DVDs and Documents
,----[ Quote ]
| If you've ever subscribed to the Microsoft Developer Network, or MSDN as it's
| commonly known, then you'll find the OOXML "standard" document familiar. It's
| a typical example of Microsoft MSDN-style technical documentation. It isn't
| badly written; indeed for proprietary documentation it's about as good as it
| gets, but as I've said before of Microsoft documentation, it's fuzzy on the
| details. It's not a standards document, something you can use to
| unambiguously create an implementation from scratch.
|
|
| [...]
|
| A good example to use to compare it to real standards documents is to examine
| Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) "Requests for Comments" (RFC's)
| documents, which are publicly available on the Web. They use key words such
| as "MUST", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHOULD", "MAY" and "OPTIONAL" and these
| words have real meaning in the standard, such that an implementor can be
| guided by these terms. The OOXML spec just doesn't use the same precision in
| language that a real specification needs. It was almost certainly written by
| documentation professionals, not by engineers who actually understand the
| needs of the implementors of a standard. B
`----
http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/278
Mentioned yesterday:
OOXML is too hard to implement … even for Microsoft
,----[ Quote ]
| So various things could be true here:
|
| * Microsoft is not putting proper resources behind maintenance of Office
| 2004 for the Macintosh.
| * The software engineers working on Office 2004 for the Macintosh aren’t
| very good.
| * OOXML at 6000+ pages is just too hard a specification for expert
| software engineers working closely with the people who designed OOXML
| to be implemented easily and completely.
`----
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=2069
Related:
,----[ Quote ]
| "[Microsoft:] For example, we should take the lead in establishing a common
| approach to UI and to interoperability (of which OLE is only a part). Our
| efforts to date are focussed too much on our own apps, and only incidentally
| on the rest of the industry. We want to own these standards, so we should
| not participate in standards groups. Rather, we should call 'to me' to the
| industry and set a standard that works now and is for everyone's
| benefit. We are large enough that this can work."
`----
http://www.os2site.com/sw/info/comes/px09509.zip
Office 2008 update delays Open XML converter
,----[ Quote ]
| The downside is that the effort to fix Office 2008 has diverted resources
| from the development of the Open XML file format converter for Office 2004.
| Originally expected by mid March, the final version is now slated to arrive
| by the end of June.
`----
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/16802/1054/
|
|
