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The Contradictory Nature of OOXML

Posted by kdawson on Thu Jan 18, 2007 09:52 AM
from the schmandards dept.
Upgrades Microsoft Software
Andy Updegrove writes "the Microsoft Office XML-based format specification, OOXML, is now in the adoption queue at ISO/IEC. That process takes six months, and has two steps. During the first one-month step, any member may submit 'contradictions,' which means aspects in which a proposed standard conflicts with already adopted ISO/IEC standards and Directives. Those contradictions must then be 'resolved' (which does not necessarily mean eliminated), and these resolutions are then presented back to the members to consider during the five-month voting stage that follows. A month isn't very long to do a line-by-line analysis of a 6,000-page spec, but experts in the national standards bodies around the world are doing just that. What they are finding includes the use of proprietary, hard-wired elements rather than incorporation of available ISO/IEC standards; additional Microsoft technology that must be emulated (but is not covered by the Microsoft patent pledge); elements that can't be implemented without Microsoft technical assistance; dependencies on Windows itself; mandatory bugs; and more. And then there's also the fact that OOXML heavily overlaps ODF — a platform-independent, already-adopted ISO/IEC. It promises to be an interesting battle." And an anonymous reader adds word of the release, after 10 months of development, of Docvert 3.0, an open-source web service that converts DOC files to Oasis OpenDocument 1.0 (download the source here).
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[+] Politics: Texas Bill For Open Documents 197 comments
Ditesh Kumar tips us to a blog entry by Sam Hiser noting a bill filed in Texas that would require state agencies to conduct their work in an open document format. After Microsoft's grueling battle against ODF in Massachusetts, bluest of blue states, it must be galling to face te same fight in the reddest of the red. Hiser notes that the bill includes a rigorous and sound definition of an open document format, which ODF would meet but Microsoft's current OOXML submission would not.
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  • It promises to be an interesting battle (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 0racle (667029) on Thursday January 18 2007, @09:59AM (#17663496)
    Ya, I'm on the edge of my seat. It will get adopted as a standard or it won't. Office will use it either way and anyone wanting to interoperate with Office will have to try to implement it as well.

    • Re:It promises to be an interesting battle (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zaiff Urgulbunger (591514) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:20AM (#17663820)
      All true, but if it does get adopted as a standard, then MS can use this to ensure the continued use of MS Office by government agencies around the globe. If it doesn't get adopted, MS will be under pressure to provide a supported, native, OOD format.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by CastrTroy (595695)
        What are the implications if it does get adopted as a standard? Can anybody implement for free? Can MS get fined for saying they support the standard when in fact their software actually does not (ala, Java, CSS, HTML, Kerberos, and others). If we could just get MS to follow some standard and actually implement it as the standard as written, then I think we could get long way to interoperability with MS word. If it's an open standard, and MS can't just go ahead and change it whenever, and they have to ac

        • Re:It promises to be an interesting battle (Score:5, Insightful)

          by truthsearch (249536) on Thursday January 18 2007, @11:01AM (#17664408) Homepage Journal
          In my opinion there are two reasons Microsoft is trying to create their own standard: PR and government contracts. The PR aspect is obvious. The US government is Microsoft's largest customer (by far) and also the most likely to demand open document standards. Other governments will likely do the same long before corporations demand it. So Microsoft needs to have their own standard which they implement first in order to get the contracts.

          They don't have to implement it correctly. They can claim support for a standard [msversus.org] for years without actually following it (e.g. CSS, Kerberos, etc.) and still get the contracts. They were actually involved in creating some CSS standards and still didn't follow them.

          It's all about the money. Get the big contracts and nothing else matters.
        • I don't *know* the answers but I believe:

          Can anybody implement for free?
          I think so! But, you'll need to get a copy of the standard first, and I believe ISO normally charge.. rather more than I'd like for that.

