Slashdot Log In
Microsoft Deprecating Some OOXML Functionality
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Dec 28, 2007 10:28 PM
from the dotting-the-is-crossing-the-ts dept.
from the dotting-the-is-crossing-the-ts dept.
christian.einfeldt writes "According to open standards advocate Russell Ossendryver, Microsoft will be deprecating certain functionality in its Microsoft Office Open XML specification. Ossendryver says the move is an attempt to quiet critics of the specification in the run up to the crucial February ISO vote. The Microsoft-led industry standards group formally offering OOXML confirms in a 21 December 2007 announcement that issues related to the 'leap year bug', VML, compatibility settings such as 'AutoSpaceLikeWord95' and others will be 'extracted from the main specification and relocated to an independent annex in DIS 29500 for deprecated functionality.'"
Related Stories
[+]
Public Request For Microsoft To Release Deprecated File Formats 154 comments
SgtChaireBourne writes "NLnet, a Dutch foundation for an open information society, has publicly called for Microsoft to release its deprecated formats into the public domain. The maker of Office has made large efforts during the last year to move against the OpenDocument Format (ISO/IEC 26300). These efforts have been producing a lot of commentary regarding the amount of data bound up in the Redmond-based company's proprietary specifications. It's a nasty situation to end up with files that cannot be read because the sole vendor with the documentation for the files has withdrawn permission. ODF is the way forward, or a step forward at the least, with new documents. But for the old documents in the legacy formats, they cannot be read without supporting software and that support requires full access to the specifications."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
deprecated but widely used by MS software? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:deprecated but widely used by MS software? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:deprecated but widely used by MS software? (Score:5, Funny)
You are in a Microsoft Office. To the North, is a door, you hear what sounds like chairs being thrown. To the South, you see an open door, but a very dark room.
What do you do?
InnerWeb
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Try using <p> next time. It's standard HTML.
Re:deprecated but widely used by MS software? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see what the Linux side does.
Do they have corporate support? Yes.
Does Microsoft? Yes.
Do they have 24/7 corporate call centers and fast pick up rates? Yes.
Microsoft does not have 24/7 corporate call centers.
Do they have people who know what the hell they're talking about on the otherside? Yes -- I have even got a kernel developer at one point when it came to a serious issue.
Does Microsoft? Well, in my experience - never managed to talk to anyone who seemed to actually know.
Does the regular consumer get support? Yes - obviously paid support is better but there are a lot of free alternatives that appear to be just as good (despite the people who perceive Linux support is 'rtfm').
Does Microsoft? There is a community that provides support on issues, but there is no paid support options offered at all.Try researching the subject a little before opening your mouth next time.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, to be fair, Linux man pages is actually useful support, as compared to: "Did you remember to turn on your printer? Did this help? If not, contact your system manager..."
Re:deprecated but widely used by MS software? (Score:4, Informative)
+100.
Unfortunate reality is that M$ provides nearly complete (== always incomplete) solutions. Up side is that you can base your business on it. Down side - you are locked into M$ solutions. But you heard that hundred times already. But what everybody's missing is development side: developers working solely on M$ platforms turn slowly into agoraphobic drones who would claim that "M$ is best" just because they do not know anything better.
Many of my versity friends turned into such drones - even most reasonable ones. M$ keeps feeding them with new (presumably better) APIs and they just keep their minds piped directly into their beloved MSDN subscriptions. 5 (or 6?) data base APIs? And M$ still keep printing them. 6 IPC APIs? - OLE, OLE2, ActiveX, COM, DCOM, COM+ - but M$ doesn't stop the printing press.
"Windows is better because it has API [XXX] and [Linux/Mac OS X/etc] doesn't." Explaining people that API does solve Windows specific problem which doesn't exist on Linux nor Mac OS X just doesn't work - because they never touched them. And they will never touch them because they do not have the M$Windows' hundreds APIs. (Recent best example was ASIO [wikipedia.org] - and fact that only Windows does support it.)
