Microsoft Deprecating Some OOXML Functionality

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.'"

About right.

[Stumbles]

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.

Re:Deprecated means forever

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Will these be removed from MICROSOFT OFFICE?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

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.

The debate is maturing

[digipres]

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 of ideas took place.

Pia Waugh was an organiser of the event and had this to say about it: http://tinyurl.com/32zfsr [tinyurl.com]

Roll on the BRM in Geneva and may reasoned debate rule over Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

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digipres, a No voter