          Can MS get fined for saying they support the standard when in fact their software actually does not...
          I doubt it, but if a test case can be produced to prove the fault, they'll maybe/probably/hopefully/perhaps fix it. Depending on whos asking for a fix!

          You're right that *a standard* is far be

        • Re:It promises to be an interesting battle (Score:4, Informative)

          by mrchaotica (681592) * on Thursday January 18 2007, @12:45PM (#17666226)
          Can anybody implement for free?

          No, because bits of it are patented (especially the "legacy compatibility" parts that basically just say "emulate old versions of Office").

          Can MS get fined for saying they support the standard when in fact their software actually does not (ala, Java, CSS, HTML, Kerberos, and others).

          In this case it won't matter, because the OOXML "standard" is effectively defined as "whatever MS Office does." In other words, MS basically documented Office's behavior down to the smallest detail, and submitted it to ECMA and now ISO.

          • In other words, MS basically documented Office's behavior down to the smallest detail

            They didn't even do that. A lot of the document states that when you encounter certain tags you will emulate a Office bug, but never specifies the details of that bug because that is "beyond the scope of the document". So even if you have the standards document, you can't fully implement the standard without getting all the old versions of Office and reverse engineering their behavior.

    • It only figures... Microsoft expecting a compendium of proprietary digital glop to be officially embraced by all. Why even submit this for standardization? De-facto "standards" have worked so well for them [ -and so badly for everyone else].

      Application Rejected. Thanks for Playing. Please Try Again.

  • as:

    Object
    Oriented
    X
    M
    L

    and whimpered at the thought...
    • That is exactly what I thought at first as well!

      But let's assume that this OOXML thing get through the approval process... with an open standard anyone can make import/export functionality for MS Office documents in non-MS applications. From iWork to KOffice to OpenOffice and whatever else is out there, will there be any need to have MS Office in order to read, edit, and forward on "MS Office documents?" To me, it seems like MS is creating a way for everyone else to erode their market share.

      • Re:I originally read OOXML ... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Knuckles (8964) <knuckles@nOspam.dantian.org> on Thursday January 18 2007, @11:09AM (#17664546)
        That is exactly what I thought at first as well!

        And i wonder how you could. Even just reading the the /. blurb makes it clear that the "standard" as proposed is non-implementable.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MoxFulder (159829)

        But let's assume that this OOXML thing get through the approval process... with an open standard anyone can make import/export functionality for MS Office documents in non-MS applications. From iWork to KOffice to OpenOffice and whatever else is out there, will there be any need to have MS Office in order to read, edit, and forward on "MS Office documents?" To me, it seems like MS is creating a way for everyone else to erode their market share.

        Indeed... that would be nice. Try reading the article to find o

    • Me too, not a nice moment.
  • One of the things that bugs me are these 'enormous specifications' that are inconsistent. What we need is not just a document, but the tools necessary to verify a generated file. Not just for valid XML, but for all the little microsofty-bits hidden inside.

    --jeffk++

    • Re:Please recommend compliance validation tools (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zaiff Urgulbunger (591514) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:22AM (#17663846)
      Microsoft isn't doing this for you silly! The whole intent is likely that it is *hard* for anyone to implement.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by xenocide2 (231786)
        On the contrary, when taking the article at face value, I think that the whole intent is to make it *easy* for Microsoft to implement the first time, because it's already done. This is of course backwards from how a community standard should work, it should be an effort that is repeatable. Instead we have whatever crap their contractors turned in, with apparent flaws turned into requirements. I doubt even Microsoft could write a second compatible handler for this document format. Well, perhaps instead of "o

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by TheRaven64 (641858)
          I am beginning to think that a requirement for anything being a standard should be two independent implementations (i.e. no shared code). I would even like to require that at least one be under a license no more restrictive than the 3-clause BSD license (GrokLaw FUD aside), and ideally MIT-licensed or Public Domain.

