Microsoft is finally following standards and everyone is all pissed off because the standards are incomplete and ambiguous?
Wow, talk about damned if you do, damed if you don't.
Microsoft under fire for ODF glitch in Excel
Summary
Microsoft has come under fire for spreadsheet interoperability issues in its latest release of Office 2007 SP2, but the company said it is an issue inherent in ODF 1.1.
Topics
Microsoft has come under fire for spreadsheet interoperability issues in its latest release of Office 2007 SP2, but the company said it is an issue inherent in ODF (Open Document Format) 1.1.
The software giant released last week the second service pack for Office 2007, which provides support for documents saved in the ODF 1.1 format.
However, Rob Weir, chief ODF architect at IBM posted a report on his blog saying SP2 had problems reading some ODF spreadsheets saved by OpenOffice.org and lost data by "silently stripping out formulas" from cells. The resulting spreadsheet displays "the last value that the cells had", said Weir.
Weir explained: "If the formulas are stripped, then this cell no longer updates, and will return the wrong value."
He added that with SP2, Excel - the Office suite's spreadsheet program - instead saves spreadsheet formulas into an Excel namespace. "This namespace is not what OpenOffice and other ODF applications use. It is not the ODF 1.2 namespace," said Weir.
Another blogger, who claimed to belong to the Oasis (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) ODF technical committee, posted a report later, saying this move by Excel fragments ODF and locks users into using Microsoft's Office product.
He said the new namespace will make new worksheets only understood by Office 2007, "eliminating the possibility that any other existing application could be used to usefully read the document".
ODF 1.2 is hoped to fix spreadsheet issue
Microsoft's response to the issue has been to say that the problem lies in the ODF 1.1 standard, which does not include formula syntax.
Doug Mahugh, senior program manager on the Office interoperability team at Microsoft, posted a response to Weir saying the issue was foreseeable because ODF's earlier specifications did not define spreadsheet support sufficiently - a point raised three years ago, he said.
"Because ODF 1.0 and 1.1 do not support formulas, all ODF spreadsheet implementations are application-dependent," said Mahugh.
Mahugh confirmed in his post that Excel preserves the old values in the cells when encountering unknown formulae, but asserted that this would allow regular office users to still read the spreadsheets. He added that IBM's Lotus Symphony spreadsheet software, which keeps and displays unrecognized formulae, would render spreadsheets unreadable to the novice user.
He said ODF 1.2, when ready, is likely to address this issue through a new Open Formula syntax. Mahugh noted that Microsoft chose not to support this version because it has not been passed as a standard by Oasis, yet.
"But we're not there yet; ODF 1.2 is not done, and not even ready for public review," he said.
Oliver Bell, regional technology officer, Microsoft Asia-Pacific said in a Web chat with ZDNet Asia the company is trying to balance the task of complying with standards, while ensuring its products work with documents from older versions of Office.
"We want our ODF implementation to work and be interoperable. We also want to conform to the standard," he said.
Bell alluded to the issue being application-dependent as well: "Today, the only way to do that is to fully understand what every ODF implementation has chosen to do, and compensate for that.
"It is a multiple-step journey. Today, anybody can open and understand those documents. With (ODF) 1.2 the formulae become interoperable as well, and we all get to where we want to be."
This article was originally posted on ZDNet Asia.
Talkback Most Recent of 19 Talkback(s)
-
MissingMatter7th May 2009 -
No, everybody is pissed because
because all other ODF implementations just copied OpenOffice spreadsheet implementation (including non standard OpenOffice namespace) and Microsoft chose to implement Excle spreadsheet in ODF under a non standard MS office namespace.
The ODF specs allows both the OpenOffice nonstandard approach and the MS Office non standard approach as the standard itself does not speciffy what spreadsheet format to use.
As long as OOo Calc was the leading spreadsheet producing ODF everybody just copied that but not that MS Office also produces ODF it is likely all other parties will have to support both ODF 'regional' dialects.
IE97th May 2009 -
MS used the standards to make something only technically compliant.
That does not mean that they made it useful.
From this link:
Remember, it is not particularly difficult or clever to to take an adverse reading of a standard to make an incompatible, non-interoperable product. Take HTML, for example. It does not define the attributes of unstyled (default) text. So I could create a perfectly conformant browser implementation that makes all default text be 4-point Zapf Dingbats, white text on a white background. It would conform with the standard, but it would be perfectly unusable by anyone. If you try hard enough you can create 100% conformant, but non-interoperable, implementations of almost most standards. Standards are voluntary, written to help coordinate multiple parties in their desires for interoperability. Standards are not written to compel interoperability by parties who do not wish to be interoperable.
