Office 2007. Instead, their own converters could generate meaningful XML-based metadata - such as whether the document had been archived and where and who was currently responsible for the document.

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 31, 2007
  John and nksingh, I think you're falling into a bit of a false dichotomy here - in fact, there's a wide spectrum of approaches in Office Open XML commenters. The loudest, most repetitive members of the Slashdot crowd remind me of fans at a football game - cheering on their team while poking fun at the other team and its supporters.  Their collective volume have some psychological effect on the game, but that's about it. Somewhere along the spectrum from that are the likes of John and I - people that haven't used Office Open XML in a program, but want to know more about the issues surrounding a story that's of significant importance for the industry.  We occasionally have a minor effect on things when we come up with good questions, and some of us will probably go on to do something directly useful some day. Further along the spectrum are the likes of Ben Langhinrichs and Stephane Rodriguez.  They are implementers that can have a significant effect on proceedings, because as well as asking good questions, they're able to provide really interesting answers. These are three discrete points on a spectrum, rather than the only three types of people in the world.  Lumping one person in with another based on a simple heuristic like "do I agree with them?" blinds you to the important, subtle messages coming from different people.

  • Andrew

• Anonymous
  August 31, 2007
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• Anonymous
  August 31, 2007
  nksignh - Since this seeems to be the FUD mantra du jour from Microsoft, I guess I'll refute it here the way I did on Doug Mahugh's blog.  Your snide remarks about "when you ask Rob Weir to open source his stuff or reveal Lotus-specific format information" reveals either ignorance or an attempt to confuse people who don't happen to know better.  IBM Lotus Notes data formats have always been public, since the very beginning.  The Notes C API toolkit, available as a free download without highly restrictive agreements, describes and documents the Notes rich text format which underlies most of Notes storage, and all the other storage formats other than two, MIME and ODF, that are documented elsewhere.  So, Rob Weir or any other IBMer would not try to restrict access to those formats, but have made them available for free and for generally free use for years to everybody.  So, did you not know, or was I correct that this is the FUD mantra du jour?

• Ben Langhinrichs

• Anonymous
  August 31, 2007
  The Notes NSF-file format seems to be completely closed. The fact that there is a C API toolkit helps nothing. MS could say that there is WORD automation and that can be used to access Word. Is there any information (of course reverse enginered!) about the Notes NSF-format?

• Anonymous
  August 31, 2007
  Christian - Don't be ridiculous.  The NSF format isn't particularly relevant, as it is the data format you are trying to access.  That is fully described, showing the data structures, etc.  It is nothing like Word automation, because you can take the raw data and decipher it without using the C API if you like.  The data formats are fully  documented, with every byte accounted for. - Ben

• Anonymous
  August 31, 2007
  Hey Ben, The binary formats (even the new xlsb from Excel) are documented and the documentation is freely available: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840817/de Back to Open XML though. I know this is a lot of work, but if you could start a running list of all the problems you face as you're implementing Open XML, that would be great. The more specific the better. In the mean time I'll look through your post on nested tables and see if I can help there too. -Brian

• Anonymous
  August 31, 2007
  Brian - Thanks.  I'll try to create a comprehensive list whenever I come up for air.  And I am fully aware that the binary formats are documented, but thanks for the link.  I agree, back to Open XML, as it needs all the attention it can get.

• Ben

• Anonymous
  August 31, 2007
  @Ben: I'm not part of any OOXML marketing machine.  I'm just an interested observer, who is merely a recent college graduate.   I'm sorry for being incorrect on the availability of SmartSuite's format documentation.  I didn't check, but I based my comment on one of Rob Weir's (or maybe Bob Sutor's) blog posts a long while ago responding to people asking for Open-Source Notes.   I apologize for any anger I may have caused.  I appreciate in particular your willingness to provide constructive criticism rather than blind sheep-like repetition of GrokDoc points (that stuff is boring).  Sure it's good to accept legitimate criticism from all quarters, but Brian's team is made up of human beings so they are not likely to react well to criticism lodged with hatred.  

• Anonymous
  August 31, 2007
  That said, I have had to develop pretty thick skin over the past couple years... :-)

• Anonymous
  September 03, 2007
  Brian, please stop misusing the term FUD. It is not another word for lies or false information. In fact, FUD is hardly relevant in the subject of XML file formats. Thank you.

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2007
  Luke, Arguably the main tool of anti-OOXML campaigners is that of FUD.  Reasoned logic is rare, more common is a scare campaign centred around the notion that MS is inherently bad.   Brian has frequently been the target of that term (and many much worse allegations), so you can hardly blame him for having a go.

• Anonymous
  December 30, 2007
  It's been quite a year for those who have been blogging about the Open XML file formats. Here's a look