petition : campaign against OOXML
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| henke54 Jun 22, 2007 10:35 AM EDT |
Quoting:Microsoft is currently trying to make believe the ISO National Bodies that its Office Open XML (OOXML) format is a good standard. This website discusses why the this broken proprietary standard should never be accepted by ISO.http://www.noooxml.org/petition |
| dinotrac Jun 22, 2007 10:41 AM EDT |
I really don't care if Microsoft is able to get another XML format approved by the ISO for office documents. In my naivety, it seems the test is a pretty simple one: I should be able to turn an OOXML document into a valid ODF document that produces pretty close to the same result in an ODF-enabled application with nothing more than a stylesheet transformation. Ditto for the other direction. If that is true, then I can live with it. |
| softwarejanitor Jun 22, 2007 10:57 AM EDT |
dinotrac, from what I've read about the differences between ODF and OOXML it will not be that simple to convert from one to the other for anything other than extremely simple documents. In fact it appears that writing a translator will be almost as complicated as writing one from Microsoft's current proprietary binary formats and nearly as prone to translation errors. If my understanding is correct, ODF is fairly simple and straightforward and is built on top of existing standards where they exist for embedded data (graphics, etc), which is part of the reason that its spec is 1/10th the size of OOXML which appears to be more of a transliteration of Microsoft's binary formats into XML and retaining a lot of their proprietary internal formats for things where an open standard already exists. I suspect you will have to live with it regardless because even if Microsoft loses the battle with the ISO (which I would doubt given the $$$ influence which they have) they will soldier on with OOXML and try to circumvent and kill ODF as much as they can. In other words -- business as usual. If they are able to get OOXML accepted as a "standard", they will continue to build "embraced and extended" versions of the standards to perpetuate interoperability being largely a one-way street. And given that many parts of OOXML are apparently covered by MS patents, they will increase their sabre rattling towards anyone else who implements it or translators to/from it w/o paying their taxes. |
| dinotrac Jun 22, 2007 11:03 AM EDT |
janitor - My understanding that the most open thing about OOXML is its name. |
| softwarejanitor Jun 22, 2007 12:02 PM EDT |
> My understanding that the most open thing about OOXML is its name. Yeah, that's about right... It sounded like you were sort of defending it before. |
| dinotrac Jun 22, 2007 12:06 PM EDT |
> It sounded like you were sort of defending it before. No, just providing my idea of what a reasonable test for an open xml standard. If OOXML were truly open, it wouldn't bother me. It wouldn't thrill me, but it wouldn't bother me. |
| tqk Jun 22, 2007 12:55 PM EDT |
I'm looking forward to the moment that some recruiter / prospective employer asks me to "Please send us a copy of your latest resume (OOXML format only)." No, I will not. I've put up with this ".doc format only" until now, assuming they're just too clueless to understand the problem to work around it. I'll continue to send .doc, if they insist. Surely Word OOXML will still read .doc? They're going to pee off their entire user base if it won't. I will not do OOXML, period. They can keep the job if that's what it takes to get it. I'm sick and tired of MS' lock-in creep. I'm not going to play that game any more. |
| jdixon Jun 22, 2007 1:06 PM EDT |
... I've put up with this ".doc format only" until now... Other people have stated that if you simply save your document as text and rename it to .doc, then Word will open it with no problems. A quick test shows that seems to work with Office 2000 here at work. I can't speak for later versions. |
| bigg Jun 22, 2007 1:56 PM EDT |
> They're going to pee off their entire user base if it won't. The thing about monopolies that have a business plan built around lock-in is that they don't care about upsetting their customers. They're forcing it on their customers whether they want it or not. |
| rijelkentaurus Jun 22, 2007 3:49 PM EDT |
Quoting: A quick test shows that seems to work with Office 2000 here at work Works OK with Word 2003. One would assume 2007 will work also. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 26, 2007 2:07 AM EDT |
I simply sent in PDF's. |
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