Ms has intentionally made their version not play properly.
Letophoro7th May 2009 -
Quoted from a stupid hypocrite speculating that
Microsoft would actually spend time and
effort to make sure they are not
compatible.
The reality is that Microsoft didn't want to
spend time and effort implementing
something which is NOT standard.
Rob Weir would like Microsoft to implement
something OUTSIDE the standard - before it has
even been put out for public review - because
it's how OpenOffice chose to implement in a
proprietary way.
Stupidity and hypocrisy rules. This was the
same guy who 2 years ago was ridiculing
Microsoft OOXML for being bloated and
excessive. Guess what? OOXML actually
DOES specify a formula language. Oh, true,
he didn't like it. Perhaps because of the ODF
omission?
ODF was and is lacking any such specification.
So here we have a standards nazi caught in hypocrisy and double standards (pun intended).
Unbelievable ****.
honeymonster7th May 2009 -
Actually, OOXML is bloated and excessive.
Having read the specification for OOXML (from Microsoft) I can tell you first hand that it is an excessively bloated file format specification.
B.O.F.H.7th May 2009 -
Having read the OOXMl standard
I can say that it's not bloated.honeymonster7th May 2009 -
Microsoft wasn't even complaint with OOXML
That's right. They can't even get their own standard correctly implemented.
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17815/1103/
nucrash7th May 2009 -
Correct
The standard was changed during the ISO
procedure, which meant that products needed to
be changed after the process completed.honeymonster7th May 2009 -
Of course MS would spend time and effort to be incompatible.
Didn't they do the same thing to Java until a court told them that they could no longer call their incompatible version Java? Hint - If your answer is 'no,' then you need to do some research.
The thing is that MS had to make changes to break formulas in ODF because the ODF formulas mechanism is a reverse-engineered Excel formulas mechanism.
This was the
same guy who 2 years ago was ridiculing
Microsoft OOXML for being bloated and
excessive.
Just because OOXML specifies a formula language, that does not mean that it isn't bloated and excessive.Letophoro7th May 2009 -
Laboring mightily
The reality is that Microsoft didn't want to spend time and effort implementing something which is NOT standard.
Except that they already spent that time and effort on their own CleverAge translator -- which works better than their NEW! IMPROVED! spreadsheet.
Now people who have used Microsoft's CleverAge product to generate ODF files will find them b0rk3d by Microsoft's SP2 -- and without any warning that the new version is incompatible with the previous one.
Yagotta B. Kidding7th May 2009 -
ODF was hosed.
That's like the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for!"
Microsoft did exactly like you would expect them to, they followed all the rules, but still managed to make things not work.
Sort of like giving some one a computer and an instruction on how to create a spreadsheet, and tell them to follow the instructions and only the instructions but they don't get anything done because no where in the instructions did it say to "Turn on the computer."
The OpenDoc community needs to reword their specification and push this. Not saying they should complain. End users do the same thing to Microsoft all the time. Microsoft just feels they are returning a taste of the medicine back to some of those end users. In a way they are.
nucrash7th May 2009 -
There IS no formula language in ODF
Get this straight: ODF 1.1 as standardized by
ISO does not specify a formula language.
Since it seems a lot of people in here is a bit
slow let's take that again:
ODF 1.1 does not specify a formula
language.
This so-called "glitch" is Microsofts failure
to implement something as it is implemented in
OpenOffice OUTSIDE the standard.
It is a failure of the standard . Quite
simply put, it's a scandal that ODF was rushed
to standard (in a preemptive move against
Microsoft) without a formula language.
This is once again just Rob Weir trying to
preempt criticism of ODF immaturity. He's
trying to turn the discussion away from the
fact that ODF is incomplete !
Some nerve criticizing another standard for
being bloated when the standard he himself is
deeply vested in is smaller because it is
incomplete.
honeymonster7th May 2009 -
RE: Microsoft under fire for ODF glitch in Excel
And if everyone just used Excel instead they wouldn't have this problem.
Loverock Davidson7th May 2009 -
olePigeon7th May 2009 -
Loverock Davidson7th May 2009
Talkback - Tell Us What You Think
The best of ZDNet, delivered
ZDNet Newsletters
Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox
Facebook Activity
