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- schestowitz, on 10/10/2007, -7/+55Reason #1: OOXML is broken by design and unless it goes through radical cosmetic surgery, it hasn't a chance.
Reason #2: Microsoft bribed.
Reason #3: Microsoft deliberate lied
Reason #4: Microsoft stacked panels and did a plethora of other nasty things.
The amazing thing is that all the corruption completely turned people's attention to 'political' issues when in fact all we have here is a broken-by-design spec. - Phocion55, on 10/10/2007, -2/+48I see this failure as a "sign of the times" for Microsoft. Think about it.
10%-15% of the Office XML examples in the specification *didn't even validate as valid XML* and yet Microsoft STILL tried to FAST TRACK it for APPROVAL AS A GLOBAL STANDARD knowing full well these blatant issues existed.
http://surguy.net/articles/ooxml-validation-and-technical-review.xml
This is like handing in your final school report without proof reading it, half the bibliography missing, and facts missing and inaccurate.......but you waited until the last minute to do it, and you could care less because you just want to turn it in for the sake of turning it in.
What does this say about a multi BILLION dollar technology company? How insanely careless, lazy, and half assed is that? Shouldn't we hold Microsoft to higher standards? Can you blame people for resisting against Office XML?
I find it shockingly appalling that Office XML even got a SINGLE "yes" on this fact alone.
It is CLEAR that Microsoft doesn't care one bit about the quality of their work.....they only care about turning a profit. They just slapped something together as fast as possible with the fear of losing marketshare of Office 2007. Microsoft is comfortable with giving the masses sub-par technologies because they know the majority of the people are ignorant and accept whatever ***** gets shoveled their way.
Is THIS a format we want to be using to stay connected with each other? I sure as hell don't think so. - GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14"This battle’s not about interoperability, motherhood and apple pie: It’s about Microsoft wanting to keep its desktop-suite monopoly and its competitors seeking ways to break Redmond’s stranglehold on this part of Microsoft’s business."
That shows a lack of understanding. OOXML simply isn't suitable to the task. If MS want their own standard ratified then first they need a workable standard. Second they need some sort of compelling reason as to why we need a second standard, i.e. they have to differentiate from ODF on something other than implementation details. Finally they need to go through the process in an appropriate manner.
Right now they haven't done any of that, their standard is so shaky it makes a drunk look stable. There is no compelling reason (as of yet) for a second ISO format in this realm. Finally they have tried to game the system. - Quix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12"I find it shockingly appalling that Office XML even got a SINGLE "yes" on this fact alone."
Money changes everything. - GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13If they dealt with all of those objections it would be a useful open standard, that's no good to MS. What I don't like is that OXML seems to be three half standards rather than one good one. Why bother with all that backwards compatibility nonsense, it isn't necessary and MS know it. Just make MSO support those formats in their original binary black hole goodness and let the XML formats be for the future.
Of course they needed an excuse to produce a broken format, I know that, you know that and thankfully the ISO seem to know it. - Phocion55, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12A very valid question. You'd think so, but you can't. MS uses vague/obfuscated terms, phrases, and properties like "autoSpaceLikeWord95"....but doesn't tell you what that actually means. Just one of many examples.
You'd essentially have to illegally reverse engineer Word 95 to figure out what "autoSpaceLikeWord95" actually means, since only Microsoft knows. Microsoft purposely does this to ensure that they are the only company that can FULLY implement Office XML.
Office XML is supposed to be OPEN, right? - ScornForSega, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12huh...
and all this time i thought it was because they're evil bastards. - funkytaco, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Microsoft should stick to the XBOX 360 and USB mice and ditch everything else. That's what they're good at.
- Phocion55, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11"...unless it goes through radical cosmetic surgery..."
And a majority of that "radical cosmetic surgery" boils down to opening up the proprietary bits and pieces of their specification that still exist........which I can't see Microsoft doing anytime soon. - Tippis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9The Danish complaints list tells a fairly complete (if at times highly technical) picture: http://www.ds.dk/_root/scripts/getmedia.asp?media_id=2791
- thorndike, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Corporate America isn't going to change right away. The big changes will come with overseas companies/governments who are tired of having to pay MS. The next round of changes will be from small companies who wont have to pay big dollars to run a word processor.
- gquaglia, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7"It is CLEAR that Microsoft doesn't care one bit about the quality of their work"
I thought that was clear when they released Vista. - daftman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Nah anti-microsoft sentiment has substance. In fact, I'll give you a 7000 pages of explanation with embedded binary format that only I can read.
- ruiacp, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5I agree, if they stick to 360 they will last for a short time. 360 is ms's white elephant.
- gquaglia, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5I don't care if anyone uses Office or not, its a personal choice. But I don't want to be forced to use to it through proprietary file formats.
- MWeather, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4They deserved to loose because it is not an open standard. Their tactics and their competitors' motivations are irrelevant
- Jowsley, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4"You mean properties like "autoSpaceLikeWord95" which the spec expressly does not require you to implement?"
That's exactly the point. It's the old embrace, extend, extinguish strategy.
If the property is there, some one will use it. Then, when the document is opened in something other than Word the document won't display properly. That will compel people to use Word to view the documents that were saved in an 'open' format. - ilgaz, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6What is really broken is lack of support from Microsoft. They don't even bother to write OOXML Library for C/C++ and offer it to open source people. They don't ship a "OOXML Viewer" for any other OS than Windows anyway.
