Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

re: Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

Sean DALY — Fri, 05 May 2006 03:19:19 GMT

The vendor-neutral OpenDocument Format has just been certified as an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 26300), which means that it is now the clear choice for reliable long-term archiving of editable electronic documents.

Meanwhile, Microsoft seeks to promote its own XML standard as a better alternative.

Unfortunately, your company has very real credibility problems on this subject:

* Microsoft continues to refuse to add ODF support to the 73 other formats currently supported by Microsoft Office, although Jason Matusow of Microsoft did go so far as to state that Microsoft would not oppose the use of ODF by any organization. I should hope that such bullying would not be necessary to encourage adoption of your standard. Meanwhile, the number of members of the ODF Alliance has grown to 138 in the two months of its existence. So: When is ODF support coming to Microsoft Office?

* The presentation made at the ECMA General Assembly at Nice last December 8th clearly identified the problems associated with old-style binary formats, yet Microsoft refuses to publish the specifications of these legacy formats - a step which would do more to unlock the data of "millions of users and their billions of documents" than any new XML format, since anyone could then develop read/write filters - assuming, that is, that Microsoft would not attack non-Microsoft developers for copyright or patent infringement. So: why do these previous formats remain closed? What is to be gained by keeping them secret, except to lock in users to Microsoft products?
www.ecma-international.org/activities/Office%20Open%20XML%20Formats/TC45_GA_Dez05.ppt

* Previous Microsoft pseudostandards such as RTF (Rich Text Format) and CSV (Comma-Separated Values) have been unstable -- changing arbitrarily with each new version of Microsoft Office -- and poorly documented -- there has never been a Microsoft specification for CSV and it has been formalized as a MIME type only since last October thanks to the dedicated Yakov Shafranovich ( http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4180.txt ). Why has Microsoft been so sloppy these past 15 years concerning the documentation of these two formats? How will the new XML format be any different? In other words, will the format be changed with each new version of Microsoft Office, or will it remain stable? Will it be obsolete 2, 10, 20, 50 years from now?

* The licensing associated with the new Microsoft XML format is vague concerning the rights of developers to freely use it. Although Microsoft claims that it will renounce royalties and promises not to sue, the format remains encumbered because it is apparently illegal to transfer rights in the manner of the GNU General Public License. Why doesn't Microsoft simply and explicitly indicate GNU GPL compatability?

* Microsoft had every opportunity to participate in the OASIS ODF committee and indeed chose not to do so, despite the urgings and encouragements of industry pundits. Why not?

* The "community" at openxmldeveloper.org is composed of Microsoft Certified Gold Partners, none of whom offer products which run in non-Microsoft environments and one of whom goes as far as saying that the Microsoft format will allow him to more effectively compete with open-source alternatives. Meanwhile, the ECMA TC45 committee work is already benefiting from Free Open Source Software contributors such as Jody Goldberg. When the subject is interoperability, isn't it quite clear that FOSS is preferable to vendor-specific partners, since FOSS development is standards-based?
http://openxmldeveloper.org/archive/2006/03/23/79.aspx

* OpenOffice amongst others has filters to read and write Microsoft legacy binary formats; today, no Microsoft product can read or write ODF. If OpenOffice supports the new Microsoft XML format, doesn't that mean OOo will offer richer, more flexible file conversion capabilities in comparison to Microsoft Office? And what about the other dozen ODF compliant applications including KOffice, Abiword, DocVert, Writely, etc. available today -- does Microsoft really wish to keep Office inadequate in this regard?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_applications_supporting_OpenDocument#Word_processors

Thank you

Sean DALY.

re: Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

Pat Garard — Fri, 05 May 2006 12:09:18 GMT

G'Day Brian,

Will Office 2007 support the ISO/IEC 26300 standard office file
format that was reportedly approved 1 May?

Pat Garard
Melbourne, Australia

re: Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

justin — Fri, 05 May 2006 14:18:19 GMT

So the updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month. Would it be able to support standard office file format? Lets see Ecma would establish a standard for Office open XML file formats as described in TC45 program of work.

re: Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

BrianJones — Fri, 05 May 2006 17:11:31 GMT

Pat, there are a number of file formats supported by Office 2007, but ODF is not currently one of them. We do support many widely used formats like HTML, RTF, and even PDF now.
I've seen that there is a project underway though to build an add-in to Office that will support ODF, so if folks want to use ODF it sounds like that will be an option. I've said before that while we didn't have widespread demand from our customers for ODF support, if demand exists someone could always come along and build an add-in. Anyone is free to do so. This is a path taken for all kinds of vertical markets where it makes more sense for a 3rd party add-in to come along and leverage Office's extensibility.

