By now, we all know about the flaws found in Microsoft's specification of
their so-called "open" so-called "standard", which turns out to be neither.
And of course we all know about how these criminals bribe and bully their
partners to do their bidding, totally screwing over what once was a
respectable organization for impartial standards application reviews.
Now there is evidence on how well OOXML works in practice, expecially
outside its parental nest, MS Office 2007: it doesn't. Apple's iWork is one
of the very few applications claiming OOXML support, but fails miserably in
rendering an OOXML document:
http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/odf/index.html
This blogger also links to more background information on the technical
merits of OOXML (or actually the astounding lack thereof), complete with
multiple DIY examples:
http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/microsoft-office-xml-formats-defective.html
In short: there shall only be one true implementation of OOXML, and that is
MS Office -- because OOXML is very closely modeled after the workings of MS
Office, both past and present versions.
For anyone else, building a High-Fidelity OOXML compliant application is an
impossible task from a business point of view. It would simply take too
long and cost too much.
Richard Rasker
--
http://www.linetec.nl
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