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.'"
If MS deprecates it but makes support for the deprecated features the default option in their software, they'll still be contributing to people spewing incompatible files that don't render correctly in software following the standards. It'd be better to just rip out the parts that shouldn't be there and resubmit the standard. Having to recognize and either support or report lack of support for a maze of twisty little semi-standard features for sake of backwards compatibility is not going to help the situation much,
I disagree. If you add up all of the letters in the words "de facto" and then multiply that by the number of times the phrase "de facto standard" is written, you can see that getting certified as true standard will save massive amounts of disk space, paper, and toner.
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.
It looks like you've used the <LineSpacing_For_IncoherentRanting_like_SteveBallmer_97> tag. That only works in Internet Explorer version 5.51g on a full moon if you squint and hold your mouth just right.
Do you actually believe windows developers actually want to touch OO?
Being a Windows developer (I also develop on other platforms, but this is irrelevant) I can tell you that I don't want to touch OOo or Microsoft Office. If I want to generate a document, I want the ability to do it myself if need be and so on. So far, OOXML is not really the solution I've been lucking for. The documentation is appalling, what is considered a very simple document and 'correct' in the specification does not work with Microsoft Office. It's annoying.
But in the end it makes development easier.
Honestly, generating odt, ods documents is easier.
Microsoft takes care of developers.
I don't agree. The MSDN is one huge example. It's great that it has such a vast knowledge base. Unfortunately a third of the documentation contains the wrong behavior and possibly the worst workarounds I have ever seen for a problem with lots of empty promises to fix issues in the future that haven't been fixed. That is how well Microsoft takes care of the developers.
Developers are the ones who make this who software word turn around.
I disagree. Microsoft has been buying out software companies that are a threat, launching extremely anti-competitive campaigns against 3rd party software developers that rival their own products and so on. Microsoft are the ones making the software world go round because they are manipulating everything, not the developers or the consumers.
It's about documentation, support and tools.And face it...that is a field where microsoft has no competition.
Have you even seen Microsoft's support? Staying on the telephone for hours on corporate support to report a serious bug, only to get a idiot who doesn't seem to even grasp Microsoft's own products (and this has been on every occasion I have tried to do anything with the enterprise support). Microsoft does not even provide direct support options to consumers, never mind small-time developers.
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.
Googling up for solutions and looking them up in forums(do i hear linux users trying to say smth?) is not acceptable.
Try researching the subject a little before opening your mouth next time.
despite the people who perceive Linux support is 'rtfm
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..."
I don't agree. The MSDN is one huge example. It's great that it has such a vast knowledge base. Unfortunately a third of the documentation contains the wrong behavior and possibly the worst workarounds I have ever seen for a problem with lots of empty promises to fix issues in the future that haven't been fixed. That is how well Microsoft takes care of the developers.
+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.)
The result of Microsoft's manipulation should be ISO banning MSOOXML from participating in the standards process.
It's abundantly clear now that the format is critically flawed and cannot be implemented by anyone, not even the Office team themselves.
ECMA 376 is a bomb disguised as a standard. It redefines functions and components just to retain ties to the undocumented legacy formats. Therefore a number of things that should be fixed by now, thanks to better engineering, and existing ISO standards, are left not only unfixed, but even perpetuated by ECMA376.
The fact that Microsoft continues to push this fake "standard" shows how little they care about their customers and how much their business is predicated on lockin.
No one is holding a gun to your head to use any standard.
If you don't use the government's pet standard to file tax documents, then the local counterpart of the Internal Revenue Service will hold a gun to your head.
It is no more a "fake" standard than any other standard.
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.
Some friends of mine currently work at IBM or did within the last year or two. They all used (Microsoft) Office.
I assume some departments of IBM eat their own dog food, but they definitely don't all do it.
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
Sounds consistent with the way Microsoft works. Promise the moon and deliver a crater. It was their intention all along. Propose something that smacks everyones senses with a bat, then back off with something that sound more reasonable, even though it is not.
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.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday December 28 2007, @11:28PM (#21845914)
And VML is used in Office 2007... see this openmalaysia blog post [openmalaysiablog.com].
