Open XML timeline

Bart Wessels' Blog — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:21:31 GMT

Brian heeft een overzicht over OpenXML op zijn blog: I posted on this earlier in the year, but I thought...

re: Open XML timeline

Danny — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:02:15 GMT

Thanks, this is interesting. Feature request: I'd like to hear more about XML format development in the ODF thread prior to OpenOffice release, e.g. were Star Division using XML?

re: Open XML timeline

Bruce D'Arcus — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:42:02 GMT

Re: your quotes from Gary, you're of course being very selective there.

I also disagree with Gary on the bit that you do quote, having been involved in some of the same discussions he has been, but coming to very different conclusions.

He's particularly upset about a recent vote on proposals for numbered paragraphs. It's worth noting that the proposal that won came from developers at Sun and KOffice. I would say it was most passionately driven by the KOffice guys, in fact, who don't accept Gary's technical assessment.

I think it's worth noting too that the most important features going in ODF 1.2 (formulas and metadata) were driven largely by non-Sun people.

All of the work of our committee is public, so you can see for yourself the technical arguments and counter-arguments of any of this. All of the comments we get are also public. That's certainly not the case for the EMCA deliberations.

Also, the OOXML TC work is guided by much tighter rules, so any input from outside parties is done within the imperative to essentially create a format suitable for a single vendor's product.

So using number of participants is hardly any reasonable measure of the openness of a standards process.

I think the proof of the suitability of ODF or OOXML as a general purpose office format standard is whether we see independent implementations, and whether the format can evolve in an open fashion.

OOXML y ODF por Brian Jones (Program Manager de Microsoft Office)

Jorge Serrano - MVP Visual Developer - Visual Basic — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:01:04 GMT

Interesante post de Brian Jones que me encantaría replicar aquí enterito, pero que prefiero que lo leáis

re: Open XML timeline

Francis — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:05:09 GMT

Will there ever be a way to import/export DrawingML as standalone files? This would come in handy in cases where images need to be used repeatedly and with 100% fidelity, say for corporate design.

At present, there is no way for users to get vector graphics in/out of Office: EMF/WMF files are a security risk, platform-dependent, and being phased out with WPF; EPS files come in so many flavors that they rarely render correctly; and SVG is not supported.

Standalone DrawingML would also make XSLT transformations with SVG much easier, e.g. how SVG-VML file converters work: http://vitali.web.cs.unibo.it/Progetti/VectorConverter

re: Open XML timeline

Sean Azlin — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 03:12:16 GMT

Great post, Brian. I'm new to MS and found this to be very helpful.

re: Open XML timeline

hAl — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 09:05:33 GMT

What I find strange in Gary's comments that he claims that the oasis TC before 2004 was very interested in interoperability with the legacy documents out there.

In de startup meeting minutes of the TC

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200212/msg00003.html

it states: "The TC agreed that transformability into potential Microsoft office XML formats could be sensible, but is not a formal requirement."

(also note that the name of the format was still refering to openoffice at that time)

Futher more the charter of the TC appended to the open call for participating within OASIS (which seems the only formal invitation to I can find) already states it will use sun's office format as a basis and already list a set of proposed members for the TC with Sun already taking control before the start.

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200211/msg00000.html

If interoperability was of any importance then I would think such a committee would invite MS to participate before choosing it's competitors format and not the other way around.

re: Open XML timeline

John Scholes — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:28:27 GMT

You are correct. The suggestion that MS first thought about XML when ODF was submitted to ISO, or even earlier in 2005 is clearly silly. MS has clearly been mulling over XML for many years.

But I am not sure what that has to do with the merits of OpenXML as an ISO/IEC standard.

As far as I can see, OpenXML is a kind of technical spec of Office 2007 or maybe of a service pack to be released later this year or early next.

Clearly past versions of Office have had an overwhelmingly dominant share of the office document market (way over 90%) and Office 2007 may well become equally dominant. There is also a respectable argument that JTC1 should not have approved the ODF standard when it was clearly not backed by the dominant vendor.

But given that we are where we are, why should JTC1 approve a 2nd standard?

re: Open XML timeline

BrianJones — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:34:54 GMT

We're in a position where there will be millions of Open XML documents out there over the coming years. I think it's pretty easy to agree that given that, the world would be better off if the specification for that format was owned and maintained by the ISO.

I think that both Open XML and ODF have very strong points and some weak points as well. Both are out there though, and while they have different design goals in mind; I hope both will continue to improve over time. Defining the process for that evolution will be equally important to the initial review going on right now. In TC45 we've been discussing how this will work. Just as Microsoft handed the formats over to Ecma a couple years ago, Ecma is essentially now handing the reigns over to JTC1.

-Brian

re: Open XML timeline

Dave S. — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 04:59:59 GMT

Reigns?

("handing the reigns over to JTC1")

Freudian slip, perhaps.

On “motivation” and commitment to open file formats

Ruud de Jonge — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:25:05 GMT

Microsoft has been and continues to be fully committed to opening its document formats for Word, Excel