We’re getting closer to ISO approval of Open XML!
Well, we're almost done with the latest stage in the ISO standardization of Open XML. On Monday, all the national bodies voting on Open XML (I think there are a bit over 100 total!) will submit their current opinion on the Open XML standard. I think that even at this stage we'll probably see that the majority of countries (maybe 60% or so?) will vote "yes". That would be great news, as it gives a lot of momentum going into the final stage which is the ballot resolution meeting. It would also mean we're close to the required number of votes needed to finalize the ISO approval of Open XML. I'm not sure when we'll find out what the actual results are, but I think it will probably be some time later in the week. (Does anyone have a more solid understanding of when exactly we'll see the final results?)
I bet if you compare this to other ISO standards in the past, the level of participation and review for Open XML is huge. We had a really large active working group in Ecma creating the original submission, and that momentum has continued to grow.
Once we move onto the next stage, the work will shift over to actual changes to the formats. Everyone will work together to help improve the spec according to the comments logged. I haven't seen any comments so far that should prove too challenging, but I haven't seen the final list yet. With the number of countries participating I wouldn't be surprised if we got somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 comments total. Many of these will be duplicates, but either way there will be a lot of comments to work though. I think that once we hit the ballot resolution meeting in February we'll see a significantly improved spec thanks to all the eyeballs reviewing it.
Jan Van Den Beld recently did an interview talking about his expectations during the remainder of this process. He used to run Ecma, and has a lot of experience in the standards world: https://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/28/Retired-Ecma-chief-expects-Open-XML-approval_1.html
BTW, for another example of people implementing Open XML, check this out: https://staffdotnet.com/products/default.aspx Very cool! A great example of how you can leverage Open XML to automatically generate rich documents.
-Brian
OpenXMLCommunity.org Quote of the Day:
Logic Studio – Ecuador
"Many of our customers, especially in government agencies, require a way to store documents in a safe, open, standardized, and interoperable way. The OpenXML proposal goes a long way towards this end, so we look forward to having it established as an ISO standard."
- Edgar Sanchez – President
Comments
Anonymous
August 31, 2007
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August 31, 2007
It's good to hear that you haven't "seen any comments so far that should prove too challenging!" I've read through through most of the criticisms raised and concur with this assessment--with one exception: VML. Even though the standard "strongly encourage[s new applications] to use preferentially DrawingML," VML is still obligatory in many cases. The standard does not furnish suitable replacements for much VML functionality. Extending DrawingML (or other features, such as text frames) to encompass shapes, OLE, ink, text boxes, comments, and controls in the various applications would solve this problem and make for a better experience for both users and developers. But I frankly cannot see how such a change could be wrought without significant expansion of the standard and extensive refactoring of Word and Excel. Unless Ecma has something up its sleeve, I cannot fathom how this is not "challenging."Anonymous
August 31, 2007
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August 31, 2007
Albert: You're misrepresenting the situation in Sweden - that was the action of one employee that was reported by Microsoft themselves when they found out about it. And to claim that admitting Open XML as an ISO standard perpetuates a Microsoft monopoly is simply to subscribe to the Sun/IBM propaganda that attempts to do via regulation and legislation what they were unable to do on their merits: make people use their products (by removing Microsoft's from the table). Lastly, referring only to other ISO standards is a principle that for some reason ODF was not held to, since it refers to numerous non-ISO standards. But these principles only apply to Microsoft, don't they?Anonymous
August 31, 2007
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August 31, 2007
Does someone know of a framework that runs on Linux and can extract fulltext of these new file formats for indexing?Anonymous
August 31, 2007
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August 31, 2007
Kevin: Lastly, referring only to other ISO standards is a principle that for some reason ODF was not held to, since it refers to numerous non-ISO standards. But these principles only apply to Microsoft, don't they? Which one please? Perhaps I should have added ISO or w3c standard to be precise. For the sweden thing do you sincerely believe that a simple employed will send such a mail? At least it's someone with responsability. Another remark Microsoft admit the problem Wednesday because everybody knew it Tuesday from another blog! I think it's a nice try to use a "fuse" but nobody a little bit serious can believe it.Anonymous
