Why all the secrecy?

Artikel
12/13/2007

Alex Brown, a long time member of SC34 and the convener of the upcoming BRM for DIS 29500 provided some additional insight into the ISO/IEC rules behind keeping the national body comments confidential. National Bodies submit their comments as part of the fast track process with the understanding that they will be kept confidential, and because of that Ecma TC45 has to be careful about how public it can make the replies: https://adjb.net/index.php?entry=entry071209-141310

Ecma Secrecy

There seems to have been something of a kerfuffle about the secrecy in which Ecma has supposedly shrouded the standards process. However, the instruction to keep the current to-and-fro between Ecma and NBs confidential came directly from ISO/IEC itself at the October JTC 1 meeting in Brisbane, and is not Ecma's initiative. It is not Ecma's responses themselves which are sensitive, but the National Body comments to which they are attached. These are, by ISO/IEC rules, confidential and should not be republished in public. Now, as a matter of fact these comments were published in public for several weeks anyway, but this was an aberration (the current SC 34 web site is not password protected; before the current controversies privacy through obscurity was enough to keep documents confidential). Ecma simply have to follow the rules. And they should have applied to ballot comments on ODF too.

-Brian

OpenXMLCommunity.org Quote of the Day:

Accenture – Portugal

"The adoption of Open XML as the standard will greatly facilitate the integration of information sources (internal and/or external), thus streamlining processes, increasing productivity, and creating new business opportunities."