Even Word 97 is more "open" than OOXML since even PDAs support it. - timf, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4In it's current form it is not fully implementable by OOo and others, which might be the reason why Microsoft pushes this "open standard" in the first place.
- mithrasinvictus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Microsofts spec does not require their competitors to render a document the way it was authored while their own software will.
You dont see a problem with that?
Subsitute "allow" for "require", see it now? - AlexFerny, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5shouldn't be using ms office in the first place
- daftman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You see how you can read digg on IE even though the server is hosted in Linux? That's call standards.
- FredFredrickson, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Whether or not MS wins the OOXML standard, I really don't see all of corporate America ceasing to buy and upgrade their versions of Word / MS Office.
- GregR, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3In other words, business as per usual for MS.
- daftman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Wow, brilliant! You dismiss his post by showing even less than nothing on your own. Brilliant !!!
- smackhero, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3it's not really an open standard, and it forces people to license their proprietary standard to make full use of the OOXML specification which they hold a patent on, thus (continue) locking people into their proprietary software suite. it's just another tactic to strengthen their monopoly and prevent any kind of fair competition that the adoption of a true open standard would allow for. read the wikipedia page on OOXML for more information.
- mithrasinvictus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Corporate America can buy whatever they want, that's the whole point of the document standard debate, its about interoperability.
- KhaaL, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3While XP is not a bad OS, it still can't compete with todays linux distros which is totally scalable (xp contains bloat wether you want it or not, unless you got xp embedded), they have support for more hardware out-of-the-box and waaay more customizable. And let's not forget they're free too.
- planktonx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2What's the use of a ISO if their decision can be bought? If M$ wins, ISO looses its credibility in offering the best standard for the industry. How long has ISO votes been for sale? I wonder.
- Stonekeeper, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Please, show your support by visiting:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/sep07/09-04OpenXMLVotePR.mspx?hahaha_you_lost - Fairly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2If they didn't have ***** for brains they would. Seriously: who the F needs these formats anyway? OK I can sort of get spreadsheet formats. But we have open standard SQL - we don't need more there. And we definitely do not need more bleeding word processor formats. We have the bloody web and HTML/SGML. M$ want these formats because #1) they're losing the browser war bad; #2) they're losing the OS war bad; #3) office format lockin is all they have left.
So don't let them have it. - mithrasinvictus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2No, they are good at exactly this. Corner the market with substandard, closed format products though any means necessary.
- Tippis, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3They would be able to hawk their existing products to customers who require their documents to be in an open standard format (e.g. various governmental organizations) without having to change those products.
If they want to get (or keep) those clients now, they will be forced to spend time implementing new formats for every single office program in their library (and not just MS Office), which is a huge investment that might not even pay off. - mithrasinvictus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2reason #5: Microsofts track record on document interoperability between different versions of its OWN software product
- Fairly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Bill Gates should stick to paying back to everyone he's lied to, double crossed, and screwed. The two bit jerk stealing with one hand and trying to be a humanitarian with the other.
- boran, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I copy/pasted this link from Tippis his post because most people that dont digg into the coments wont see it.
If you want some more technical info about why OOXML in it's current form is definetly up to snuff this document provides you with a lot of info.
http://www.ds.dk/_root/scripts/getmedia.asp?media_id=2791 - GMorgan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Personally prefer Netbeans. The little things work nicely there and GUI editors mean nothing to me (though Matisse is a nice GUI editor).
In terms of profiling, unit testing, debugging, inline documentation, refactoring and even simple editing I find it to be better than VS. Then there's version control support. - Fairly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1MJF: unblinking? Yeah right. Search far and wide for a bigger M$ tool. That blinks more.
- Optimaximal, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4The biggest mistake of Office 2007 was this Open XML format and the distinct OOB incompatibilities between 2007 and 2003.
I don't give two ***** if its a better format that supports open standards... I now have to go to ever 2003 machine in my company and run a 27mb compatiblity patch (which must be run as an administrator, so disrupts the user of that machine) so that everyone can now talk to each other.
Ok, I could make a GPO that forces everyone to save in 2003 format, but why should I have to? - MWeather, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1"Have you seen the horrible kerning in OpenOffice?"
Nope. Then again I'm running 2.3. Besides, 99% of word users have no clue what kerning even is. - MWeather, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1My office standardized on ODF over a year ago. If somebody doesn't support it, we export a PDF or tell them to download one of the several free programs that support it.
- Stonekeeper, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Here, use this: http://www.ocsinventory-ng.org/
You can push out the patch to all of them automatically. - w0rd, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You should probably be deploying your software with group policy if walking around is a big deal.
- TypeEE, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3I still don't get what would MS gain by having OOXML as a standard? Can't open office or star office adapt that standard right away?
- Tippis, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3Keyboards?
Oh, and Visual Studio... - EvilGeniusTodd, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0ftw.
- skinturtle, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3Simply put and all the technical issues aside....Micro "greedy cash and money" Soft has lost integrity and trust with lots of people. Everyone knows what they are up to and nobody is buying into it.
Thats what happens when you screw people over. - jellygraph, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3I'm glad Microsoft lost out, but I'm just curious... what is so broken about OOXML? I don't know much about this...
- MWeather, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Who cares if there are 100 document formats, so long as any program can implement them?
- Fairly, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1If you don't know much about it - why ask? You want a free ten minute course in formats?
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