Parent
Smoke and Mirrors (Score:5, Insightful)
It's abundantly clear now that the format is critically flawed and cannot be implemented by anyone, not even the Office team themselves.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
No, not OOXML, but there are plenty of examples around the world of governments requiring you to use a document format to do business with them.
InnerWen
Tax data standards (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Smoke and Mirrors (Score:5, Insightful)
You may not see a pattern here. I suspect may others will.
-
Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something related to this. - William Henry Gates III on ACPI, 1999
- Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language. - Prashant Sridharan, MS Visual J++ Product Manager, 1997
- The first obligation that the ICPs undertook was to distribute Internet Explorer and no "Other Browser" in connection with any custom Web browsing software or CD-ROM content that they might offer - US District Court of Columbia on proprietary HTML extensions, 1999
- OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new ones, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market. - Vinod Vallopillil, ex-MS Engineer, 1999
- The first type of conduct found to constitute an abuse consisted in Microsoft's refusal to supply its competitors with interoperability information and to authorize them to use that information to develop and distribute products competing with its own products - EC First Instance Court, 2007
- We [Microsoft] are OASIS members but since we didn't have an interest in ODF we didn't participate in its development. - Brian Jones , MS Office Program Manager, 2007
This isn't a battle between OOXML and ISO. It is a battle between having document standards and not having them.Microsoft is trying to wreck the concept of standards and interoperability to a point where those concepts are useless.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
FYI: (Score:2)
I assume some departments of IBM eat their own dog food, but they definitely don't all do it.
Addenda: (Score:2)
About That... (Score:2)
There was, and probably still is, a powerful pro-Microsoft faction at IBM. That said, the office version your friends used, given the timing, was almost certainly not saving documents using MSOOXML.
This is about formats, not software packages. It doesn't matter if people use MS-Office. It matters
About right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Deprecated means forever (Score:5, Insightful)
In another move to spread more FUD, now they're trying to hide the UGLY part of the specification. But, what use is hiding it? They claim the deprecated features will be used only for the migration of old binary formats, and that they should not be used by new documents... But considering that the whole point of this document format standardization effort is to be able to open any document in 20 or 30 years time, and if the old binary format documents will be converted using deprecated features, that just means that any software implementing the standard will have to support the deprecated features anyway...
Although they keep manipulating, manipulating, and manipulating more, I still think their format stinks, they're only using it to spread FUD over other formats, and I really hope they can't pull this stunt.
Re:Deprecated means forever (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Deprecated means forever (fixing broken link) (Score:2, Informative)
I see you have it as
404 (Score:2)
Re:Deprecated means forever (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone help me out here, for real. I think I'm missing something. What is the point of those ridiculous "backward compatibility" tags? Word's never been good enough for pixel-perfect rendering. For example, printing the same document on different printers hasn't ever been likely to give the same output. So, what on earth is the justification for maintaining a "renderLikeWord95" tag when that was never well-defined to begin with?
If the <foo> attribute originally meant "centered, bold, double-spaced", then just make the importer translate it to something like "<textblock align="center" weight="bold" height="200%"> text goes here </textblock>". Forget bug compatibility. That's a dying horse and needs killed now before we end up with something like the loose HTML parsing nightmare that browser designed are stuck with. Who cares how the document originally displayed on the original machine? MS never did before today.
Don't hide those tags - delete them. There is no rational explanation other than lock-in for having them, and as long as they're around, the IT world will know this is a joke.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Thus, if there is a specific way that rendering works in Word '95 that is different to Word 2007, correct it while painting it to the DC. If the printer driver doesn't work, then
Re: (Score:2)
A superb standard (Score:5, Funny)
-- Miguel
What about... (Score:2, Funny)
AutoSpaceLikeWord95 (Score:2, Funny)
Lets just hope they keep the 'WaveYourArmsInTheAirLikeYouJustDontCare' setting.