- Manuel Mira Godinho – Partner

Comments

Anonymous
December 13, 2007
PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2007/12/13/why-all-the-secrecy/
Anonymous
December 13, 2007
Brian, since the Ecma proposed resolutions, as you and I know very well, are distinct from the NB's comments, then why doesn't Ecma make these public? Experts in both SC34 (Alex) and Ecma (Jan van den Beld) have now confirmed that the Ecma responses themselves do not require secrecy. So can we expect them to be made public soon? If not, what are you afraid of? Of course, as a private organization, Ecma has every legal right to keep their work secret, as Ecma has kept secret almost all aspects of the development of OOXML, from mailing list archives, to meeting agendas, minutes, public comments, etc. But it is inconsistent to have such a public communications effort, involving Ecma press releases and Microsoft bloggers, promoting the existence of these proposed resolutions, but then have them not be public. -Rob
Anonymous
December 13, 2007
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Anonymous
December 13, 2007
@Brian, More than my website, I think the comments would be better hosted by a neutral site like http://www.dis29500.org/ That site already has the NB comments from when they were publicly available. (You can't put the genie back in the bottle there.) But if Ecma could give their permission for that site to host a copy of their proposed resolution PDF's, then you would have my thanks (and that of others). I wouldn't want to give the Ecma password out, because the Ecma server is already slow as it is, and I wouldn't want to put more load on it. Best to keep that for NB-access only. As you said, IBM is an Ecma member. So I am familiar with Ecma rules, and one of the rules is that the degree of openness of an Ecma TC is determined by that TC. Ecma neither mandate nor forbids making things like meeting minutes, mailings list archives, etc., available. That was TC45's decision alone.
Anonymous
December 13, 2007
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Anonymous
December 13, 2007
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Anonymous
December 13, 2007
Hyprocrisy 101
Anonymous
December 14, 2007
Watching Rob Weir reply to these posts makes me think that ODF has a serious problem if he is sitting on their TC... it makes me also wonder why US V1 hasn't gotten rid of him either. Rob (Grima Wormtounge) Weir is a deceitful liar. look at him squirm his way out of his mistruths by commenting here. Rob, your mother really did love you. There's no need to take it out on everyone here.
Anonymous
December 14, 2007
I must follow the official fiction that Ecma TC45 owns these documents and not Microsoft alone. I must pretend that there is a democratic committee there, and this isn't just whatever Microsoft wants. This it is insufficient for a single Microsoft employee to suggest that I put them up on my web site. This is true, isn't it? Since Ecma legally owns these documents and their copyright, I ask again for Ecma to allow these PDF files to be posted on other websites: mine, dis92500.org, wherever. What are you afraid of?
Anonymous
December 14, 2007
Of course, would the TC45 or Microsoft publish the documents, we would see a post on Rob's site in big bold letters stating: "OMG OMG MICROSOFT VIOLATES ISO RULES BY PUBLISHING RESPONSES THAT WERE SUPPOSED TO BE PRIVATE KTHKSBAI" Followed by the regular smear with lack of details and half-truths that we are used to. Rob, if you want to get those documents published, why dont you take this with ECMA? Your company is a member as much as Microsoft is. I await your non-response.
Anonymous
December 14, 2007
Brian is on Ecma TC45. I am not. I think I'm raising this request to an appropriate person. Similarly, if you had a request of the ODF TC, to make particular information available, it would be appropriate to ask me to bring this request forward. Note that, as I explained before, Ecma TC45 determines how open the process is, not the overall Ecma membership. Remember, the consistent interpretation, from me, from Ecma and from SC34, is that these proposed disposition are not covered by ISO rules. They are Ecma's to do with as they will. My request remains that they make these public. What are you afraid of?
Anonymous
December 14, 2007
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Anonymous
December 14, 2007
Dear Reggie "Watching Rob Weir reply to these posts makes me think that ODF has a serious problem if he is sitting on their TC... it makes me also wonder why US V1 hasn't gotten rid of him either." I do not know him personally. If he do use his "web style" in the committee stage, I will be "all hands to battle stations" if I were proposing something through any committee that he does not like. However, it is not unknown for people to have multiple-personality disorder, ie, one style on the web, another for committees.
Anonymous
December 14, 2007
Rob, I asked you, a member of the OASIS TC for Opendocument, several times already why OASIS has not submitted Opendocument spec 1.1 to ISO yet.
Anonymous
December 14, 2007
The fact is Drunken and Reggie, these documents are not published which makes for a "closed" process. The suggestion not to host them on ECMA due to slow servers seems completely reasonable. Find some place to publish them and open up the process. This is a fundemental element of a stardard being Open, which is, it is created in an open enviroment. The 2 Chairmans of the ECMA TC45 are both Microsoft employees, they are calling the shots more than likely and can get this done ASAP if they want..
Anonymous
December 14, 2007
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Anonymous
December 14, 2007
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Anonymous
December 15, 2007
While you guys are all chatting about how sophistic Rob's points are or are not, I'd like to ask Brian if he feels that closing the TC45 work is a good thing when elaborating an open standard (remember, drafting the answers to the NB comments is part of the development of an open standard). This is a very important issue, imho. Charles.
Anonymous
December 15, 2007
Charles, it depends on whether or not that's Brians (or Microsofts) call. Are you asking the question to the right person(s)?
Anonymous
December 15, 2007
@skc: Since Brian is on the TC 45, I guess he's the right person who can tell us why the TC 45 works and pages are being locked. Charles.
Anonymous
December 15, 2007
"I'd like to ask Brian if he feels that closing the TC45 work is a good thing when elaborating an open standard" It seems to me that the obvious conclusion is that OOXML is a closed standard, not an open standard.
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
It seems that Luc now declares it an obvious conclusion that all ISO and W3C standards are closed standards and not an open standard because the TC committee work in those organisation is also not published openly. Even not all OASIS TC's seem to do that.
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
@hAl : Indeed, but I see nothing wrong with being a "closed standard". It is just a choice made about the way of working. The issue I see is to work in a closed way, but to pretend to work in an open way, as Microsoft is doing.
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
@Luc That is probably because just about everybody in ICT considers those ISO and/or W3C standards as open just like OOXML is open. If seems like opponents of OOXML are trying to redefine open standard to fit only ODF.
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
hAl, Luc, What it boils down to is confusion about what constitutes an "open standard". Most of the anti-OOXML-lobby seem to mix the standard itself with the development process of the standard - hence dismissing just about everything from being called an "open standard" than ODF. To be clear: OOXML /is/ an open standard just as ODF is. ODF was developed in a more "open manner" than OOXML, but this does not make OOXML closed in any way. /Jesper
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
It seems like nowadays "open standard" is used by many people simply as a synonym of "standard"... There is obviously a lack of common agreement about the definition of "open standard". But the the processes in place at ECMA and at OASIS have clearly different degrees of openness.
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
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Anonymous
December 16, 2007
@hAl: since when does the OASIS close its TCs? Being a member of the OASIS I find this allegation quite interesting...
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
There seems to be a massive confusion about the use of the use of "open" in "open standards". All (non-defacto) standards are open, by definition, since they publically provide a detailed description of how something works. Attempts by anti-OOXML people to say that OOXML is not "open" are nonsensical, since it is an accepted ECMA standard.
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
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Anonymous
December 16, 2007
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Anonymous
December 16, 2007
@Jesper: if you enter "mathml w3c mailing list" in Google, the 3rd entry shows : "Public discussion of MathML and issues of support through the W3C for mathematics on the Web takes place on the public mailing list of the Math Working..." With a couple of additional clicks, you end up at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-math/, containing the mail archives starting from April 1997. This took me less than 30" to find. Hope this help.
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
>It is a major victory for the anti-OOXML-lobby >that this definition made it into the decision >in Denmark ... yes, and it is a major defeat to vendors and partners who collect $$$ abusing monopoly positions instead of just work to support open standards like ODF in its products, they prefer to spread FUD and simplificate this debate as a "anti-ooxml" versus "pro-ODF" thing the worst thing is that some of this people participate in ISO SC... like Stocholm really worring
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
Luc, Well - I simply beg to differ. I agree with you that it is nice if an open standard is also developed through an open process, but it is certainly not an requirement for it to be usefull. Good examples of this are PDF which is (now) an open standard and is today an even bigger monopoly than MS Office-files. Yet - it was not developed in the "open". An open process is clearly in the "nice-to-have"-category and does not have anything to do with an open standard being usefull or not. :o)
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
@marc It is rather scary that you feel that there is a need to 'defeat' vendors an partners trough use of standardization processes in ISO. It should be about the format and not about the party and/or supporting submitting the formats. You show that you think that is more important than the standardization proces itself which is not what ISO is about. ISO is not about regulation competetion but allowing competition and not on limiting people by standards but allowing them choice through standards.
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
Luc, Thanks for your reply. I found this list as well but it is not the one I am talking about. I am talking about the mail list that the members of the WG use to support the development of MathML, and it is not public - as far as I can see. The section I referred to says: "The Math Working Group communicates via the archived member-only member-math@w3.org mailing list. During development, all working documents are visible to the W3C membership." The public mail list is fine and it provides a way for you and me a channel for feedback - but the development of OOXML is being bashed because there is no insight into why decisions were made and how they were made. The content of the public mail list of MathML does not answer these questions. (at least it does not seem like it to me) :o) /Jesper
