Microsoft appears to have lost the Open Office XML battle, according to Pamela at Groklaw, but seems destined to win the war, according to the New York Times. But, as Pamela notes, given the fact that the committee members who will be reviewing comments from the disapproving countries are overwhelmingly in favor of Microsoft's latest bid for global monopoly, it's likely just a matter of time (early next year, in fact) before OOXML becomes a "standard."
A standard that smells of money and the taint of corruption. But a "standard" nonetheless.
Now if only the standard actually worked. That would be progress.
You simply must go read Matthew Aslett's passionate, forlorn description of the farce that is the OOXML standardization process. Petty, shallow, and mean.
Unfortunately, I think the ugliness probably goes both ways, as the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. It's no wonder, then, that some (like Sweden) are throwing up their hands in disgust.
To quote Matthew:
... Read more
Arst Design has a probing article on Microsoft's Open Office XML 'standard.' Yeesh. OOXML is even worse than I thought. And to think I wanted to give Microsoft the benefit of a doubt. Fool me once....
Microsoft is trying to push new file formats that are using ZIP and XML. Are those new file formats any good for Office developers ? In other words, should anyone feel safe to make direct access to file parts, and start getting free of running instances of Microsoft Office and its COM object model, usually through VBA?
They insist on the fact that, provided you make a valid use of the XML, pretty much changing the content of anything in an existing document can be achieved by sequentially 1) unzipping the content 2) making appropriate changes to one or more XML parts that are compatible with the provided XML schemas and open packaging relationships 3) zipping the content back.
Unfortunately, Microsoft doth insist too much, as the article points out. The OOXML spec churns out broken code. Try again, Redmond.
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