April 21, 2008 7:46 AM PDT
Office 2007 fails OOXML conformance test
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In a blog posting last week, Alex Brown, leader of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) group in charge of maintaining the Office Open XML (OOXML) standard, revealed that Microsoft Office 2007 documents do not meet the latest specifications of the ISO OOXML draft standard.
"Word documents generated by today's version of Microsoft Office 2007 do not conform to ISO/IEC 29500," Brown in the blog post recounting the process of testing a document against the "strict" and "transitional" schema defined in the standard.
Microsoft Office 2007 saves files in OOXML, an XML-based format, which has been offered for standardization through the Ecma industry body to the ISO. Since a vote narrowly accepted OOXML as a draft international standard earlier this month, ISO is now in control of the specification.
As changes were made at an ISO ballot resolution meeting, Office 2007 documents no longer conform to the current standard based on OOXML, known as ISO/IEC 29500, according to Brown.
In a statement sent to ZDNet UK on Friday, Brown said that although he is hopeful that Microsoft will update its Office products to stay in line with the version of OOXML approved by ISO, it is not guaranteed.
"The question behind the question, for a lot of the current OOXML debate, seems to be: can Microsoft really be trusted to behave? We shall see," Brown said.
Commentators, including Tim Bray, the inventor of XML, have suggested that Microsoft is unlikely to bother to keep conformant with the OOXML standard as it develops within ISO, but Brown was more optimistic.
"Given Microsoft's proven ability to tinker with the Office XML file format between service packs, I am hoping that Microsoft Office will shortly be brought into line with the (ISO/IEC) 29500 specification, and will stay that way," Brown said. "Indeed, a strong motivation for approving 29500 as an ISO/IEC standard was to discourage Microsoft from this kind of file-format rug-pulling stunt in future."
Brown added that Microsoft has probably realized that there may be considerable commercial advantages to becoming a good citizen in the standards community.
"Actively working to make OOXML an internationally informed standard will help them to retain their considerable share of the desktop office space, as this removes objections to Office having a proprietary, vendor-controlled format," he said.
In future, Brown hopes to repeat the test to see if the open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, conforms with the Open Source Initiative (OSI) version of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) document standard: ISO/IEC 26300.
He asked: "Will anyone be brave enough to predict what kind of result that exercise will have?"
Peter Judge of ZDNet UK reported from London.
See more CNET content tagged:
Alex Brown,
Microsoft Office 2007,
Microsoft Office,
OpenDocument Format,
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say it...
Which is why it will never be a standard, regardless of how many ISO members Microsoft bribes.
2007 does not "conform" to OOXML. OOXML is a quasi
proprietary binary, and xml formulation created to support
Microsoft enterprise solutions, and increase the publics
dependence on Microsoft. The fact that the current version
does not conform, means that you "might" get a version that
conforms in the future that everyone "must" buy.
Paying off a few people force it through a system to get a stamp
of approval does not make it a standard. Real world use, and
acceptance is what makes a standard. That means usage across
all platforms, and not in some meek manner.
Re:
"Brown added that Microsoft has probably realized that there may be considerable commercial advantages to becoming a good citizen in the standards community.
"Actively working to make OOXML an internationally informed standard will help them to retain their considerable share of the desktop office space, as this removes objections to Office having a proprietary, vendor-controlled format," he said.
In future, Brown hopes to repeat the test to see if the open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, conforms with the Open Source Initiative (OSI) version of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) document standard: ISO/IEC 26300.
He asked: "Will anyone be brave enough to predict what kind of result that exercise will have?"
How go the "i-n-t-e-r-o-p-e-r-a-b-i-l-i-t-y" issues (between Microsoft Office XXX and OpenOffice XXX...!!!
Read the subject line.
What the story refers to as "OOXML" in the title is in fact the yet-to-be published IS 29500 standard, which will differ from ECMA-376 by about 1000 items.
There is no way any year-and-a-half-old software is going to conform to a yet-to-be-publsihed standard.
That is the non-story. That's all.
P.S. Micrsoft has pledged to make MS Office 100% compliant with IS 29500 as soon as possible. Their SDK for OOXML applications, which will be released in beta form in a few days, will be 100% compliant with IS 29500.
It's up to us to make Microsoft confirm.
How long does it take to update their current implementation to reflect the changes?
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2008/04/21/alex-brown-s-research-abiword-enhancements.aspx
Be safe and use whatever MSFT is shipping.
Really? Why would anyone dream that MSFT would want an open spec that anyone could conform to?
You've been had world! You should have remembered the first rule of dealing with MSFT: if their mouths are moving, they're lying - and while you're listening to the lies your attention is being diverted while they burn down your house and kidnap your children.
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