Ready to be published? LXer is read by around 350,000 individuals each month, and is an excellent place for you to publish your ideas, thoughts, reviews, complaints, etc. Do you have something to say to the Linux community?
The editor of the Open Document Format (ODF) standard has written a letter that strongly supports recognizing Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) file format as a standard, arguing that if it fails, ODF will suffer. As the editor of OpenDocument, I want to promote OpenDocument, extol its features, urge the widest use of it as possible, none of which is accomplished by the anti-OpenXML position in ISO," Patrick Durusau wrote. "The bottom line is that OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses. ... Passage of OpenXML in ISO is going to benefit OpenDocument as much as anyone else."
[More FUD from Patrick. How did he become an ODF editor? - Sander]
The only way to mould OOXML into something resembling a proper standard is a rejection of DIS 29500 and the a resubmit of Ecma 376 through the normal, slow track ISO process.
Even apart from the process, isn't the proposed standard itself infected with proprietary binary-isms?
The surest test of a usable OOXML standard would be the ability to construct any complete document that can be created by the software based solely on information in the standard alone, and, if I understand correctly, that isn't the case right now.
Indeed. That's most certainly isn't the case now. But hand it over to ISO in the non-fast-track process, let them hammer on if for a year or 2-3 and maybe, maybe something nice and usable could come out of it. Of course, the odds are that ISO will simply lift the few bits that are not part of ODF yet and put them in ODF. Problem solved. And in under a year too!
Post a comment
A free account is needed to post. Write your comment here first: your text is kept in this browser while you sign up or log in, and is waiting for you when you come back.
Your message:
|||||
10
Markdown: **bold**, *italic*, [text](https://link), - lists, > quotes, $x^2$ for math. Formatting help
Under those circumstances, OOXML would be a boon to everyone, Microsoft included.
The current nasty mess, however, not.