What is Digg?223 Comments
- melaren, on 10/10/2007, -7/+226I never comment anything on Digg, but I think this OOXML issue is extremely important. The industry is crying out for an open standard for documents, and this is what we may be stuck with? We're living in a tech world where Microsoft is "the standard." It doesn't matter whether Word is better or worse than any of the alternatives, it matters that we don't have choices in the industry. ...one office suite controls the industry. This one office suite is one of the single biggest factors that keep organizations away from other platforms. I've overheard IT Admins telling techs to install Office 2000 without legit licenses (instead of Office XP) because Microsoft doesn't care about enforcing Office 2000 licenses anymore. ...why don't they just use a free alternative? Because Microsoft is the standard and if you work in IT, anything else is a risk to your employment.
Yet I feel rather helpless. I have this feeling that Microsoft is going to get the ISO certification and we will continue on in this age of incompatibility. ...another 'x' number of years with a proprietary format and one office suite. I have to cringe every time someone at my university tries to email their Word Perfect file to the teacher expecting that it will open just fine in Word. ...it should open just fine. There is no lack of technology that prevents this sort of thing from being possible. So I guess what I'm getting at... Is there something we can do about this problem? Should we Digg up every OOXML article we can find? Should we all contact our ISO representatives in our respective countries? It can't just be a few that do something. That will amount to little. Collectively we might be able to do a little more...
...let me know if I'm overreacting... - schestowitz, on 10/10/2007, -9/+152100 man years. What a joke. It's this big because there is absolutely no reuse of existing standards. Watch how sheer corruption actually gives the damn thing consideration. FWIW, Microsoft dumped 30,000 pages of legal documents on thew EC a few months ago. That's 6 times larger. It's like a DDOS attack.
- baalzebub, on 10/10/2007, -10/+147there should be no way in heaven, earth or hell anyone in their right mind would standardize a document format with specs as bloated as that! 6000 pages of what? loopholes & gotchas & incompatibilities that help microsoft maintain a monopoly on office file formats?
- niallabrown, on 10/10/2007, -3/+83So this is what vendor lock-in looks like. Ugly Ugly
- typicalusername, on 10/10/2007, -7/+80Okay, I'm no hippie, but that killed a whole ***** tree... and I feel terrible for it.
- petoria, on 10/10/2007, -4/+68Read the description "Yes, it's authentic"
- rboyce, on 10/10/2007, -3/+53SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE on page 3276 of the OOXML standard.
- zlatko, on 10/10/2007, -3/+46Read more here: http://blog.janik.cz/archives/2007/05/19/T20_32_07/
- VirtualCtor, on 10/10/2007, -4/+41What kind of text? Text encodings have specifications too. I'm assuming that you want people from the rest of the world to be able to read the text, so you probably better use Unicode. You'll need a way to encode the characters in a machine readable format. Unicode has three specified encoding formats: UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32. They are described section 3.9 (page 98) of the Unicode Standard 5.0. The Unicode Standard is 1472 pages. Good luck!
- GaiaAP, on 10/10/2007, -4/+34Not at all, I concur and I'm glad to see your input on this. Welcome to the debate :)
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+296000 pages equals 12 reams of paper...
Yes, it's real. - br0ck, on 10/10/2007, -0/+27The guy posted a picture and then in the first comment (scroll up!) linked to an entire article about how and why he printed the spec and took a picture of it.
- cbreaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+24Well, maybe not a DDOS, but just a DOS.
- MikeFromAmerica, on 10/10/2007, -3/+27Complexity == bad
- questionable, on 10/10/2007, -0/+22I don't know. Once a document standard format gets past 300 pages, I'm pretty much done.
HURRAY for .TXT! - myheaditches, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21Please people, think of the pixel trees! :(
- Jugalator, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21Well, among other things, it contains a definition on how to act on the parameter "formatlikeword95". And that hack is no joke either. :-(
- cybertrader, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21http://www.noooxml.org/
OOXML is an immature documentation of one vendor's proprietary document format which depends on software patents held by this vendor, which block interoperability. It conflicts with existing ISO standards. More than three hundred technical comments have been raised by industry, academics, researchers, and experts. The ISO JTC-1 Directive p.48 section 9.8 requires national bodies to vote "NO with comments" if there remain unanswered technical problems. The accuracy and honesty of the voting process has been questioned in many countries. - melonhedd, on 10/10/2007, -1/+22Paper is made from trees grown specifically for paper.