August 31, 2007
Dream on, Brian.Anonymous
August 31, 2007
Albert, You probably don't know this, but W3C is not a standards orgaization.Anonymous
August 31, 2007
@Christian: I just took a look over on the sourceforge site of OpenXML4J, which is a Java library for doing what you want. They're in alpha, but they will probably pretty easily support reading data. The other option may be to use Microsoft's .NET OOXML library in Mono. Another good place to ask is on Doug Mahugh's blog, since he's the OOXML evangelist.Anonymous
August 31, 2007
Brian, Referring to your point about Sun/IBM propaganda, ISO IEC 26300 is a standard used by a vast open community of millions - please visit http://www.odf-eag.eu/odf-metrics, then correct that statement. ChrisAnonymous
August 31, 2007
Ian : Are you sure: http://www.w3.org/ "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. " Naturally some compagny like Microsoft tried to change the html norm for example but it's a norm with specification define by w3c!Anonymous
August 31, 2007
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August 31, 2007
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August 31, 2007
@nksingh "I just took a look over on the sourceforge site of OpenXML4J, which is a Java library for doing what you want." But, but but .. it's supposed to be impossible to implement OOXML unless you're Microsoft :D This Java library can't possibly exist. LOLAnonymous
August 31, 2007
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August 31, 2007
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August 31, 2007
Craig, I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that the OpenXML4J isn't completed yet. I don't think anyone has denied that someone could try to make a library. Anyone can try :)Anonymous
August 31, 2007
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September 01, 2007
Speaking of VML, I was just thinking that this whole OOXML vs ODF thing is almost exactly like VML. A couple of companies got together and made PGML, but Microsoft wanted their own VML, and submitted VML to be a standard. But VML was rejected because there was already PGML. PGML and VML to some extent merged and begat SVG, which became standardised. However since SVG was now an official standard, built by a group of companies and so on, Microsoft decided to implement their VML in IE only, and not support SVG. Sounds familiar, no? JohnAnonymous
September 01, 2007
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September 01, 2007
Interestingly, one of the companies (Sourcetech ab) that joined the debate in Sweeden at the last moment and voted for Microsoft, has just been made a Microsoft Gold Partner.Anonymous
September 01, 2007
@John Very suggestive as Sourcetech already was a MS partner before and would be a 99% likely approval voter of OOXML anyways.Anonymous
September 01, 2007
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September 01, 2007
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September 01, 2007
[quote] However since SVG was now an official standard, built by a group of companies and so on, Microsoft decided to implement their VML in IE only, and not support SVG.[/quote] Strange as I seem to remember VML already being supported in IE before SVG became a standard. IE5 in first half of 1999 already contained VML when SVG was merely an early working draft and SVG became a W3C recommendation 1,5 years later when VML was already launched in MS Office 2000 a year before. So your suggestion that MS did not implement an official standard but VML in stead is completly wrong. By the time Ms released VML in it's browser an official standard was still 1,5 years away and of course development of IE5 was already started long before that trelease probably even before any such thing as SVG even existed. Please don't try to falsefy history by suggesting that VML was used over an exiting standard when that standard was not even in existance yet at the time of IE5 development.Anonymous
September 02, 2007
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September 02, 2007
hAl and Paw, And the reason MS /still/ doesn't support SVG in IE is? JohnAnonymous
September 02, 2007
hAl, Lol, what a hypocrite. You are just pointing out some bug in openoffice the application, and yet you hate it when everyone else points out bugs in OOXML. JohnAnonymous
September 02, 2007
Earlier on your blog, where comments are closed, I've said: "If Open Office XML, sorry, I'm always confusing this: Office Open XML delivers on its promises as truly open, broadly implementable, and technically sound format, I have no problems welcoming that on the other hand." After all I read in the past few days, I have to add, and clarify: RIght now, OOXML does not seem to deliver a truly open, broadly implementable, and technically sound format, so instead, I do have problems welcoming this format next to ODF. And, how do i know that the voting process towards ISO for OOXML has been handled fair and sound?Anonymous
September 02, 2007
@John It is not a bug in OpenOffice. It is a because they cannot support full SVG images in native ODF.Anonymous
September 02, 2007
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September 02, 2007