Justin, not sure what your question is. Yes, it's going to be a standard (that was the reason we submitted it to Ecma).

-Brian

re: Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

Martin Ellis — Sat, 06 May 2006 00:34:29 GMT

Hi Brian,

In previous blog entries, you never quite gave a straight answer to the question of whether the new "Open XML" format could be implemented in GPL, without violating some licence or other. (At least, I never saw you give one)

So it's quite interesting, to me at least, that you draw attention to the Gnumeric filter in your blog. I've just checked the code in CVS, and it seems it is licenced under the GPL.

Oh, one more thing. You mention PDF support... will that include import? Sorry, if this it's common knowledge - I haven't seen it mentioned explicitly anywhere.

Thanks
Martin

re: Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

BrianJones — Mon, 08 May 2006 19:50:04 GMT

Hi Martin, sorry if I've been unclear on those questions around compatibility with other licenses. The move we made back in November away from the royalty-free licenses and to instead use the CNS was done because of the earlier criticisms around potential incompatibles with some open source licenses. Here is the original post on that: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/11/22/495876.aspx
I’ve talked to a number of open source developers and read some comments that were very positive about this new approach.

In answer to your second question, the PDF support is for save only, not open. It’s more of a “publish” feature, where once you’ve published it to PDF, you’ll need to keep a .docx file around as well if you think you’ll make any more changes. Of course there are other tools out there that will let you edit PDF files, Office just isn’t one of them.

-Brian

re: Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

tom — Tue, 09 May 2006 09:15:06 GMT

Would the update version of Open XML spec coming this month be able to support standard office file format? Its upto Ecma to establish a standard for Office open XML file formats. But there r number of file formats supported by Office 2007 and ODF is not one of them. Thanks for the info!

Design Goals Behind SpreadsheetML

Brian Jones: Open XML Formats — Wed, 10 May 2006 17:49:41 GMT

It's been awhile since I've talked in detail about the SpreadsheetML schema and I apologize. I had a...

re: Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

BrianJones — Fri, 12 May 2006 00:20:38 GMT

Hey Tom, the update of the Open XML spec will be the latest draft of the standard. It is not complete yet though, as we still have a lot of hard work ahead.
In Office 2007, there are a number of formats supported such as HTML, RTF, SpreadsheetML (from Office XP), WordprocessingML (from Word 2003), and of course the new default formats which will be the Open XML standard. Hope that helps.

-Brian

re: Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

BrianJones — Thu, 18 May 2006 16:05:28 GMT

I received an e-mail from Sean Daly notifying me that his comments he tried to leave on this post never made it up here. I'm not sure why that's the case (I let him know that that I definitely don't delete comments... worst case I'll remove profanity). So, anyway, here is a comment that Sean tried to leave on this post:

***********************************

The vendor-neutral OpenDocument Format has just been certified as an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 26300), which means that it is now the clear choice for reliable long-term archiving of editable electronic documents.

Meanwhile, Microsoft seeks to promote its own XML standard as a better alternative.

Unfortunately, your company has very real credibility problems on this subject:

* Microsoft continues to refuse to add ODF support to the 73 other formats currently supported by Microsoft Office, although Jason Matusow of Microsoft did go so far as to state that Microsoft would not oppose the use of ODF by any organization. I should hope that such bullying would not be necessary to encourage adoption of your standard. Meanwhile, the number of members of the ODF Alliance has grown to 138 in the two months of its existence. So: When is ODF support coming to Microsoft Office?

* The presentation made at the ECMA General Assembly at Nice last December 8th clearly identified the problems associated with old-style binary formats, yet Microsoft refuses to publish the specifications of these legacy formats - a step which would do more to unlock the data of "millions of users and their billions of documents" than any new XML format, since anyone could then develop read/write filters - assuming, that is, that Microsoft would not attack non-Microsoft developers for copyright or patent infringement. So: why do these previous formats remain closed? What is to be gained by keeping them secret, except to lock in users to Microsoft products?
www.ecma-international.org/activities/Office%20Open%20XML%20Formats/TC45_GA_Dez05.ppt

* Previous Microsoft pseudostandards such as RTF (Rich Text Format) and CSV (Comma-Separated Values) have been unstable -- changing arbitrarily with each new version of Microsoft Office -- and poorly documented -- there has never been a Microsoft specification for CSV and it has been formalized as a MIME type only since last October thanks to the dedicated Yakov Shafranovich ( http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4180.txt ). Why has Microsoft been so sloppy these past 15 years concerning the documentation of these two formats? How will the new XML format be any different? In other words, will the format be changed with each new version of Microsoft Office, or will it remain stable? Will it be obsolete 2, 10, 20, 50 years from now?

