Oracle Confirms Commitment to OpenOffice.org (Linux Journal)

Posted Oct 16, 2010 15:36 UTC (Sat) by intgr (subscriber, #39733)
In reply to: Oracle Confirms Commitment to OpenOffice.org (Linux Journal) by luya
Parent article: Oracle Confirms Commitment to OpenOffice.org (Linux Journal)

How can you call OOXML "dead"? Microsoft is using it and they got exactly what they wanted: their products now have a "standardized document format" rubber-stamp, but other implementations are still at a big disadvantage.

Oracle Confirms Commitment to OpenOffice.org (Linux Journal)

Posted Oct 16, 2010 16:58 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

how can you say that microsoft is using OOXML when they have yet to ship a product that conforms to the standard?

Oracle Confirms Commitment to OpenOffice.org (Linux Journal)

Posted Oct 17, 2010 9:02 UTC (Sun) by AlexHudson (guest, #41828) [Link]

It may not conform in the strictest technical sense when validating output, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't use OOXML.

The simple fact is that OOXML is out there, with people from Office 2003 upwards being able to use those documents, and there are few advantages, if any, of moving to OpenDocument (which, if you noticed, the leading implementations of also don't conform to).

The file format thing is an argument from ten years ago; it's yesterday's battle.

Well, it's easy.

Posted Oct 17, 2010 12:00 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Well, it's easy: if Microsoft's product does not conform to the standard you change the standard!

I'm pretty sure in a few years time Microsoft Office 2007+ will finally conform to the standard - because it'll be tweaked enough to make Microsoft Office 2007+ compatible.

This is "Microsoft way": standards exist only to placate losers, Microsoft is never bound by them. Best case scenario it'll implement some small subset to placate authorities.

Oracle Confirms Commitment to OpenOffice.org (Linux Journal)

Posted Oct 17, 2010 14:04 UTC (Sun) by SEMW (guest, #52697) [Link]

My understanding is that Office 2010 *does* conform to *a* standard, that standard being ISO 29500/Transitional. What it doesn't conform to (in the sense of doesn't save as, not can't read) is ISO 29500/Strict -- not much of a surprise, being that that's presumably ( haven't read it) the theoretical ideal no-backwards-compatibility-baggage one, like with HTML 4 Strict/Transitional.

It is true that Office 2007 didn't even conform to ISO 29500/Transitional -- but that's not exactly surprising, given that the standard was only published a year after Office 2007 was released, and underwent several changes towards the end.

I'm not sure that this argument is particularly relevant, though -- discussing how well Microsoft's products conform to a standard that *they themselves introduced* is a bit, well, playing in their ballpark. And certainly doesn't tell you much about their Microsoft's devotion, or lack thereof, to the idea of industry standards.