          ODF has already been supported by several implementations, and some of these threw up some OpenOffice-isms; if the support had been finished before the standard had been finalised then this w

  • Describing exceptions doesn't make a standard. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by splutty (43475) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:10AM (#17663662)
    Despite what Microsoft thinks and how they're been acting in the past with all their 'standards'; Describing all the exceptions doesn't make something a standard. Describing them in the context of a non-standardized environment, makes it even less so.

    Although I'm quite sure that Microsoft really doesn't give a and will push this through as 'their' standard that everyone else will have to adhere to to be able to do anything with Mickyshaft generated content anyway.

    Whether ISO approves of this or not is inconsequential, the only thing that matters is that M$ can now say: Look, we proposed a standard, it's not our fault 'they' think it's not good enough.

    • Whether ISO approves of this or not is inconsequential, the only thing that matters is that M$ can now say: Look, we proposed a standard, it's not our fault 'they' think it's not good enough.

      My response: I proposed a rational solution for the tech department that I control - it's not my fault that we decided to go to another vendor when you no longer support Office2K. Google gives its love and regards. As does OpenOffice, MySQL, and Linux. Sincerely,

      The guy who makes the tech decisions

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by suggsjc (726146)
        It was mentioned before, but since the US gov't is their biggest customer. Until you are the "guy who makes the tech decisions" for them, M$ won't care about your response.

        Idealism will only get you so far, especially when it squares off against practicality.

    • Re:Describing exceptions doesn't make a standard. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:41AM (#17664102)

      Whether ISO approves of this or not is inconsequential, the only thing that matters is that M$ can now say: Look, we proposed a standard, it's not our fault 'they' think it's not good enough.
      It matters to governments, who are coming under increasing pressure to rationalize their MS Office upgrade cycle (and why they're not getting out, via standards)

      But yeah it doesn't matter much to the private sector / industry.
    • Not true. As the AC above states, it does matter to governments who are finally starting to demand open standards for documents. The US government is Microsoft's largest customer. Microsoft would lose them if they finally decided to only use applications that have documented and standard file formats.

  • Deja Vu Docvert (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ei4anb (625481) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:14AM (#17663724)
    Way back before the web I worked in a Unix shop that was a development lab for a big multinational. Head office kept sending us e-mail with large MS Word attachments. We got tierd of having to go down to the library, where we kept the only PeeCee in the department, just to see what was in the attachment.

    I solved the issue by writing a program that ran on a Windows PC (an old one that had been discarded and was gathering dust in the closet) that received SMTP mail, detached the Word attachment, started up Microsoft's Word Viewer to read the attachment, then "printed" it to a file in PDF format and finaly SMTP mailed it back to the sender.

    From then on all we had to do was forward the email to the robot and wait for a readable version to bounce back. As I used Microsoft's own Word Viewer there were no problems whenever a new version of Word came out, I just downloaded the latest viewer :-)

    • That's a pretty smart Idea. It's a pretty good way to protect against Word Macro viruses too. I'm pretty sure the viewer doesn't support Macros, and even if it does, only the computer processing the documents would get infected, and that machine could be reimaged every night if it was a real problem.
      • It should be noted that the recent Office exploits have been buffer overruns and similar effects, not directly related to macro handling. As the rendering mechanism in the Word Viewer is quite identical, it's not invulnerable. (So for an automated machine stuffed away to do only this, reimaging can be quite needed if no other checks are performed.)
      • There have been vulnerabilities that affect word viewer (I believe one is still in the wild). This could, however, be prevented from becoming a vulnerability by running the viewer in a VM that was restored to a snapshot state immediately after running. Ideally the document would be loaded from a disk image that would be generated before starting the VM and then printed to a generic PostScript printer over IPP on the host machine, which would then convert the PostScript to PDF. No connections other than t
    • That's a nice solution. Any chance you might release it under an open-source license?
    • UNIX shop... before the web... only one PC... rendering to -- PDF?!

      I think I smell a tiny fib.

