OOXML vs. ODF: Lessons learned
Summary: The votes have been tallied but it's still not 100 percent certain that Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document-format is going to become an ISO standard.
The votes have been tallied but it's still not 100 percent certain that Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document-format is going to become an ISO standard.
(Supposedly, the vote is still too close to call and neither ISO nor Microsoft is yet discussing the final results. But a number of sites are speculating that OOXML did manage to get enough votes to secure ISO standardization status.)
Update: The official statement from the ISO Central Secretariat's office: "Because ISO needs first to inform its worldwide membership of national standards bodies of these results, a press release on this subject will be issued on Wednesday, 2 April 2008." No doubt word of the official count will leak well before that....
Some -- and not just Microsoft employees -- think ISO standardization for OOXML will be a good thing. Others consider OOXML becoming an ISO standard (like its rival Open Document Format alternative already is) to be one more example of Microsoft monopoly power run amok.
At this point, I'm more interested in lessons learned during the past months of standard squabbling, where both the OOXML and the ODF backers spent lots of time and money lobbying governments, partners and customers.
(I've noticed a number of Softies and other OOXML backers now saying publicly that the ODF camp could have better spent its anti-OOXML energies and funds improving the quality of ODF and products that implement it. However, the same can be said about OOXML, Office and other products implementing Microsoft's document format. Lobbying monies were wasted on both sides.)
When I asked Tom Robertson, Microsoft’s General Manager of Interoperability and Standards, last week about what lessons the Redmondians learned from the OOXML debate, he gave me a pretty noncommittal answer: "There's (now) a greater recognition in the role standards play in the marketplace."
I'd argue there's also a greater recognition by Microsoft that simply owning more than 90 percent marketshare (as Office does on Windows desktops) doesn't mean it can dictate when and if it can monkey with something as important as how documents are stored -- at least not without a lot of outcry by customers and its competitors.
Other lessons learned from the OOXML vs. ODF battle:
* Everyone plays politics. Microsoft lobbied. IBM lobbied. Google lobbied. Why? Government contracts are lucrative. No vendor can afford to be cut out of competing for business simply because it can't check the "ISO standard" box on the request-for-proposal form.
* Interoperability isn't a nicety -- it's a necessity. Would Microsoft proactively have worked with Sun, Novell and other vendors on creating OOXML-ODF translators and connectors if the lack of interoperabiltiy between OOXML and ODF wasn't highlighted by its critics? I'm doubtful.
* Backwards compatibility shouldn't be an afterthought. Making a change as sweeping as altering the underlying document format in Office can't be done without considering backward compatibility. Mac Office 2004 users still don't have a way to read the new Office 2007 file formats.
What else do you think the OOXML standards battle taught Microsoft -- and its competitors?
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Talkback
It taught Microsoft that its days are numbered
It's taught us, the community, that maybe it's time to start lots of lobbying of our own. Perhaps lots and lots of letters to MP's asking why they feel it is ok to waste, thus continue to waste, taxpayers money propping up a monopoly which hinders progress and competition to such a degree that some people even think Vista is a step forwards .....
RE: OOXML vs. ODF: Lessons learned
It's Greed...
That is rubbish
I doubt if the commenter is a Microsoft Office user anyway, because if they were, they would know that Microsoft always offers backward compatability like this whenever it changes file formats.
Most users aren't going to know this.
Re: Most users aren't going to know this.
They were out on a limb alone
They had no choice but to do something to appease the silly's who bought into their scheme until they could do something REALLY nasty to the market and buy up enough votes to have their little folly declared a "standard" so other software vendors would feel they have to accommodate Microsoft's proprietary format, or fail to meet ALL the "standards".
Anyone with a grain of intelligence is busy right now finding mobo's that are NOT "vista-ready" (do not have the Intel vPro "fritz-chip") and ensuring they have a retail copy of XP to last them.
If you wonder what this little chip, (which Dell & HP are already putting in their machines) can do - in combination with VISTA, check out Intel's White Paper on the Intel vPro (its written to corporations, but its the same chip - replace "corporation" with "Microsoft"
(it can detect your PC via a hardware "heartbeat" even if it is turned off, it can turn your pc on (in the dead of night), reinstall any remote management software you may have removed, (& if you have VISTA) snoop&poop in your PC (i.e. "inventory" everything on your pc, disable your software and change or delete your files) then slyly return the PC to whatever state it was in before its "attack". Sounds like science fiction, doesn't it? Read Intel's own White Paper. Microsoft SAYS they will only use the technology to disable pirated software, & delete files created with it, but that's a lie, they have ALREADY used it to disable legitimately purchased software to try to force their customer to buy it again in the newest version they are pushing.
Soooo....
No it is not!
It's happened before and it can happen again.
Yes it is!!
By the way, when Office 97 came out, it was 33 years since I finished high school.
No, it's not
It is easy to talk about something
what he/she speaks.
That way there is no concern for
accuracy and no chance of
contradiction, since there is nothing
to contradict.
Converter Happy
I agree
Everyone should demand that documents be sent to them in REAL standard formats that have REALLY open specifications.
OOXML is a PROPRIETARY format - it is NOT a standard until every vendor has the information they need to create, write, read documents in it, exactly like Microsoft. Lacking that, it is NOT a "standard" at all.
No, it isn't rubbish.
No problem, I said, you just need the converters from Microsoft. A download and install later and... nada, nilsch, do not pass go. Format unrecognized.
Ok, rename it to .docx. Now it's recognized but Word complains that the XML is not right. No go again.
Nothing wrong with the file. It works just fine in Office 2007.
Not All Rubbish
APRIL FOOLS
Let the 2007 users save THEIR file in a REAL standard format
Why should I have to download and tack on pieces to my software because foolish followers want to play footsie with a known monster of greed & self-service (even to criminality/lawbreaking)?
Microsoft altered a very basic structure into something proprietary trying to force upgrades down their customer's throats and then wants to force it through as a "standard" so everyone else will feel they have to accommodate it because they suddenly found themselves out on a limb alone. I hope the rest of the world is not that stupid, to be led around by the nose by Microsoft.
The backward compatibility issues is spurious
OOXML does nothing to make anything more or less compatible with older document formats, and the references to those older document formats in the OOXML spec are by reference to closed binary formats, and OOXML does not make them any more transparent.
Backward compatibility is not an excuse for sloppy formats
In other words OOXML should have been a step forward from BIFF and other MS Office legacy formats. It should support all the features, but in a cleaner and more compact format. Unfortunately it does not.
OOXML is a convoluted and sloppy way to store documents. For example a simple test I made with the following sentence "The cow jumped over the moon" produced the biggest and most convoluted xml when saved in OOXML. ODF was clean. It used styles to represent the formatting on the text. In this example "jumped over the" had one color (red) and was bold.
ODF used a reference to a style to represent that piece of text's format. The same strategy applied for text documents (Writer) and presentations (Impress). OOXML on the other hand had inline format. That repeated the formatting XML for no apparent reason. The worst case was PowerPoint. It had formatting for each word. The words jumped, over, and the each had their own formatting tags. Even when they all had the same format. More so the formatting tags were not consistent among applications.
I would have expected OOXML o be a good implementation. After all you still have to create a mapping strategy between the old binary format and the new. There is no need for the new XML format to follow the old format. All it needs to do is have support for all the features in the old format and represent them in a new cleaner way.
Unfortunately this was not done. Even when it is possible. After all you can open a Word file in Open Office and save it ODF, right?