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September 02, 2007
hAl, You make an interesting argument, and I hope that we can discuss it without adding to the little flamewar going on around us. If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that the (only?) point of reusing parts of one standard in another is to get direct compatibility - as you put it, to make it possible to paste a chunk of one document directly into another. I agree that this is the optimal outcome, but my understanding was that cross-pollination has a much more subtle value: using precedent rather than logic. In writing a new standard, if you model your work on something that went before, then you can use all the practical experience that exists about the previous work in designing your standard. One example is that ODF's partial re-use of SVG means that it gets many of the (known, documented) advantages and disadvantages of SVG, rather than taking a risk on something new that mightn't work in the real world. Another example is that Office Open XML should behave very similarly to the binary formats that the world's been using for the last ten years, so we can be fairly certain that it won't massively confuse users when it's rolled out.- Andrew
Anonymous
September 02, 2007
@Andrew That is a good point. ODF is not SVG but resuing parts of SVG. That can be usefull in some cases where you could reuse parts of SVG codebases for instance. However ODF also contains quite a lot of other 3d element that are not SVG. I think Micrsoft was busy replacing VML for a much more Office oriented graphics implementation in DrawingML. The whole standardization effort is just coming in the period that this is being developed but for instance not is fully implemented in MS Office yet that still relies on VML heavily. However it could wel be seem as a fdifferent but not nescesairly bad strategy to make Office graphics support more dedicated than just reusing some existing format. Office document have special requirements for graphics mainly to do with graphic presentation which can be extended on much more easy in a format that is used primarily in an Office environment whereas ODF relies on SVG development or further extending the unnamend propriety graphics extensions in ODF. That is a choice and it seems very strange to pick one above the other based on the emotional arguments or even plain lies that are flying around now.Anonymous
September 02, 2007
"If you copy and paste an SVG imager (sic) iinto (sic) MS Office it converts it to VML and it becomes a native vector graphis (sic) part of the office document. If you copy and paste a SVG image into an OpenOffice.org document is (sic) become (sic) an externally embedded file." The former is one of the behaviors in Office I dislike. Converting and embedding makes it impossible to retrieve the graphics and operate on them with the original tools. This might not be necessary, but the image manipulation tools that have shipped (maybe they are better in O2007) with Office, both vector and bitmap, are maddeningly finicky. Via linking this is not a problem. In fact I examined an Excel sheet embedded in a PowerPoint presentation (not a -table- ) and found there was an error in the formula underlying one of the values. Had it been converted to a bit-map or by creating a table within PowerPoint, I would never have been able to see how the value came to be.Anonymous
September 02, 2007
hAl, I hadn't considered the issue of control of the (sub-)format. Although reusing parts of SVG gives ODF time-tested features for free, in practice the ODF TC will have to pay great attention and repsect to the people maintaining SVG. Given Microsoft's relative newness to the standards arena, I can see how giving up that much control of their format would seem very unappealing. Dave S., That's a really good point, although it's more of an example of application lock-in than file format lock-in. It'll be interesting to see how little things like that shake out in this next generation of office software.- Andrew
Anonymous
September 02, 2007
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September 02, 2007
hAl, SVG is a w3c standard. Are you saying that Microsoft doesn't follow it because it's "only" a w3c standard, and not an ISO standard? JohnAnonymous
September 02, 2007
Jeffrey, Formulas for ODF will be in the next version.Anonymous
September 02, 2007
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September 02, 2007
SVG is a bit off-topic for this thread. It is also not a good example for the benefits of ODF, open-source software, or standards. SVG became a standard in 2001. Yet despite the passage of SIX YEARS, how many applications support it, and what is the level of that support? To the best of my knowledge, no application has implemented SVG fully. It is, simply put, a failed standard. (And not, one might add, as a result of interference from Microsoft, but rather due to neglect from many of the companies that are now championing ODF.) )Anonymous
September 02, 2007
More fun in the danish comments The Danes also want Ecma to remove OLE embedding from Office Open XML because it is windows platform based technology. Strange because they did not object to Opendocument having OLE embedding supported when that was ISO standardized.Anonymous
September 02, 2007
