High Plains Thumper <highplainsthumper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> Mark Kent wrote:
>> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>
>>> http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-15521/swiss-cheese
>>>
>>> Does Microsoft still fail to realise why the world hates it?
>>
>> Standards bodies were never designed to cope with this kind of
>> manipulation. Of course, some here will just say that we're seeing
>> "reds under the bed" or "conspiracies everywhere". Doh.
>
> I thought these points were apt:
>
> [quote]
> (3) OOXML is a specification by one company only. ODF is defined by a
> consortium and put in practical use by Open Software communities - and
> accepted as EU standard. ODF is also the default file format in most
> charitable offerings such as the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project and
> the school project in the Spanish Extremadura region. In other words, it
> has had real world exposure, use and correction. OOXML is too new to be
> trusted, and certainly too new to be then voted as a formal standard with
> wide ranging economic and social impact. OOXML could only ever be
> considered viable if it had as many years 'in the field' as ODF and could
> demonstrate cross-vendor interoperability.
>
> (4) OOXML has extreme deficiencies in the way it handles mathematics (see
><http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-failure.html> for a
> sample analysis). For a nation whose technology exports are renowned for
> world leading precision this should raise questions. Flaws like this have
> the potential to lead to economic damage even more than the lock-in to one
> provider, and may only have emerged as a result of the pressure for
> openness - we will never know if these are new problems or are exposures
> of existing ones.
> [/quote]
>
> ODF is a true standard supported by a multitude. It puts all players on
> an even playing field, even Microsoft. :-)
>
I agree; what you didn't mention is that OOXML is also 6,000 pages
long, which is about 5,900 pages too long for any standard.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
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