- Maddjonesy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21Never heard of the oft-used Digg comment 'Pic or it didn't happen'?
This is the first time I've seen the total opposite be posted! - Quix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21"Is there something we can do about this problem?"
Get your friends/relatives to use OpenOffice/NeoOffice/etc. They likely don't use 99% of Microsoft's "features" anyway. While you're at it, get them to switch to Firefox as well.
Microsoft's days of holding the world by its throat are over. Lots of people (i.e. your friends and relatives) just haven't realized it yet.
Oh, and we need to lean on Apple too. I love iWork 08, but why aren't they supporting open document formats??? It's OK Apple, you really don't need to fear Microsoft any longer - their threat to kill Office for Mac is an empty one anymore. Call their lame bluff. - drmangrum, on 10/10/2007, -2/+22That's the point. Microsoft would pull something like this so the standard is so horribly convoluted that nobody can make sense of it. The end result? everyone just stick with Office. There is absolutely no reason the specs couldn't be clearly defined in 3-400 pages. That's counting future features.
Think of this like a filibuster in congress. - blackmage439, on 10/10/2007, -4/+24I'm an I.T. tech, and I fully support OpenOffice; well, just short of donating to their cause anyway. I wasn't always this way. I thought that you pay for Microsoft products because they take your money and put that extra time and effort into making their products the best. Wrong. Their products are no better than free or less expensive alternatives (Linux or Mac for OS, OpenOffice for office software, etc.). My faith in Microsoft has eroded away after three major things. The first was when I purchased a legit, unopened copy of Microsoft Office 2003 Pro from a vendor on Ebay. The software works fine, except for Word. The Autotext menu has broken links in it, and I can find no material on this problem anywhere. GRRR.... The second is the entirety of the beast known as Vista. The rainbow of "flavors" and features is dizzying, completely shady, and unnecessary. I wonder how many saps have shelled out hundreds of dollars for "Ultimate" when they won't take advantage of half of its capabilities. The third, which is probably the worst, is Microsoft's act of officially keeping the Vista source code under "lock and key" , preventing anti-virus companies from total kernel protection, and forcing people to rely on "Defender". Pffft. Please... There were root hacks before Vista was even released! And if these AV companies "compromise the safeguard measures in place", I'm sure M$ will lay a hacking lawsuit right on those companies, just like they would to a common hacker.
I for one say a resounding "NO!" to proprietary standards. - MrViklund, on 10/10/2007, -24/+42So. A guy posted a picture and for that we should believe it's real?
- SenatorPenguin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+18I just downloaded the complete spec from here: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm
As I opened parts 1,2,3, and 5, I thought it looked like a normal spec. Big, but still no part over 500 pages (about 700 combined). Then I realized my computer started to slow down, and my pdf reading software lock up. 10 seconds later, part 4 loaded and opened. All 5220 pages of it. - msgyrd, on 10/10/2007, -0/+18Exactly. It may not be the *real* document, thats irrelevant, but it is an excellent illustration of what a paper copy would look like. We know it's 6000 pages, most people just haven't ever seen 6000 pages quantified and think this is some exaggeration.
- lordsandwich, on 10/10/2007, -0/+17You're comparing a spec for office documents to a video and audio codec? That's like comparing a telephone to two cans on a string.
- smackhero, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16the UTF standard is so big because it covers 30 writing systems, and the 1472 page Unicode Standard book is not entirely composed of technical specifications. the actual technical specifications of the standard are only a few hundred pages, and the unicode transformation format and encoding schemes are only about 12-13 pages long. the notation conventions are also only a handful of pages and the implementation guidelines comprise of about 50 pages. the vast majority of the rest of the book consists of character charts, technical, historic & cultural background of the various writing systems covered by unicode, and miscellaneous information about the unicode organization. it's not like an RFC document, which strictly outlines technical specifications and standards.
there's no reason for the OOXML specifications, which is a much narrower standard, to be that long. it's also not appropriate to compare the unicode specification to OOXML as they are completely different kinds of standards. unicode has much broader applications and thus is a much larger specification than OOXML, which is a document format, like HTML or XML. - weeeeeeee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16never EVER EVER take a technical writing position
- drmangrum, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16E-books are useful, but it's no substitute for the feel of paper. Not to mention the strain on the eyes for looking at pixels 15 hours a day.
- cbreaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+15Sure, and perhaps more people would, if they weren't required to use Word .DOC files all the time.
- rolosworld, on 10/10/2007, -3/+17SARCASM
how come Miguel de Icaza had time to read this and all the other MS "standards"?
/SARCASM - msgyrd, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14Again, the discussion is about file formats, not the application itself.
The problem is that OOXML is a format that can only be fully implemented by Microsoft, which prevents it from becoming a real standard. MS proposed OOXML simply because they want vendor lock-in. It's like they're allergic to adhering to standards. - cbreaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14.DOC, .XLS, .PPT, .MDB.. While these formats have been "reverse engineered" to a point, they aren't anywhere near perfect and you'll always have problems with interoperability.
It IS a file format issue, because there's no guarantee that you'll be able to actually use your documents in 20 years. With everything going electronic with NO paper backing anymore, this is a huge point. We need a document format that: Isn't proprietary, and has an open specification. - schlottj, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14remember this isnt a choice about what office program to use, its a choice about what format to send!
thats nice that your office uses openoffice but what if you need to send that document to another company? how do you know what program they use, do you send a .doc file? .rtf? did i get my point across yet?
this is about a standard format to solve this problem - cbreaker, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13Trees are one of the only truly renewable energy sources on the planet. You should feel worse about using the electricity to view that image then the tree that it took to print the document.
- manstein01, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13Take a look at that stack, and imagine a team of developers being asked to implement it. It would be time consuming to the point of being near impossible. That is not even mentioning the fact that inside those books is language that is ambiguous at best on several key issues. Considering ODF is 600 pages, it is wise to be suspicious of why Microsoft would need to define their format in 7000 pages of a specification that even they cannot seem to implement properly.
- ToadLeg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10No, that has nothing to do with this; OOXML is incapable of being fully implemented, period. Microsoft will choose some way to do it, not according to the standard, and in many ways contradicting the OOXML standard. It's 6000 pages, not because it's a detailed format that covers every conceivable situation, but because it's a series of ancient formats strung together that contradict each other. Tests done on Microsoft's implementation of OOXML show that just to make one character change to a file, many different changes have to be made all over the file as if it's some sort of cascading encryption routine. If a program doesn't make ALL of the different edits to the file, Microsoft Office will display a message that the file has not been saved properly (IE Microsoft is the only product you can use). Apple has tried its best to fully implement OOXML, and has failed. OOXML is designed, along with every other piece of garbage Microsoft has come out with and called "open source", to attack open source by creating an appearance of superiority by Microsoft, to vendor lock-in to Microsoft, and to make open source appear worse.
Yes, open source could use OOXML. Yes, they could ignore it and use ODF. But that doesn't make OOXML an INTERNATIONAL STANDARD. You would not make a screw with threads going both ways the international standard of screws. - Amablue, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10Pic so it didn't happen?
- stalefries, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Apparently, lawyers really like WordPerfect because it retains formatting and display really well. If you're trying to point someone to something on page 347 of your big fat document in court, you want to make sure that their rpinter printed it out in the exact same way.
- cnowacek, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10Can I get the audiobook format?
- lordsandwich, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Very true. What FOSS developer would possibly want to wade through this sludge to develop a competing product?
- Jugalator, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Umm, that's the story/pic I posted on that last OOXML and Miguel de Icaza article here on Digg... Like 20 hours ago. Well, good to see it get more attention then, because it is always kind of scary to see 6000 page standards. I wonder how large the ODF standard is?
- DeadlyBrad42, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10Just like my school papers...
- Nanobe, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Um. OpenOffice was developed by Sun Microsystems, not IBM.
- rsvguy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8I have to disagree.
OOXML is not implementable by any other company as parts of it rely on MS technologies that are under patent. This is a problem for other companies wishing to implement the standard.
A standard should not require that you license technology from a monopoly in order to implement it. This is the probem with OOXML.
It MS wanted to it could support ODF but instead it wants to own the market in perpetuity.
MS is as evil as everyone is making out, their attempted corruption of the ISO process is damning evidence of this. - chriscamacho, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8KISCOWCUI - Keep It So Complex Only We Can Use It (m$ idea of KISS :o) )
- bobbyi, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9Microsoft definitely cares about businesses using unlicensed copies of Office 2000 rather than paying for a current version.
- duality, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8More like "text, or it's photoshopped".
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