      I would have believed you if you had told me that you used Windows' (native since 3.1) Apple Laserwriter printer driver set up to print to a file, then mailed the resulting (PostScript) file to yourself to print or view with GhostScript/gv.

      Well, except that I didn't think the Word viewer was released until either '95 (or as late as '97?), and it was released because MS broke the Word 6.0 (Office 4.3) document forma
  • It's to be expected as Open XML is a straight transliteration of the DOC "dumps" to XML format.

    I wonder how it ended this way: not enough time to properly develop and implement a more proper standard, or by design.

    I feel it's both.

    • Re:Open XML is a transliteration (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 (641858) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:39AM (#17664078) Homepage Journal
      The design requirement of Microsoft's XML format was (obviously) that it be possible to convert existing Word documents to it without any loss. In order to do this, there must be a one-to-one mapping between the .DOC semantics and the OpenXML semantics.

      The second design requirement was that the spec be developed and released quickly, before ODF had time to gain much traction. Between these two objectives, it's hardly surprising that it ended up the way it did...

      • You know that's an interesting take.

        Microsoft is so huge now (and i work for a huge corporation as well) that it may be easier/more natural to just let the business mangle things in a natural way than to get a purposeful plan going to do this kind of thing.

        The project planning and meeting time alone would be bad plus you wouldn't want a documentation trail showing you intended to lock in to word or it might come back to bite you later.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cnettel (836611)
      Well, the XML notation for Office 2003 was even more so. They broke that one now, and some changes are to the better. The requirement to be able to represent just about anything that was possible in the previous versions, faithfully, is still a great contaminant, as you say.

      • Re:Open XML is a transliteration (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Thursday January 18 2007, @11:35AM (#17664978)

        That's the reason for all the "render like WordPerfect 5.x" options that people have complained about, because they have to allow people to convert to the XML format and then convert back without reducing the document to an unreadable mess.

        There is no reason I know of why the XML format cannot support all the features of Word and round trip, without relying on nasty hacks like this, it just takes more work. The problem with "Open"XML that I've seen is the concentrate entirely on supporting only the features of .doc files and their interactions with other programs to the exclusion of anything else. Rather than "render like WP 5.x" you need to define how WP 5.x renders that feature, then incorporate it into your conversion script in a way that makes sense in general for documents.

        The whole format is built upon the assumption that only MS and Word will be using it and it is not designed to abstract word processing documents in general, but to kowtow to the eccentricities of Word.

        The alternative is to not support roundtripping and then wait for slashdot headlines like "Users find that the new Office XML format mangles their documents".

        No, the alternative is to do it right and build hacks like the ones you mention into the import and export routines, rather than embedding them, without any definition, into the format.

  • And the sad thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Durkheim (960021) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:26AM (#17663908)
    ...Some people think its fine that way. A friend of mine, quite pro-ms, told me that all those little strange things in the specification where normal to have backwards compatibility, and that reading the specification was a waste of time. Instead, he directed me towards a preview of Ms office 2007. Because for him, as for many more, what's important is the final product, the cuteness of the buttons, the way it works and displays its own format. Why bother using a free program that displays word documents badly, when Office is already perfect huh? I feel so misunderstood sometimes. What makes me sad is that they don't see the use of a clear straight-to-the-point format. Maybe only geeks can be horrified by this one.

    • Re:And the sad thing is... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by westlake (615356) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:58AM (#17664356)
      I feel so misunderstood sometimes. What makes me sad is that they don't see the use of a clear straight-to-the-point format. Maybe only geeks can be horrified by this one.

      The user cares only for the document he sees in print or on screen. The internal structure of the file interests him not at all.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TheRaven64 (641858)
        Give him a few years. Like Free Software, the need for Open Standards is only really apparent to people who haven't yet been bitten by their lack. I still have a load of ClarisWorks 1.0 documents from years ago that I can't open; even if I could find my copy of ClarisWorks and the disk hadn't been corrupted, I don't even own a disk drive that could read it anymore.