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
marc, "the worst thing is that some of this people participate in ISO SC... like Stocholm really worring" I wonder if you have the slightest idea of what goes on in the meetings in ISO and the various NBs? Between you and me ... most of the work is really, really, really boring. :o)
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
@Jesper: "Good examples of this are PDF which is (now) an open standard and is today an even bigger monopoly than MS Office-files." PDF is surely (and has always been) an "openly used" standard, but I would not call PDF an "openly defined" standard, even today. And I strongly oppose the concept that PDF is a monopoly : don't confuse a successful standard and a monopoly company. No company has a monopoly build on PDF, and this is showed by the dozen of independent implementation of the PDF standard. "An open process [...] does not have anything to do with an open standard being usefull or not." I fully agree with you (this happens :-), and I never implied the opposite. A perfect example of this is PDF : very useful (and successful), despite a closed definition process. "there is no insight into why decisions were made and how they were made" The W3C charter you pointed to says "In support of public accountability, the Working Group will periodically make public a summary of all technical decisions made since the last public summary, and the rationales for these decisions." This is probably the public information you are looking for.
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
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Anonymous
December 16, 2007
Jesper, we are making progress ! You explain that MathML and OOXML have similar development processes (this should perhaps be qualified...), and you conclude that MathML and SVG seem to be closed standards. So I assume we both agree now that OOXML is also a closed standard. "OOXML is a unique opportunity to create a market of equal Office implementations" Do you seriously believe that Microsoft is fighting so hard just to be sure to loose control of their file format ? That's the whole point... "Seriously, have you even looked at the spec" Yes, I have, and I noticed they are really of a poor technical quality. MS assembled in a hurry the existing documentation (they are even requiring the use of a SharePoint Server in the normative text! see Part 3, section 4.5.1)
Anonymous
December 16, 2007
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Anonymous
December 17, 2007
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Anonymous
December 17, 2007
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Anonymous
December 17, 2007
marc, You're comparing apples and oranges. It's a lot easier to get 100% pixel perfection in PDF seeing as each character has it's position on the page stored. It's more a vector format than a document format. True document formats such as Word are flow based. Thus, if you change the font on your machine (i.e. change nothing within the file itself) the format of your document may change. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is absolutely positioned...well ok, except those things that are anchored to page, but only those on the first page. I'm not saying that the fact that the same document could look different on two different machines is a good thing, but have you ever tried to edit a PDF by hand? They each serve a different purpose. Word doesn't store pages. Word doesn't store character positions. Even object positions depend on the the position of the character to which it is anchored. This is why it is so very hard to implement right. Get one thing wrong at the beginning of the document and the rest just fall apart. A better example is this - Can you find me two independent applications that support ODF 100% accurately? And if you can, can you find 6 (the number listed for PDF viewers)? And I don't mean 6 viewers, I mean 6 near 100% perfect viewers. I suspect you'll have difficulty with the first challenge let alone the second. Besides PDF has been an standard for a while, OOXML hasn't even been around for a year yet. Give people time to implement it! Brian has posted several times about which applications support OOXML. Granted, I doubt any are 100%, but for the same reason you can't find multiple viewers with 100% support for ODF too.
Anonymous
December 17, 2007
mmmm... i don't understand your way to argument... i mentioned PDF to counter-argument this assertion: "jesper said: Good examples of this are PDF which is (now) an open standard and is today an even bigger monopoly than MS Office-files." and you throw me a lot of arguments to convince me that ODF can't be 100% reproducible in +2 implementations what have to do with it!!! :-)
Anonymous
December 17, 2007
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Anonymous
December 17, 2007
@A - "You're comparing apples and oranges. It's a lot easier to get 100% pixel perfection in PDF seeing as each character has it's position on the page stored. It's more a vector format than a document format." Portable Document Format is a document format. It has vector, text, and bitmap capacity as well as bookmarks, page ordering, and many other key features. PDF does not require a position for every character. That is up to the creator of the PDF file.
Anonymous
December 17, 2007
"OOXML is a unique opportunity to create a market of equal Office implementations without loosing compatibility with existing binary documents." There is no compatibility between MSO-XML and the MS Office binary formats. MSO-XML requires new applications to process it. There is also little way to create equal Office implementations in much the same way there is little way to start a new car company in the US that makes cars just like the ones that are out there. It's not impossible, but you won't have many investors.
Anonymous
December 17, 2007
Dave S, Backwards-compatibility goes the other way (from the binary files to OOXML). I'm really surprised that even after all of this time, all of these discussions and all of these blog-entries, there are still someone out there, that hasn't understood this crucial point. PS: I tried to write the same to you on Doug's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2007/12/13/open-xml-links-for-12-13-2007.aspx, but my comment has not been released yet. Granted, my words there were not so "polite" as here, so it might have been banned. :o) /Jesper
Anonymous
December 17, 2007
David Carlisle, Thanks for your input on the process of your W3C-WG. I'm not sure whether anyone will be able to shout "victory!", but it is always good to get information directly from "the horse's mouth". :o) /Jesper
Anonymous
December 18, 2007
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Anonymous
December 18, 2007
"marc, I only brought it up because you said PDF was a "good" monopoly but implied OOXML a "bad" one. " you ( and jesper ) are redefining the meaning of the word "monopoly" applying it to a product or format and not to a market actor you may say "Adobe is a monopoly", or "Microsoft is a monopoly" , but not "PDF" is a monopoly
Anonymous
December 18, 2007
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Anonymous
December 18, 2007
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Anonymous
December 18, 2007
Dave S, "Applications can be backwards compatible, not formats." Well, I do not agree. "MSO-XML is -not- compatible with MSO binary." There is no need to put an emphasis on XML/binary since it is not relevant here. OOXML is backwards compatible with the binary files since each and every setting in the binary files can be persisted in OOXML. "To suggest the new format can represent structures that are found in the old format moves the discussion to whether that has been independently established." Eh - has anyone said that is was independently established? OOXML was created on the basis of the existing binary format of the Microsoft Office Suite. I thought that was common knowledge and I am pretty sure it is even stated in the charter for TC45. I don't really see the problem in this since it shares point of origin with several standards like PDF and even ODF. "If there is not a one-one correspondence between the old features and the new, then the new format represents a subset of the old features." Don't you mean super_set ? /Jesper :o)
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
Jesper said "since each and every setting in the binary files can be persisted in OOXML." Prove it. Where is the document with the mapping tables?
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
S: Why the intense distrust on the point of preserving the binary data in OOXML (in another form, of course, i.e., in an XML structure)? Are you not aware that this is the design intent of OOXML, and that enormous efforts have been expended by Microsoft and ECMA to ensure that this is precisely the case? Are you also not aware that the anti-OOXML lobby has made a big fuss over this preservation of information, saying that OOXML should not have preserved some of the legacy information, because to their minds it made the documents less portable?
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
Nice diversion Ian. When you fall short, try to put some spin. Right? Are you by any chance a Microsoft employee? Where is the document with the one-to-one mapping tables between the binary formats and the new formats ?
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
S: My comments were not intended as a diversion or as a spin. You just seem to be quite uninformed. If you were informed, you would know that the information you seek is contained in the document known as the OOXML spec. You can download it from ECMA. Read it, and then come back to this blog with a more informed approach. And no, I am not a Micrsoft employee, and I have no connection whatsoever with them and never have. I comment in these discussions occasionally when I see that someone (e.g., like you) is arguing from an uninformed, purely emotional perspective. So far, this lack of information and the emotional zealotry has all been from the anti-OOXML side, but if in the future there are any supporters of OOXML who have their facts wrong or who are acting purely emotionally, I will speak against that as well.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
Ok, Ian, let's assume I am uninformed. Now please can you tell me where in the documentation I can find the mapping tables between the binary formats and the new formats? I thought that, because the specs were about XML, that binary formats were barely mentioned at all and, as a result, the chance to see the tables with the mappings is less likely. Perhaps I have overlooked something obvious. Now something as big and complex as binary formats could take several thousands pages just to map to the equivalent in the new formats. It's hard to miss it, in principle. PS : I am playing the devil advocate. Now is your turn to show me the stuff.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
S: As I said above, the information you seek is the the OOXML spec. I didn't say that it was in the form of mapping tables. Your main point, surely, is that you don't believe, for whatever reason, that the OOXML format can represent the data that is contained in the binary files. You can disabuse yourself of that belief by reading the spec.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
Spin, spin, spin. The point : you can't tell me where the "mapping tables" are in the specs, probably because they are just not there. So I did not overlook something obvious, they are not there, period. Perhaps you want to stop making less grandiose statements about backwards compatibility then. You have nothing to show.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
marc, :) Actually, I only called the formats monopolies because you wrote: "i would like all monopolies were like PDF" Of course I know that only the company that creates the format can be the monopoly. DaveS, "piece of work created with an application, as by a word processor" Isn't that pretty much any file then? Thus even what you would call a vector format would still be a document, no? A raster image would also be a document. I'm not trying to argue against you here, I'm actually intrigued by the definitions. "computer file that is not an executable file and contains data for use by applications" I also agree this one is a little shaky. Postscript is an interpreted language as well as a file format. My POV was a little different. I saw a document format as something that was at its core text based requiring text formatting on the fly by the interpreter, most things being relatively positioned. It also flows between pages...or to be more accuate, there are no pages, one merely cuts the flow to create them. Maybe a better term would be a word processing format. A vector format being more drawing based and most everything being absolutely positioned and fixed to the page on which it was created (no overflow). A spreadsheet format being grid based, and mostly numerical, again with no flow between pages. A raster format being more pixel oriented, generally images, though some images formats are vector based of course. This is how I came to the result of PDF being more like a vector file than a "document" file. And as for Adobe Illustrator, we've found that they may contain hooks for the application to implement some functionality not stored in the file itself. So though they may be stored in PDF, we can't show them correctly with normal PDF support without those additional application-specific elements being implemented. I don't know if text would fall under that or not. But I really know very little about Illustrator.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
S: Grow up. Just because the information you seek is not in the format that you demand it must be in, doesn't in any way falsify the truth of the fact that OOXML is designed for backward compatibility. Since you seem to be alone in the world in this point of view, perhaps you can tell us why this is important to you? I.e, what are you seeking to prove?
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
@Ian, It's the second time in a few comments that you resort to insults. That's what liars do. As for the rest, I'm a technical person. If a vendor going to ISO tells us format X is backwards compatible to format Y, I want to see proof of it. If the vendor can't offer any evidence of the claim, it's deception. Frankly I love your logic, you said "doesn't in any way falsify the truth of the fact that OOXML is designed for backward compatibility.". In other words, it's true because you say it's true. If you show me some evidence, I may be more inclined to believe it. That would be a start.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
S: This is the last response from me on this subject. You say you want proof. You have been pointed at the documentation. It's up to you to read it.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
Well, if you were just trolling, why did you participate in this thread at all then? The first comment I posted was to Jesper who posted a claim about backwards compatibility. I asked proof of that. We haven't heard back from him yet, so perhaps he has something for us. But you chose to join the party and made an even bolder statement : you said that not only this stuff is backwards compatible (meaning that you have proof of that too), but the only reason I can't see it myself is because I'm uninformed : it's all in the specs. But when I ask where are the mapping tables between the binary formats and the new formats, you seem to be unable to tell me where exactly are those mapping tables. And then you tell that those mapping tables are not in the specs, at all. I think you've painted yourself into a corner. Now that you resort to insults to exit the issue you created, is rather interesting. I'm still waiting for Jesper's answer, and hope you will stop polluting this thread with bogus comments. Thanks.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
@jesper If set A has elements that are not in set B then set B is a subset of set A with respect to the elements in set A. If MSO-XML does not match all the elements in MSO binary, then it is a subset of MSO binary. So, no, I did not mean 'super-set.' You seem certain that each and every setting from MSO binary can be represented in MSO-XML. You should publish your comparison. I doubt either ECMA or ISO have seen that documentation. A good part of describing the settings is to describe what an application does with them. Elements that are added to a new specification requiring the understanding of behaviors that are part of old software do not count as description. Were your view of compatibilty correct VHS, BETA, DVD, Blu-Ray, 35mm movie film, and MPEG movies are all compatible. Are they? It's a rhetorical question - the only answer is no. Someone can make a device that is compatitible with all of them, but they are not compatible.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
Dave S said "If set A has elements that are not in set B then set B is a subset of set A with respect to the elements in set A." No, this is not so (basic set theory). You don't know what "subset" means. Google on "Venn diagram", and you will see what I mean.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
@A - I would hold that most all formats are document formats - that all those mentioned contain various combinations of document elements. It's pretty hard to find any of them that are particularly pure. Many bit-map/raster formats also contain meta-data, such as creator, time, date, et al. Not necessarily authoritative, but Open Document Format includes word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation elements. These in turn are each likely to hold character, text (strings of characters), bitmap, vector, meta-data, and whatever other elements they cram in there. I too am intrigued. There was certainly a good reason for you and/or your compatriots to try to classify document formats. Did you have downstream needs? The DoD has been concerned with file formats, because in the past vendor support for formats tended to wane when the company moved to other interests. Both media formats and file format can disappear. Do you remember the 20Mb 3.5 inch floppies? Sad it did not catch on. Just too late and CDs swept over them. What I missed in my Illustrator explanation was that Illustrator can't make** relationships that aren't already in the .pdf, in the sense that were the characters individually placed and appeared to form a word, Illusrator would not know they formed a text string. If the characters are a text string, then Illustrator can edit and reposition it as a string. Thanks for your sanity. It's rare. ** Not that they can't be made - OCR is designed to do just that. I just don't see that Illustrator can do so.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
@ Ian - Not so! Basic typing! Do you know I missed the word 'not' between 'is' and 'a'? Do you know you noticed it made no sense without the 'not'? :) Thanks for the find. It's almost a not-not joke. As this was in the context of MSO binary (set A) and MSO-XML (set B) if MSO binary has elements that are -not- in MSO-XML then MSO-binary is -not- a subset of MSO-XML. OK- the nots are good. For jesper's edification: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subset
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
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Anonymous
December 19, 2007
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Anonymous
December 19, 2007
@Rob Weir : yes, that was what I meant to say, and you have drawn the conclusion. Indeed, there is no reason that ODF+extensions can't do what OOXML+extensions supposedly do. @Jesper : I fail to understand your logic. You said "every single setting in binary files is persisted in OOXML", and when asked to prove it, you say that you say so because you like Microsoft and therefore have no reason to think this is not true. Duh? It is YOU who made that statement. Are you by any chance a Microsoft employee? Why is it that the backers of OOXML keep making statements that they are unable to prove? We are talking about an ISO proposal, an open standard, therefore anything we are talking about here should be easily verifiable. If we can't verify the charter of the ISO proposal, all the wrong conclusions follow.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
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Anonymous
December 19, 2007
Dave S. , "when asked to prove it, you say that you say so because you like Microsoft" Did I? Reading my comment again I think the words "so much" were tapped in by mistake. Sorry about that. "Are you by any chance a Microsoft employee?" I think I'll leave that up to you to figure out - it's really a no-brainer. :o)
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
"Indeed, there is no reason that ODF+extensions can't do what OOXML+extensions supposedly do." That is incorrect. For instance the packaging mechanism has no extension mechanism. So the OPC packaging in OOXML cannot be done in ODF without altering the specification. Also you cannot extend something like MathML because it is a w3c spec so to use the OOXML possibilities which interegate imml and office tags you would have to transplant the entire omml math specs and have ODF with two math languages which would be farcical.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
@Jesper You made a bold statement and don't back it with anything substantial. Let me repeat it. YOU said "every single setting in binary files is persisted in OOXML". Alright, show me the proof. Show me the document with the mapping tables between the binary formats and the new formats. "I think I'll leave that up to you to figure out - it's really a no-brainer." You smell like a Microsoft employee. Beware not to pull a Karl Rove of what you advocate. We have enough alternate realities already.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
Dave S. , "Let me repeat it. YOU said "every single setting in binary files is persisted in OOXML"." Yes - have I stated otherwise? Am I saying that YOU said it? Have I said that I have a mapping table that I won't show you?. Indeed I told you: "Yes - but I have no proof for you in terms of a mapping between the binary MS Office file format and OOXML." What is unclear to you? "You smell like a Microsoft employee." Ok - I'm not sure if I should take it as a compliment or not. Maybe we should leave this with the jury. "Beware not to pull a Karl Rove of what you advocate. We have enough alternate realities already." Being a non-American I fail to see your analogy, but since I am increasingly getting the feeling that you are more talking to me than talking with me, maybe it doesn't matter so much. :o)
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
Jesper said "What is unclear to you?" You lied and don't want to be held accountable for those lies. Your name will be remembered as a Microsoft shill.
Anonymous
December 19, 2007
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Anonymous
December 20, 2007
By now, it should be clear that "Dave S", or "S", whatever they call themselves, is exhibiting the classic trollish signs, namely, that in response to rational questioning of or disagreement with their point of view, they:

accuse the other person(s) of being a liar
accuse the other person(s) of being a shill
pronounce that the other person(s)will meet retribution later in life for what they have said
pronounce that they must be an employee of such-and-such a company
pronounce that other person to be a troll
consistently misrepresent what other people have said I suggest therefore to the participants in this blog that no further responses be given to Dave S / S.

Anonymous
December 20, 2007
@Jesper, I can't code to intentions. I can't review intentions. I can't verify intentions. I can't standardize intentions. Saying that OOXML was designed with the intention of being backwards compatible with legacy binary formats means nothing. I could say ODF was designed with the intention to stop world hunger and reverse global warming, but unless I can point to the specifics in the documented format that achieve that intention, then you would be right to laugh at me. In an open standard, the text of the standard should be sufficiently detailed so that any practitioner in that field can achieve the goals set out in the standard. Some may struggle or fail for lack of money, resources or talent, but no one should be prevented for lack of information. That is the key -- the information is in the standard. So Microsoft can claim all they want, using circuitous and waffling language, that OOXML was designed with the intent of being backwards compatible with all legacy documents, but the fact remains that the standard does not give enough information to do this. If allowed the same loose interpretation, the same claims of legacy compatibility can be claimed by ODF as well. I find it useful to look at this from the patent law perspective, where a patent, in the US at least, must have sufficient detail that it enables a person having ordinary skill in the art to practice the invention without undue experimentation. A patent claim that is not backed by that level of details can be rejected for lack of enablement. I think it is a useful model for reasoning about whether something is sufficiently documented. We can apply it to standards by analogy. The concept of a "person having ordinary skill in the art" is a useful abstraction. A standard doesn't need to explain the basics, the fundamentals. You can assume a basic facility with the field of expertise. But the standard should be implementable, and achieve the stated claims, without undue experimentation. So the question I have then, is whether OOXML -- the text of the standard -- enables backwards compatibility with Microsoft legacy documents, so that a person having ordinary skill in the art can achieve that without undue experimentation? I think you'll agree with me that OOXML does not do this. @hAl, you say that it would be farcical if ODF had two math markup languages? But isn't this what OOXML does by having two vector markup languages, VML for legacy compatibility as well as the new DrawingML? Would you call that 'farcical' as well?
Anonymous
December 20, 2007
@Ian, Jesper did not express a point of view, he made a statement so bold that not even Brian Jones said such thing on this blog. Brian Jones never said that "every single setting in binary files is persisted in OOXML". Jesper thus has to back his statement with something factual, a document that he can point to. Which he has failed to do so far. Because he's a liar. You? You are a troll supporting a liar being nice about a deceptive corporation (Microsoft).
Anonymous
December 20, 2007
@S : "Jesper thus has to back his statement with something factual, a document that he can point to. Which he has failed to do so far." I think you made a good point, but your insistence to get a proof is now undermining your own argument. Jesper said :