Paw, I can't comment on the other issues you raise, but I'll try to explain what I meant by "application lock-in". Lock-in is a situation where the pain of changing the way you do something far outweighs any possible benefit. For example, many mobile phone operators give cheaper rates for calls to phones on their network. This encourages you to use the same operator as your friends, which in turn means that if you changed provider, you'd have to pay twice as much for your calls - in other words, you're locked in to using a single provider, forever. A product can be good value even though it has a lock-in effect, but lock-in makes it harder for users to do what they want, and tends to make products less competitive in the long-term. In the case we were discussing above, MS Office converts SVG images to VML images, but won't convert VML images back to SVG. This has the effect of locking the user in to the VML format, and therefore into the Microsoft tools that can edit VML. Dave S. noted that the VML editing tools in Office are of lower quality than equivalent SVG editing tools, which makes sense to me because Microsoft previously had no competitors in VML editing, so they had no real incentive to improve their tools. This lock-in effect is due to the behaviour of Microsoft Office, and so long as VML is sufficiently documented in the Office Open XML specification (which it may or may not be, I don't know), there's no reason why this lock-in effect should be a requirement of the format. I referred to it as "application lock-in" as opposed to "file format lock-in" as a short-hand way of making the above distinction. Your comment about companies existing to provide value for their customers is very true, and it's the reason I'm so interested to see how this issue changes in the future. Maybe a company will come along with a VML-to-SVG converter, maybe companies that make vector graphics programs will add VML as a supported format, and so on.- Andrew
Anonymous
September 02, 2007
@andrew Need a VML to SVG XSLT converter ? http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:zo22tapjba8J:svgvml.trac.cs.unibo.it/browser/trunk/vml2svg.xsl+vml2SVGAnonymous
September 02, 2007
If that's as good as it looks at first glance, we're a halfway-competent Windows programmer away from "right click -> send to -> SVG extractor". I love the Internet :)- Andrew
Anonymous
September 02, 2007
Andrew- application lock-in offence would make up beautiful concept. Unfortunately it has negative implications as well. -each application should be entitled to support editing in its native file format. -an ISO file format standardization prevents file lock-in. -OLE is evil if OOXML supports it, not so evil if ODF supports it. Better no support for foreign files at all. Don't care about customer demands. However, do not import foreign files into the native file format; this very likely creates application lock-in. Remember, don't care about customer demands. -application lock-in also happens if an application cannot restrict its capabilities for details in question to the lowest common denominator of related file formats. Don't care about features or customers. -the most sophisticated application lock-in strategy is probably to employ official file formats with discriminating implementations. The file renders dissimilar in different applications. Like svg, xhtml, odf, aso.Anonymous
September 02, 2007
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September 02, 2007
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September 03, 2007
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September 03, 2007
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September 03, 2007
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September 03, 2007
At least Micrsoft alows discusion about OOXML on it's blogs even by people who are against the format unlike opponents of OOXML that just moderate people supporting ooxml away.Anonymous
September 03, 2007
About embedding, I was referring to the general case against converting. It is better to maintain the original content and run the converter as required. There would be no need for an outbound converter - plain old 'Copy' would place the original material on the clipboard. Likewise 'Save As' would export in it's original format, unless conversion was the goal.Anonymous
September 03, 2007
Paw, I get the humour in your post, but I have to ask - do you genuinely not see any way for Microsoft to avoid vendor lock in without annoying its customers? Do you feel that Microsoft tries its hardest to please everyone, but still can't win? JohnAnonymous
September 03, 2007
Julien - Thanks for the clarifications. Yes, I do understand the packaging conventions (at least I think I do), but it is still the case that what OpenXML4J is doing right now is hardly the level of manipulation that people are talking about. I am glad to hear that more work is planned, as I strongly feel that what both ODF and Open XML need is a good deal more in the way of API's that others can use, but don't your comments completely confirm what I was saying that OpenXML4J is nowhere near ready for active use in modifying and manipulating the content of office documents, as opposed to the package which contains them?Anonymous
September 03, 2007
