Comments

# Peder Vendelbo Mikkelsen said on April 1, 2008 4:59 PM:

Here is the correct URL to Oliver Bell's blog-article:

http://osrin.net/2008/04/02/dis29500-becomes-is29500/

# dmahugh said on April 1, 2008 5:11 PM:

Thanks, Peder, I've corrected that.  It's still early enough in the morning (in Singapore) that Oliver may not have noticed.

# dave said on April 1, 2008 7:41 PM:

Sorry to rain on your parade, but it looks like you will need to print up a business for CSI.  It would appear that ODF was just accepted as the Croatian national standard.

# chris.strevel [blog] said on April 1, 2008 8:19 PM:

Al fin... el James podrá descansar ( 1 , 2 , 3 ). La guerra de los formatos ha sido terminada y OpenXML

# DJ said on April 1, 2008 10:18 PM:

So when will MS Office implement the standard?

# Iga lahendus tekitab uusi probleeme ehk alati võib leida veel ühe bugi. said on April 2, 2008 1:32 AM:

Eilne uudis on see, et DIS 29500 ehk Open XML -i standard, mis oli viimasel hääletusel ISO/IEC standardite

# dmahugh said on April 2, 2008 3:24 AM:

Looks like it's official now.  Here's the ISO press release:

http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1123

# Tryan said on April 2, 2008 8:29 AM:

Congratulations, you've succeeded in making a mockery of the standards process

# dmahugh said on April 2, 2008 2:08 PM:

DJ, we're looking into the details on that and we'll announce our plans after they firm up.  We're committed to implementing IS29500 (as Chris Capossela announced recently), so it's just a matter of figuring out the scope of the changes and planning/executing the work.

# Dave S. said on April 2, 2008 10:51 PM:

I thought that Microsoft participated in the submission and the review process. Odd that MS would not be able to roll out the compliant version of Office within a week or so. Keeping up with - what - 38? changes should no be a big deal.

# John Hensley said on April 3, 2008 1:05 AM:

At least there are people in China, Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela who still care about freedom.

# John Hensley said on April 3, 2008 1:10 AM:

Dave, you might be accustomed to making random changes to code and kicking it out the door untested, but that's not how Microsoft does things.

# hAl said on April 3, 2008 2:06 AM:

@Dave S

It is probably stranger that OpenOffice still has not managed to make an application that provides full support for any versions of ODF in the 5 years that they have been busy with that format now. ODF is supposed to be relativly small and simple or is it ....

# Ian Easson said on April 3, 2008 9:17 AM:

Don't be snarky, Dave S.  You know there were about 1000 changes approved at the BRM, not 38.

# omz said on April 3, 2008 1:13 PM:

Congratulations for the countries that had *balls* and didn't agree with this way of deliver standards to people:

   * New Zealand [1] ( dissaproved )

   * Brasil [2] ( dissaproved )

   * India ( dissaproved )

   * China ( dissaproved )

   * South Africa ( dissaproved )

   * Canada ( dissaproved )

   * Venezuela ( dissaproved )

   * Ecuador ( dissaproved )

   * Iran ( dissaproved )

   * Italy ( abstained )

   * Spain ( abstained )

   * Belgium ( abstained )

   * Netherlands ( abstained but only Microsoft opposed the disapproval )

   * France ( abstained due to heavy Microsoft pressure )

   * Malaysia ( abstained due to heavy Microsoft pressure )

   * Australia ( abstained due to heavy Microsoft pressure, government opposed OOXML )

   * Kenya ( abstained )

and many others ( 17 in total )

[1] http://standards.co.nz/news/Media+releases/NZ+maintains+negative+vote+on+OOXML+Standard.htm

[2] http://homembit.com/2008/03/openxml-in-brazil-no.html

I would like that the "abstainers" were "disapprovers", but i know... the lobbying was too heavy.

 --omz

# dmahugh said on April 3, 2008 3:37 PM:

Omz, you seem to be questioning the courage and integrity of the vast majority of national bodies in ISO/IEC.  I don't think that's supported by the facts.

For example, consider Jirka Kosek of the Czech Republic:

http://xmlguru.cz/2008/02/report-from-brm

He submitted many comments about problems in the spec, including things nobody else had pointed out.  Then when the Ecma proposed dispositions came out, he gave detailed feedback to Rex Jaeschke on how he'd like to see the dispositions improved.  Then at the BRM, he wrote resolutions and worked with others to build consensus for those changes.  And for doing all of that, people like you are calling him names and questioning his character.  (Jirka's one of many examples worldwide, and I used him because I saw the above thread today for the first time.)

Please consider the possibility that some of these people may disagree with you for reasons other than a lack of character.

# Pranav ... Blogging said on April 3, 2008 5:19 PM:

Yes ..really thanks everybody, people who were "for" and people who were "not for". I believe that everything

# omz said on April 3, 2008 11:11 PM:

( when i say 17 countries i mean P countries ... most Observer countries didn't review more than 10 pages of this beast, the same goes for the rushed P-upgraded countries unconditional yes-sayers:  Jamaica, Cyprus, Malta, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Cote-d'Ivore, Pakistan )

Regarding Jirka, i agree with orlando's comments  ( see the comments section of Jirka post ).

By the way, congratulation Canada, one of the contry with balls ( and sorry Donald Knuth, this is were we are in 2008: DIS 29500 is an ISO standard, will you modify TeX to support it? ):

http://www.scc.ca/Asset/iu_files/29500-OOXML-Cdn-Pub-Stmt.pdf

 omz

# Tom said on April 6, 2008 2:03 AM:

Give that past attempts (4) to respond to Doug's request for detail of concerns about my assessment of inappropriate zeal in support of OOXML (beyond making technical arguments) and given my biased approach of providing only single specific URLs in support of a point of view of events that I did not witness, I offer the following seven search topics for the reader's broad review:

1 Sweden microsoft ooxml

2 Norway microsoft ooxml

3 Croatia microsoft ooxml

4 Jamaica Cyprus Malta Lebanon ooxml upgrades

5 Windows Evangelism! A stacked panel

6 Peter Quinn microsoft

7 Mexico Gates ooxml

Thank you.

# Dave S. said on April 8, 2008 11:29 PM:

@John Hensley (& Ian) - Clever. I did not refer to random changes, but to a well defined set of changes that were critical to the passage of MSO-XML into ISO standing. On second thought, why is the common wisdom to -never- buy an MS 1.0 product?

As to the number of changes, the majority appear to have been formating changes, or what should be simple extensions. Unless the code is poorly modularized. Given that each program has idiosyncratic behaviors around what should be identical tasks, I'm pretty sure modularity is not the strong suit.

@hAL - when Open Office holds a 95%+ market share and sends attorneys to discuss technical matters with government representatives, then I'll care what they have done. Why you care is your problem.

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