Links for 1-31-08
A few interesting links I wanted to point out:
Content Reuse with Open XML and XSLT – Alexander Falk (Altova's CEO) has a great post giving examples of how to work with Open XML files using XML Spy:
"This is the first article in a series of blog postings that I plan to write about practical Open XML tips & tricks, so I encourage you to subscribe to my XML Aficionado blog (via RSS or via e-mail), if you haven't already done so. This will ensure that you get future articles from this series automatically as soon as I post them."
Myth: ISO Approval of Open XML Will Hurt Interoperability – Jasper Hedegaard Bojsen has a great post where he tries to cut through some of the FUD we've seen around whether or not ISO approval of Open XML will help or hurt interoperability. Years ago we were asked by the European Commission to submit our formats for standardization because they wanted them to be in the public domain. Clearly the approval of Open XML within ISO will help interoperability.
There is humor is the OOXML morass – I think Bob Sutor is protesting a bit too much here. Bob, do you deny that your company is flying people around the world trying to block Open XML from being approved by ISO? Where is Rob Weir this week? He wouldn't happen to be out in Asia meeting with National Bodies and trying to push for a "no" vote would he?
ISO 32000 — Document management — Portable document format — PDF 1.7 – While from a practical standpoint, Jim's statements make total sense, I wonder how people would react if this has been something I said about Open XML:
As we began to make decisions, answer questions and move forward, it became clear to me that the standards process that Adobe had been following and the standards process that AIIM/ANSI/ISO follow are quite different. For the standards organizations the carefully written standards document is supreme. It defines the standard. While Adobe's PDF 1.7 Reference document is intended to do that same thing it isn't quite so clear. For example, if the billions of files in existence today all contain a construct that has A=1 and the Adobe document says they should have A=2 the document must be changed. That is, the existing files triumph the documentation. It would be of no value to have a specification that does not cover the existing files. So, one focus I put forth at each opportunity, was that the primary objective of the new ISO PDF 1.7 standard was to document the existing files.
Comments
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
"Myth: ISO Approval of Open XML Will Hurt Interoperability – Jasper Hedegaard Bojsen " Just reading the guy's blogroll, you know he's a Microsoft employee. Judge and party?Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Why don't you also link to Oliver Bell, another Microsoft employee, who's just posted a blog post that begins like this : "As a complement to that conversation Baker & McKenzie have posted a paper entitled “Standardisation and Licensing of Microsoft’s Office Open XML File Formats“; This paper was commissioned by Microsoft and..." I stopped reading after I read "commissioned by Microsoft". What a fraud. Don't you guys have any sense of ethics?Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Well, speaking of ethics, Jasper and Oliver always use their real names and identify their employer, on their own blogs and everywhere else they post, "S". Are you familiar with the concept of irony?Anonymous
January 31, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 31, 2008
@dmahugh, BrianJones It's obvious that you guys need to know who you are talking to before you are able to make an answer. What I can say is that I'm not judge, nor party. That should be enough to put a stop to your childish behavior. As for actually making an answer, why wouldn't you guys start now? Let me say it differently : there is no community support of what you are trying to stuff. Support ODF. Stop the FUD. Stop wasting everyone's time with bogus self-promotions.Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Nice to see IBM following Brian's lead in asking for real names: http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=2043Anonymous
January 31, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 31, 2008
I'd be happy if everybody just used their real names on all these blogs. I'm all for it if you folks decide to adopt that policy, and I'm glad both Brian and Bob Sutor are going that direction.Anonymous
January 31, 2008
My vote (if I had one, that is) would be for no anonymous posting here. There's been so much vitriol that I think people should be willing to stand up for what they post.Anonymous
January 31, 2008
This S character is quite the riddler. "I'm not judge, nor party" So that leaves jury, witness, counsel, solicitor, officer of the court and advocate then. Jury - ISO NB member? Witness - Joe Public (don't think so) Counsel / Solicitor - Andy Updegrove ;) Officer of the Court - ISO Staff Member Advocate - ODF Zealot @S - any more clues for us? Gareth (Horton)Anonymous
January 31, 2008
My speculation on "S"... "S" is male, about 4 feet 8 inches tall. He weighs about 300 lbs. He has red hair and a scraggley red beard, and a pock-marked face. He speaks in a strange middle-earth accent. He lives under a bridge.Anonymous
January 31, 2008
"My vote (if I had one, that is) would be for no anonymous posting here. There's been so much vitriol that I think people should be willing to stand up for what they post." "real name"... this is a formality, you will ask for credentials for posting? how do you know a name is a "real" name? i don't share any of Brian's points of view regarding the following: . OOXML technical merits for be fast-tracked . standards and standardization goals . fast-tracking spirit . XML goals and spirit . quality in standards format development etc, etc, etc but i never insulted him this is the point here, respect and by the way, Brian, tell your employer to respect standards. Money is not everything in life, you know? Don't be scared to lose some governments customers, learn to compete fairly and ethically, And welcome to the open world ... but hurry up supporting ODF natively [1] !! --marc [1] http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=107403Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Dear mysterious "S". We have a saying here in Denmark that if you cannot attack the argument, then attack its motives. Of course motives are always speculative and thus you have a platform from which you can pretty much attack anything … or rather nothing. Well, actually we don’t have such a saying, but we should ;-) I agree with Jespers comment that anyone should have a saying, even the anonymous, although I believe that being anonymous in this context is rather silly. Anyway, the problem with your post is not that it is anonymous, but rather that it eludes to present any real comment to any real matter. Please try again…Anonymous
January 31, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 31, 2008
@ mysterious "S" Again more speculations about motives, than about actual substance. And when you manage to touch slightly on substance you also manage to get it wrong. I'm not posting about how bad ODF is. I'm posting about how there are differences and why those differences matter in the real world. Quotes from my blog post:
- “The semantics of ODF and Open XML are different. This does not mean that one is necessary better than the other (any such qualitative comparison is by the way outside the scope and relevance of this post)...”
- "I do not want this to sound like I am picking on ODF and I am also confident that someone else will be able to identify some capability that is in ODF but not in Open XML..." Could you at least please read my blog before you throw accusations and speculate about motives? Thank you.
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
The fact that you are a Microsoft employee automatically disqualifies you. That's like asking a Lockheed Martin employee if he's in favor of the destruction of Irak. "The semantics of ODF and Open XML are different." : that's pointless. The point of XML is to be able to round-trip formats, and to interoperate across applications and platforms. That's why people use XML. It's very hard though, that's why people tend to use small vocabularies, as opposed to massive binary dumps (i.e. OOXML). It's very hard to get it right and honestly, that's why fast-tracking this stuff automatically disqualifies such proposal. "I do not want this to sound like I am picking on ODF and I am also confident that someone else will be able to identify some capability that is in ODF but not in Open XML". Both define Word/Excel/Powerpoint Office documents. Neither ODF or OOXML is a file format designed to launch rockets in the sky.Anonymous
February 06, 2008
Apparantly S's ODF-compatible word processor does not have a spell checker...Irak???? What is that? Unless you are amazing us with your knowledge of Iraqi history and its Turkish origins...somehow I doubt that.