"I kindda wish I hadn't been so categorical in my comment about backwards compatibility"
"I have no proof for you in terms of a mapping between the binary MS Office file format and OOXML" I think this clearly summarise Jesper's position. You do not agree with it (nor do I), but personal attack and rude language will not help the discussion.

Anonymous
December 20, 2007
@ Jesper,Ian, It would be better if you responded to the correct party. "S" <> "Dave S". I refrain from abusive methods, preferring instead to examine the chain of evidence to see where it leads. An informitive example - In the trial of Microsoft, one of the Microsoft reps - a vice-president of something, perhaps - clearly stated on the witness stand that he had been with the team who applied a program that removed Internet Explorer in total, which should not prevent the OS from operating otherwise normally. This witness provided video recordings of the process, which showed the procedure failed and the computer did not work, bolstering the MS contention that IE was critical to the OS. The prosecuting attorney reviewed the tapes and the next day asked why an icon (or some similar small detail) had changed on the desktop during the process, but no icons should have. The witnees response - an I don't know. Further questioning showed he had -not- been there during the entire process and knew it and had perjured himself, perhaps by accident - the night of the software install had been a long one. Just follow the evidence.
Anonymous
December 20, 2007
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Anonymous
December 20, 2007
Dave S, We separated the formats by behaviour, as it is difficult to write a single app that will render many format types, as the the underlying concepts of those formats are so completely different. After all, one could build a spreadsheet sheet as a complex table in a word processor, but it doesn't really make sense. So to show a file, we need to know what "format group" that document falls under to know how best to handle it.

As to that other discussion, it will pretty much be solved by one person finding one single property that didn't persist between the formats. Though I was willing to believe that not all elements survived, I didn't see anyone proving that they didn't, just a bunch of people asking the opposite to be proven. Just because there was no easy mapping table didn't mean that everything wasn't there. It just meant it was hard to tell. The purpose of the Spec was to define the format, not to compare with another format. I would assume that's why there was no mapping table, no? Otherwise why not include mappings to ODF, WordPerfect and others? I'm sure if there was such a table the spec would not get through the scrutiny of the readers of this blog because that table does not belong in the spec. A no-win situation. I think Rob, with his mention of macros not being documented in OOXML satisfies the requirement of proof. It isn't in the spec, so the spec doesn't cover everything that is in OOXML, let alone what is in the binary. So the answer is no, the pure ECMA spec does not support everything the binary did. However, the format might still support everything the binary did given those undocumented extensions. Anyone have an example of something that really didn't make it? I'm actually interested to know :) There were some things you could no longer add through the UI, but you could still convert from an older file. I've yet to find anything that's just completely gone (but that in no way implies that I believe there are no such features!).

Anonymous
December 20, 2007
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Anonymous
December 20, 2007
A said "However, the format might still support everything the binary did given those undocumented extensions. Anyone have an example of something that really didn't make it?" Interesting take. You are asking to let those proposing a standard to be let alone, and that everyone else prove what the standard is meant to achieve. Doesn't it work the other way around? Don't you think a proposed standard should be clear enough to make everything it tries to do verifiable. And not just verifiable : if it's really good, it should be easily verifiable. Given that the typical standard is 40 pages long, what does a 6,000 page proposal leave us with? As for the standard itself, it's a migration format. In ECMA 376, in the Scope page 2, it says : "The goal of this clause is to define conformance, and to provide interoperability guidelines in a way that fosters broad and innovative use of the Office Open XML file format, while maximizing interoperability and preserving investment in existing files and applications". Have you noticed "existing files" ? Since the mapping (migrates from, migrates to) isn't provided, the scope is wrong. All the wrong conclusions follow : nothing related to the legacy can be verified. Which also means interoperability is not provided, one of the ISO rules is violated. As for other questions that the mapping tables between the binary formats and the new formats would answer, I guess if you were implementing it, it would be a no-brainer why they are so much important. If this stuff is specified, it's something you don't have to find or re-invent yourself. Again, that's what a standard is for.
Anonymous
December 20, 2007
@A - I gotcha. I feel your pain as it seems another format pops up most every day. So what to do with them? Did you work for Rosetta or Myriad? They built multifunction apps using a modular approach. One app with a hundred little extension programs, each for its own format. I've had a quarter century with computer graphics. I admire Jim Blynn's work and when I see a teapot in some odd place in a computer rendered movie I get the joke. Most of what I've come across is that only the obvious chunks get dealt with, not the entire capability. HPGL/2 offers all sorts of features to the dedicated programmer, but most HPGL interpreters I've seen only handle the basics, so it looks like it is vector only. Half the HPGL/2 book is about raster graphics. The interest I have about MSO-XML, which MS labels OOXML (named way too much like it is related to their competitors product.) is the repeated assertions that the goal for it was compatibility with the binary formats. I'm thinking if a company publicly states that something is their goal and they go for international approval of it as a standard there should be covered, in complete detail, how it does that so that others can move their MSO binary documents to the new MSO-XML format and verify they did it correctly. I wouldn't hold ODF to the same measure, only because their charter is different. I will mention that I use MSO-XML because MSO-XML is the best name for the standard, given the origin and the charter. "Open Office" is any office that is open, not much of an identifier unless one means the only product that is so named in the category, Open Office - but that is a competing product. Thanks for the sound reasoning.
Anonymous
December 20, 2007
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Anonymous
December 21, 2007
@rob <blockquote]I can't standardize intentions</blockquote> It seems you already have with ODF and the spreadsheet formula's
Anonymous
December 21, 2007
I now have to agree with S on some level, the scope does state that it is meant to be interoperable with the binary, and thus perhaps a mapping table of some sort was warranted, but still perhaps not necessary. Just because something is difficult to prove doesn't make it less true. Are there any other standards out there (not necessarily file format related) that have such a charter, i.e. to move from one standard to another, that includes a mapping as to how to do it? Be interesting to compare. BTW, how big is the ODF standard, I assume its more than 40 pages too. I have seen Brian give proof that parts of the ODF format are not fully documented, so in truth the Spec should be bigger than it already is. (I know nothing about ODF, btw, though I understand they are in the process of filling in the missing bits). Personally I'd rather have 6000 pages with lots of pictures and explanations, than say 600 that basically leave it up to you to figure out the details. I wouldn't even mind more pages, much as it's a daunting thought. I already don't have time to read all the useful bits they've included (though there are a lot of useful bits they've left out, I'm not saying their documentation is perfect! Far from it.) But those bits I do read I find very useful. Now I've implemented a fair chunk of the format thus far and didn't have any trouble figuring out the mapping myself. The names were pretty clear in general and I pretty much just looked inside the files themselves and refered to the documentation afterwards to ensure I covered the element's attributes. This being such an improvement after staring at random bits and bytes that I generally have no qualms about the improper XML they use (e.g. bitmasks). It is so much easier than the binary I probably could have done it without the Specs at all. Keep in mind though, my goal was never to implement each and every feature! Macros are nowhere in my plans, so I'm sure others have hit obstacles that I have not. For most people, they won't care if there is one missing mapping (depending on what that missing piece is). And most mappings can be figured out just reading the file internals themselves, not even refering to the specs. This whole thread is really just nitpicking. And yeah, I did think the name OOXML was a little too close for comfort to the competition's name. I felt that just added to the confusion and was actually a bad move on MS's part. Though some marketing team probably thought that the muddied waters would be a good thing.
Anonymous
December 21, 2007
@Jesper, the difference is no one is claiming that ODF 1.0 defines spreadsheet functions, whereas you, and others, are claiming that OOXML is represents every feature of the the legacy binary formats. Do you see the essential difference here? There seems to be a tendency on this blog to make arguments with the following outline:

Microsoft claims X, where X is that Ecma will hand over control of OOXML to ISO, or that OOXML represents every feature of the legacy binary formats, or other such nonsense.
Microsoft's claim X is refuted
Microsoft fanboy says, well look at ODF, they don't do Y, where Y is similar, but not identical to X.
But no one every claimed that ODF did Y. There must be a fancy Latin term for this type of logical fallacy. But let's just call it "the weasel" for now. You're avoiding the main issue. Lying about maintenance,lying about Ecma secrecy, lying about the features of OOXML -- you cannot escape from these allegations by pointing elsewhere.

Anonymous
December 21, 2007
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Anonymous
December 21, 2007
<i>"@Jesper, the difference is no one is claiming that ODF 1.0 defines spreadsheet functions"</i> Yet another lie from Rob Weir. Rob, you and your company are lobbying governments to mandate the use of ODF 1.0, and in so doing, telling those governments that ODF 1.0 is sufficient for all of their needs. Since their needs include spreadsheet formulas, your company implies to these governments that ODF 1.0 supports spreadsheet formulas. And a lie by implication is still a lie. Or do you really expect us to believe that when IBM lobbies a government to mandate ODF 1.0 usage that IBM explicitly says, "Oh, it doesn't work for spreadsheets"? I bet you just leave out that part when telling governments about the greatness of ODF 1.0, right?
Anonymous
December 21, 2007
Rob, "@Jesper, the difference is no one is claiming that ODF 1.0 defines spreadsheet functions, whereas you, and others, are claiming that OOXML is represents every feature of the the legacy binary formats. Do you see the essential difference here?" For real? Is this the best answer you could come up with for my question? Let me ask you in another way: Do you think it provides for better or for worse interoperability that formulas are not a part of the ODF-specification? (Please don't reply by saying, that ODF was never claimed to provide interoperability for document formats) On completely different note - do you have some insight to what is happening with OpenFormula? From looking at their webpage it seems that the work has almost completely stopped with only 23 emails on their maillist in the second half of 2007. :o) /Jesper
Anonymous
December 22, 2007
One of Rob Weir's statements does worry me greatly, as a commercial software development organization. We are both IBM Partners and Microsoft Partners. "We are in the process of producing a corrigenda document for ODF 1.0" ODF 1.0 was finalised well over 2 1/2 years ago in April 2005, actually being approved by the OASIS TC in December 2004. I sincerely hope that this process is more towards the end than the beginning, or I will have retired before we have a fixed ODF 1.0. We can't really do too much with ODF as it is anyway, without spreadsheet formula support, you might as well put out a XLS to support OpenOffice users. Gareth
Anonymous
December 22, 2007
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Anonymous
December 22, 2007
@S "it only references other standards it is based on" Actually that is not nescesarily correct. For instance the drawings parts rely on some SVG compatible elements but the ODF specification refines them with their own namespace on them.
Anonymous
December 23, 2007
hAl, So, I suppose we will see some sort of proof for the bold statement of S that ODF actually only references the standards it utilizes? "ODF is a proper standard, it only references other standards it is based on" Output form could be some sort of ... ahem ... table with the references of existing standards on one side and confirmation for each of them on the other side that the refererence is actually only a reference and not redefining the referenced standard. ;o) /Jesper
Anonymous
December 23, 2007
Btw, I just browsed through the OASIS-ODF spec and the first time SVG is mentioned it says: prefix: svg Description: For elements and attributes that are compatible to elements or attributes defined in [SVG]. Namespace: urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns: svg-compatible:1.0 Does anyone know what determines if an element is compatible with SVG or not? I do not see any explanation of this in ODF and neither in SVG (also the parts dealing with extension of SVG). It seems that the extension model of SVG (section 23) is basically the same as for ODF (just mark any foreign element and attribute with it's own namespace), but will this not make any element or attribute "compatible to SVG"? /Jesper
Anonymous
December 23, 2007
@Jesper, On details, you may be right. But you quibbled to sidestep the big picture. Here is what I mean :

ODF is kind of pyramid-shape standard. It uses other standards. In full ISO/W3C standards tradition.
ECMA 376 however, is a nuclear-shape standard. It redefines everything just to keep the legacy (and therefore a number of things that should be fixed by now, thanks to better engineering, and existing ISO standards) afloat. Why? There is a difference between preserving old files and preserving them with all internal bugs. In essence, Microsoft is shoving their own mistakes right down the throat of ECMA/ISO. It's ironic that, given how much different that is from the ODF standard, Microsoft has the gal to say the standard meets a different need (which they've really said many times), when all they mean is : we don't wanna fix our bugs, because that would force us to use non-Microsoft standards, and that is unacceptable. The analogy with Internet Explorer is obvious. As Internet Explorer became the dominant web browser (it managed to force OEMs to stop pre-installing Netscape, and so on), Microsoft did not bother fix the bugs in their HTML, Javascript and CSS implementations. Heck, they were the dominant web browser, therefore their implementation became THE standard. So Microsoft kept the bugs in Internet Explorer for 5 years, ruining the lives of web developers out there. And then Firefox came out of nowhere, got a lot of traction, which caused Microsoft to ship Internet Explorer 7, cloning a number of Firefox's features, and fixing some of HTML+CSS issues. Which company is being reactionary here? Who is creating proper standards that benefit all?

Anonymous
December 26, 2007
First of all Merry Christmas to everyone who reads this blog and happy upcoming New 2008 from me and
Anonymous
December 26, 2007
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Anonymous
December 27, 2007
I don't really think that ODF even used SVG. They used concepts from SVG, and reused some element names, but they also have a bunch of stuff in their own namespace. If you took an existing SVG drawing, from what I can tell you would not be able to place that into an ODF file and expect it to work. The same is the case for the "use" of XSL-FO. -Brian
Anonymous
December 29, 2007
First of all Merry Christmas to everyone who reads this blog and happy upcoming New 2008 from me and
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
Anonymous
January 16, 2008
Embrace and extend - SVG in ODF revisited
Anonymous
January 16, 2008
Embrace and extend - SVG in ODF revisited

Freigeben über

Why all the secrecy?

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