How is OOXML good anyone but Microsoft? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As far as they are concerned, they are getting the best deal and there arent any compeditors.
They simply dont know any better.
"What's good for msft, is good for America" (Score:2)
This is an unsurprising move (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the obvious problem:
They will claim a feature is deprecated, or not part of the spec, but their software will continue using it. Meanwhile, other programs that try to read and write OOXML format following the "official" spec, will result in the documents created or edited by other programs not being fully compatible with MS Word. This will be seen by the user community as a deficiency in the alternative software and no as a problem with Microsoft's software.
We have seen this before and we continue to see it. People think that because a web site works with MSIE and doesn't work with Firefox that there's a problem with Firefox... Microsoft continues to damage the competition in this way and will persist in the same. I hope that the voters in the ISO decisions are aware of this potential problem.
Re: (Score:2)
I can almost guarantee this... (Score:2)
Will these be removed from MICROSOFT OFFICE? (Score:4, Interesting)
But I suspect that was the goal all along. Orgs that just wanted to use Microsoft Office in the first place would be able to say "see, this is open" and keep doing what they were doing.
Well, at least it's somewhat documented, making it somewhat easier than
Sneaky? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really try to fight the kneejerk anti-microsoft sentiment around here, but lordy, all of their moves seem so calculated and evil. It's not just single actions, it's a pattern of actions. Humans are great at recognizing patterns. And even with good moves and bad moves, one can generally see a positive attitude behind Google, for example (some may disagree, but I think the general consensus is that they're not dastardly.) But with MS, every move seems like a piece of a puzzle showing a nasty, calculated, aggressive, anti-competitive entity. Everything seems consistent with that. The way the US rolled over on everything for political reasons is shameful. Hopefully the EU will right some of those wrongs, at least in part of the world.
I guess to try and find the bright side, one could say "at least it's documented" (without an exorbitant fee and crazy restrictions, like SMB et al.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether or not the pattern so recognized actually exists.
Re: (Score:2)
In the case of Microsoft there have been several courts engaged in the legal equivalent, establishing that those patterns do exist.
Microsoft Deprecates ... Functionality (Score:2)
The big problem with this (Score:5, Informative)
If you agree that this is a real risk, and you're willing to help with doing something about it, please join us at OpenISO.org [openiso.org] and help put together a "problem report" document about OOXML that explains the main issues clearly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The debate is maturing (Score:2, Interesting)
Nice to see that the comments thread on OOXML is shrinking as the debate matures. Of course that means that the usual trolls are either bored or on holidays but I think that we may collectively be starting to better understand what's going on.
I attended the UNSW Cyberlaw centre forum on OOXML http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/2007/ooxml/ [cyberlawcentre.org] as an interested observer and I liked what I saw. Smart people engaged in a positive discussion. Yes, the viewpoints were polar, but the words were civil and a real exchange
Re: (Score:2)
Nice try at stopping people reading them though - I assume you couldn't come up with anything real to say.
FUD! (Score:2)
Someone spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about a TinyUrl link in reference to a discussion about Microsoft trashing standards.
Meanwhile, the full link is:
http://pipka.org/blog/2007/12/18/initial-report-from-ooxml-technical-and-legal-workshop-last-week/ [pipka.org]
Clear evidence OOXML is crap (Score:2)
While we're at it... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Deprecate" is also technology jargon that means "to mark as obsolete." How you could be a Slashdot reader and not be familiar with that usage, I cannot understand.
Re: (Score:2)
"Deprecate" is also technology jargon that means "to mark as obsolete."
I'm not the first one to observe this, but ... how can you obsolete an element of a standard when it has never been part of the standard?
Re: (Score:2)
In a standard, deprecated can mean something like it does for software, or it can refer to stuff that's optional or old and that usually has an alternative you're encouraged to use instead.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, we hate it because: