Links 1-23-08

A few interesting links out there today:

• A Closer Look At Those "Single Standard" Policy Mandates – Great post from Oliver Bell, as he provides a look at the actual facts in terms of Policy Mandates around file formats.
• Altova's Alexander Falk Discusses OOXML and ODF – Great interview with Alexander Falk, a key figure in the XML community. He discusses some of the questions they get from customers around Open XML and ODF.
• While you're waiting, don't save in OOXML format – in another Fox News style post (an approach that has now been fully adopted by the anti-OpenXML folks), Bob Sutor reaches a new level in FUD. Hey Bob, which version of ODF does Lotus Notes support? ISO? 1.0? 1.1? Are there extensions as well?
• The Standard Trolls – Bob's sidekick, Rob Weir, goes on the defensive and claims that the Open XML support in IBM products is due to market demand, and is not necessarily a show of "support". Rob also makes an attempt to rip apart the Open XML conformance clause (which by the way has been significantly improved as part of the ISO process). It's a funny complaint though given that he's the head of the ODF committee, and their conformance clause basically says nothing: "There are no rules regarding the elements and attributes that actually have to be supported by conforming applications, except that applications should not use foreign elements and attributes for features defined in the OpenDocument schema." [ODF 1.1]
• A gadfly's take on IBM's 'support' for Open XML – Eric Lai interviews Sam Hiser from the Open Document Foundation, and has some reactions to Rob Weir's latest defense.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 23, 2008
  Bob Sutor's FUD is a good example that the company that invented FUD is still on top of its game. It is not worth posting on Bob's site as I doubt that anything critical will make it through the moderation queue.

• Anonymous
  January 23, 2008
  What's telling is that Rob Weir censors his readers' comments on his "personal" blog--he does not publish them when they contradict his point of view--whereas you, on your MSDN blog, allow everything!

• Anonymous
  January 23, 2008
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• Anonymous
  January 23, 2008
  To be fair, I have never had any of my postings (there has not been that many) on Robs blog censored. The col thing about Rob's blog is that it's fun. It's not Rob's articles that make me giggle, though, it's the comments. Like this one: "The difference in MS pro-OOXML postings and (dare I say it?) IBM's pro-ODF postings is that MS postings are mainly written by managers and people more concerned with "wide PR impact" than actual technical details. Pro-OOXML people are also less likely to check and confirm their facts first. They are more business-oriented people than pro-ODF cloud, making them less likely to be accurate. Sadly, although this means they have to check their fact more closely, they did not. As far as the technical aspect of this debate is concerned, they are out-classed." It's amazing ... everything is much clearer now. :O)

• Anonymous
  January 23, 2008
  @Frequent poster That is correct. I have had several reactions squashed in Rob Weirs moderation queue. The latest example actually on his latest article where I argued that the ODF conformance clause stated only one conformance item on ODF files "Documents that conform to the OpenDocument specification may contain elements and attributes not specified within the OpenDocument schema." A shockingly poor conformance clause which effectivly leaves files of ANY filetype ODF conformant. Both Office format specifications are lacking in having a minimal file conformance/definition clause. A conforming OOXML file should be defined as valid OPC package containing a minimal set of XML files that validate against the schema's provided along with the standard. I am not sure if the current disposition of comments already provides a minimal definition on what actually constitutes an Office Open XML file.

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2008
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• Anonymous
  January 24, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2008
  Hmm, going further off topic here.  I notice that we seem to ask Microsoft about Office 2007 and OOXML as if they are the same thing.   I'm not even sure it is fair to say that Office 2007 provides a reference implementation of an OOXML processor as of the ECMA approval.  I'm also pretty confident that OO.o is not a reference implementation of ODF.  This is a comment about what being a reference implementation entails, not about those products. Even though Microsoft is heavily involved in the technical committee work at TC45, I think Brian has said repeatedly that Microsoft does not own OOXML.   I think this leaves a large gap with regard to Fredrik Nilsen's concern for fidelity, functionality, and ease of conversion.  Those are appropriate concerns.  It is not clear how well these are addressed (let alone should be addressed and even could be addressed) by any of the current specifications.   I don't quite know how to factor out the importance of "how Office 2007 does it" or "how OO.o - some version from some implementer - does it" will work in the sense of fidelity and functionality (without any concern for conversion).   That's a concern in collaborative work and successful interchange.  I think it is the problem that we only begin to appreciate and maybe even address as we learn the degree to which existence of these document format standards may be necessary but not sufficient. In the past, we dealt with this by having everyone in a relevant community adopt the same product (version).  I suspect that will remain the tendency until we demonstrate that there are other ways based on standard formats as the interchange vehicle.  Is anyone even prepared to test or qualify products for this, at this time?

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2008
  Yeah, I've been blocked by Rob on his blog too. I politely pointed out some obvious self-contradictions in one of his posts, so of course he didn't allow the post.

• Anonymous
  January 25, 2008
  orcmid: I can tell you with absolute certainty that at least Excel 2007, when it comes to cell styles, does not follow the ECMA specs.  There are some posts related to that in the Developer Forum.  So yes, there is a huge question about "how does appX do it?".  Does one assume the specs are wrong and they just forgot to mention a quirky behaviour, or that Excel is wrong? Obviously if you've got a standard format then then Excel would be wrong, but really, if you try to show the file the "right" way, won't people assume that you got it wrong, not Excel?

• Anonymous
  January 25, 2008
  A, When you says doesn't follow, do you mean it's a bit more strict than the Ecma spec says? Or do you mean it actually does things differently from the spec? I've definitely seen areas where Excel 2007 requires certain elements to be present that the spec says aren't required. Those are bugs though that need to be fixed in the product. I think this is pretty common in any standard though (especially a new one). Browsers to this day still have oddities in how they implement HTML and CSS. I'm not trying to trivialize this though, and I do think it's something that in the long run needs to be either fixed or clarified. -Brian

• Anonymous
  January 25, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 25, 2008
  I just wanted to add that I too have been "censored" by Rob Weir. I noticed he had a couple outright lies regarding OOXML support in the field, and pointed them out, but (not surprisingly) the comments never made it past the Rob filter.

• Anonymous
  January 26, 2008
  Oliver Bell's post doesn't say much. I guess he thinks that every gas station should have its own gallon or litre.

• Anonymous
  January 30, 2008
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