* The licensing associated with the new Microsoft XML format is vague concerning the rights of developers to freely use it. Although Microsoft claims that it will renounce royalties and promises not to sue, the format remains encumbered because it is apparently illegal to transfer rights in the manner of the GNU General Public License. Why doesn't Microsoft simply and explicitly indicate GNU GPL compatability?

* Microsoft had every opportunity to participate in the OASIS ODF committee and indeed chose not to do so, despite the urgings and encouragements of industry pundits. Why not?

* The "community" at openxmldeveloper.org is composed of Microsoft Certified Gold Partners, none of whom offer products which run in non-Microsoft environments and one of whom goes as far as saying that the Microsoft format will allow him to more effectively compete with open-source alternatives. Meanwhile, the ECMA TC45 committee work is already benefiting from Free Open Source Software contributors such as Jody Goldberg. When the subject is interoperability, isn't it quite clear that FOSS is preferable to vendor-specific partners, since FOSS development is standards-based?
http://openxmldeveloper.org/archive/2006/03/23/79.aspx

* OpenOffice amongst others has filters to read and write Microsoft legacy binary formats; today, no Microsoft product can read or write ODF. If OpenOffice supports the new Microsoft XML format, doesn't that mean OOo will offer richer, more flexible file conversion capabilities in comparison to Microsoft Office? And what about the other dozen ODF compliant applications including KOffice, Abiword, DocVert, Writely, etc. available today -- does Microsoft really wish to keep Office inadequate in this regard?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_applications_supporting_OpenDocument#Word_processors

* The OpenDocument Foundation has announced the near-availability of an ODF plugin for Microsoft Word which will allow governments and businesses to easily save and load ODF files. Batch conversions to ODF will come next, easing automation of currently manual data interchange processes since ODF filter development only needs to be done once on each side of an exchange. As document creators regain control of their documents, will Microsoft try to hinder the efficient functioning of third-party ODF tools designed to work with Microsoft Word? Will Microsoft help developers to maintain functionality to the next version of Word, or will Microsoft prefer to try to break compatability in order to further its own XML standard?

Thank you

Sean DALY.

Legal issues around PDF support

Brian Jones: Open XML Formats — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 17:30:30 GMT

About 8 months ago we announced to our MVPs that we would provide PDF publish support natively in the...

re: Updated draft of the Open XML spec coming this month

Gerben hoeksma — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:12:48 GMT

My profession: electronic engineering
My PC use: all kinds of technical applications, much word processing with import of praphical data like ocilloscope plots tec. Use of spreadsheets.
Sratetd the word processing in the WP age (up to WP51./52).
Using MS Word for a couple of years, and I do not like it, because the difficulties I have in stable insertion of graphics.
The only way to make sure that my *.docs are not destroyed at a certain moment, is to save them as *.pdf (I use PDF995 for this purpose).
I have been using OpenOffice1.0 at home in combination with W98 and a Pentium200 (82 MB RAM) for a number of years. Although its (OO) memory use is greater (then MSWord), and certain operations are slower, with OpenOffice 2.0.2 and a new high speed Pentium based computer with WXP and 512 MB RAM, this speed difference is hardly noticeble. I get spell check in 4 languages and the whole office software set for free. It works stable, an impression that especially MS Word has never been able to give me.
The new Open Office2 suite is easy to use, and even my wife who has just started word processing, finds it easy to use.
Open standards are common in almost every technical field.
I really hope the ISO/IEC 26300 standard wil become used widely, and users themselves can judge whether or not the need MS Office suits.
I could give a lot of other time consuming "computer" events, in my daily work, all stemming from the fact that there is hardly any normal open technical standardization in Windows software land.

Design Goals Behind SpreadsheetML

Brian Jones: Open XML Formats — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:45:37 GMT

It's been awhile since I've talked in detail about the SpreadsheetML schema and I apologize. I had a

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