SVG is slowly getting there. You have expanding support in Mozilla/Firefox. You have support in the popular vector app inkscape (getting to the point it can also parse Visio-produced SVGs ie actual interoperability). The SUN StarOffice/OpenOffice team had to acknowledge a few months ago what their users wanted was not import of SVG to ODF but native SVG support in OpenOffice/StarOffice (and they were trying very hard not to hear like MS today). Regardless of what happens to OOXML I predict deprecation of the ODF elements redundant with SVG in the next years and more direct SVG re-use. So, shame on MS for ignoring SVG. The ODF camp at least started standardising years ago, when one could label SVG a "failed standard". SVG is not failed and is pretty much alive today thank you very muchAnonymous
September 03, 2007
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September 03, 2007
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September 03, 2007
"If you copy and paste an SVG imager iinto MS Office it converts it to VML and it becomes a native vector graphis part of the office document." No it doesn't. I just tried - opened the SVG in IE with the Adobe plugin, pasted into word and I got the XML pasted as if it was text.Anonymous
September 03, 2007
Why does this forum is if Microsoft has lost the voting of the iso institution? This post of the penguin says it clearly and also I read it in this link http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-18553/iso-records-a-no-vote-on-ooxml Really have we lost? This makes me very sad please that someone says to me that is not like that. :(.Anonymous
September 03, 2007
Sigh! The hardest part about holding a technical opinion is when you abhor the people you agree with as much, or more as the people you "agree" with. I hope that the ISO process has forced a real revisiting of the Open XML standards, but it sounds already like both sides are just waiting to spin this in political terms rather than get on with the process. I want to disassociate myself from HUGE FALKLAND'S PENGUIN!!! above at the same time as objecting to Microsoft's puff PR piece today claiming victory when you were clearly stopped from stacking the vote and getting an absolute win. Now, with any luck, ISO can focus on the BRM and make a better standard, rather than simply put band aids on a few issues and stack a few more committees. I have said it for about a year now - please do yourselves (at Microsoft) a favor and focus on fixing the issues with Open XML, and not simply focusing on "winning" at all costs. A better standard will make your own lives easier in the long run, and it will certainly help those of us developers who want to implement tools to work with Open XML, which I would think you would want as well.Anonymous
September 04, 2007
ISO votes to reject Microsoft's OOXML as standard http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/09/04/isorejects/index.phpAnonymous
September 04, 2007
So, now that fast track has failed, maybe just maybe Microsoft will abandon the "win at all costs" mentality and do the right thing. You now have an opportunity to address the 1000's of comments and show good faith by making substantial changes to the spec. Will this break from Office 2007? Probably. But standards, in my mind, aren't about specific products. I'd also challenge Microsoft to open up the comment resolution process between now and January. What are the comments and the proposed resolution to each? My pessimistic guess is a boilerplate response of "Will not be resolved" or something like it to many of them.Anonymous
September 04, 2007
MS reaction to the vote: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/sep07/09-04OpenXMLVotePR.mspxAnonymous
September 04, 2007
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September 04, 2007
Microsoft accused of more OOXML standards fiddling http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=42106Anonymous
September 04, 2007
YEAH WANNA C THE REACTION TO THIS "Microsoft loses ISO vote on OOXML " http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=42133Anonymous
September 04, 2007
ooxml will be rejected in 2008.Anonymous
September 05, 2007
I am sick and tired of the penguinistas imposing their political games on those of us who simply want to make some money from their software. I think it is disgusting that ISO have not ratified OOXML. The best remedy is just to impose it and let the world deal with it. Thankfully in our capitalist society we can still do that. The communists may have won this round but they can never compete on quality or on security or on ideology for long. We will defeat them and make them Pay.Anonymous
September 06, 2007
do you think that novell ibm sun ncr peugeot citröen cisco systems etc etc etc this cia's friends are comunists for using GNU LINUX? heheh you have loss focus like m$ loss ooxml iso procedure. There is a new generation of ultra right and is not necessarily a friend of m$ ooxml will be rejected in 2008 for sure.Anonymous
September 06, 2007
Oh my! Perhaps Joel Spolsky was right on the value (or lack thereof) of blog comments. Some of the stuff you let through makes me cringe in its inanity. Once again, an application of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Theory.Anonymous
September 07, 2007
ooxml will be rejected in 2008 for sure.