  • Divy it up? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by plopez (54068) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:28AM (#17663928)
    I wonder if you could get 60 people to review 100 pages each (or divide up chapters or sections in some logical manner). That may be feasible in 1 month. At least the glaring problems would be flagged. I have no idea how to organize this however.....
  • Submitting contradictions?


    Wait a minute, I know this! This is just Phoenix Wright!

  • For all the students out there (Score:3, Funny)

    by Catbeller (118204) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:30AM (#17663952) Homepage
    This is why we oldsters hate Microsoft. 25 YEARS of this.

  • Who needs OOXML... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Chris Mattern (191822) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:36AM (#17664034)
    ...when you can have oo-mox? [memory-alpha.org]

    Chris Mattern

  • Open Source community debugs MS code (Score:4, Funny)

    by RichMan (8097) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:40AM (#17664086)
    So it looks like the Open Source community is now debugging Microsofts Document format. I am sure Microsoft does not itself know what is going on in here half the time and much of this document was generated by code scrappers looking for structures and interfaces.

    Congrats to the world community but they should really submit a bill to Microsoft.

  • "additional Microsoft technology that must be emulated (but is not covered by the Microsoft patent pledge); elements that can't be implemented without Microsoft technical assistance; dependencies on Windows itself; mandatory bugs; and more. And then there's also the fact that OOXML heavily overlaps ODF -- a platform-independent, already-adopted ISO/IEC."

    Pretty much like everything they do.

    Wait - where are the virus APIs? Did they leave those out?

    Naah...

    Gotta be there somewhere. Keep looking.

  • Now We'll Now... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by segedunum (883035) on Thursday January 18 2007, @10:58AM (#17664350) Homepage
    ...whether ISO has simply become a dumping ground for people simply wanting to market their stuff as standards (ECMA), or a real standards body.

    As it is, there is not a snowball in hell's chance that OpenXML can become an ISO standard. It is simply a dump of the existing awful doc format into a nice incomprehensible 6000 page document, and it doesn't even use existing ISO standards. There's even a set group of banners and bullet points defined in there which can by no stretch of the imagination be called international.

    I know Microsoft has managed to butter the ECMA up as their usual standards dumping ground, but I simply cannot see how they can get past the shortcomings in that article. To do so would be a huge amount of work (and Office 2007 is already using this format) and it would threaten their Office monopoly - which is what this obfuscation was about in the first place.

  • More info @ groklaw (Score:5, Informative)

    by mario64 (573112) on Thursday January 18 2007, @11:16AM (#17664650)
    Check out the article on Groklaw Searching for Openness in Microsoft's OOXML and Finding Contradictions [groklaw.net] for further comments. The article also has links to a couple of wiki pages with further comments.

  • ISO maybe, but never an IETF standard (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pascal Sartoretti (454385) on Thursday January 18 2007, @11:29AM (#17664852)
    Maybe they'll get an ISO standard, but I have the feeling that an IETF standard would be out of question. Look at the requirement for being just a "Draft standard" (see here [ietf.org]):

    A specification from which at least two independent and interoperable implementations from different code bases have been developed, and for which sufficient successful operational experience has been obtained, may be elevated to the "Draft Standard" level.

    Outside Office 2007, who would ever implement this "standard"?

  • Hey guys, I've an idea (Score:3, Funny)

    by matt me (850665) on Thursday January 18 2007, @01:01PM (#17666538)
    > there's also the fact that OOXML heavily overlaps ODF -- a platform-independent, already-adopted ISO/IEC.
    Couldn't the Microsoft people use the existing standard instead? That way everyone would be able to communicate. Someone should call to let them know about it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by moranar (632206)
      I'm shocked too, that someone using ad-hominem attacks would resort to anonymous posting. Amazing. This must be Slashdot.

      The fact that Updegrove might have a vested interest in ODF succeeding doesn't detract from the OOXML proposed standard being a crock of shit.

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