Marking things as deprecated just means that it's discouraged, and it doesn't mean that there's a modern replacement (like how in HTML FONT was deprecated and it's replacement was CSS functionality). VML is still a necessary part of OOXML, so marking it as deprecated doesn't actually help developers. What would help them is if DrawingML could be used in all the places that VML can be.
Infact, as the CNS (Microsoft's covenant not to sue) specifically excludes patent coverage over non-required features this means that we may now be lacking patent coverage over VML. Can anyone from Microsoft comment on this? (the Microsoft OSP might grant coverage if that "Necessary Claims" means normative, as they claim)
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...
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.
Actually, I've looked into the way that Microsoft Windows does printing. It's a bit more complicated than this, but basically you open a DC (device context), paint onto the DC and then submit to the printer driver. After this it's up to the printer driver to print correctly, not for the app to try to get around driver deficiencies. 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
I've done quite a bit of reading, and listening on the topic of OOXML, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no good (at least of the technical kind) in OOXML. Yet, people seem convinced that Microsoft is a "good" company. And a good company wouldn't actively push something that was obviously without any good for the industry... so I must be missing something. I generally just think that it is for the purpose of profit and control, but every now and then I like to give opposing views a chance - si
Just like people who buy their phone and internet from the biggest company they know. As far as they are concerned, they are getting the best deal and there arent any compeditors.
Just like with Vista, they just drop features until it's "releasable."
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.
If microsoft if really serious about getting this in a standard, we need legal documents saying their software will remove the features, then the features removed from the standard, not getting them removed from the standard.
'AutoSpaceLikeWord95' and others will be 'extracted from the main specification and relocated to an independent annex in DIS 29500 for deprecated functionality.'
...that, that so called deprecated functionality will be "re-introduced" in an update to enhance the user experience and security at some later date. When this happens, part of hell will break lose and we'll be back here at Slashdot debating this and that.
It is highly doubtful that the "deprecated functionality" will be removed from Microsoft Office. Therefore if they get the revised OOXML passed as a standard, anyone who uses Microsoft Office based on its claim to be OOXML will have been the victim of a bait-and-switch tactic.
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.doc/ppt/xls for the free world to reverse engineer.
This seems sneaky to me. Remove controvesial stuff from the standard, but put it in an Annex, that MS will implement and people will rely upon left and right, so it will become a de-facto microsoft embrace-and-extend standard.
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.)
IMO there's nothing wrong with the decision to deprecate some of the most revulsive misfeatures of OOXML, but there's the very real problem that this could lead some people (in particular in the national standardization bodies that will have the opportunity in March to change their vote about OOXML) to think that these relatively minor changes somehow make OOXML suitable for acceptance as a "standard".
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.
I won't join your site, but I have a problem with the Introduction and its restatement later in the Goals section. Feel free to quote, copy, take credit for, or in any other way use, disuse, or fail to use, the following as it is now in the public domain.
Introduction The goal is to enable the implementation of the Office Open XML formats by the widest set of tools and platforms, fostering interoperability across office productivity applications and line-of-business systems, as well as to support and strength
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
The format is, in effect, still in development and there is already an independent annex dedicated to deprecated functionality. How exactly is it possible for a decent format to have deprecated features even before it exists?
'Deprecate' has a precise, relevant meaning when talking about specifications. It basically is a polite way to put all people who depend on a specification (or implementation thereof) that a certain feature is slated to be removed at an arbitrary time in the future. This is done so that developers, integrators, etc., can migrate away from the deprecated features before they are removed, allowing a smooth transition.
"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.
In software, deprecate means to officially warn that they're planning to remove the feature in question later - after everyone else (like other software that might assume said feature is present) has had a fair chance to prepare for its removal.
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.
Please point out my obvious troll! I made a serious point. A lot of people on Slashdot only hate the idea of OOXML because Microsoft wrote it.
Now, are you going to discuss it or hide behind the moderation system?
No, we hate it because:
It is not meant as a specification to be implemented openly by others -- it was only introduced to quash a competing, already ratified standard so as to maintain Microsoft's Office Monopoly.
It is not an open standard -- it does not promise to be patent unencumbered.
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: