[H]omer wrote:
Roy Schestowitz wrote:
Cuba Votes No to OOXML - Says It Did So in September, Too -
Updated
Yet another exposure of serious corruption within ISO. How
exactly did they manage to count a /no/ vote as a /yes/?
Closest US state to Cuba is Florida, perhaps ISO was following
Florida's election balloting model? :-)
Cuba was also forced to send its comments as *gasp*
Microsoft Word files (yes, to ISO!), so it needed to mail
it.
Also I find this "requirement" to send comments in a *Word*
document format (of all things) deeply disturbing. How much
confidence can anyone have in the impartiality of a supposed
standards body that pro-actively promotes and enforces the use
of proprietary technology?
Japanese comments here were interesting reading:
http://media.ffii.org/tmp2/noooxml-comments/ISO_IEC_DIS_29500_JISC.pdf
However, these Spanish comments were even more interesting:
http://www.inen.gov.ec/Web_sp/Comite%20Espejo%2029500/Ecma%20OOXML%20Respuestas.pdf
Part 4, Section 3.17.4.1, Page 2522, te
OOXML only support two time-bases or date-bases (the 1900 base
and the 1904 date). None of those two represent correctly the
Gregorian Calendar (ISO 8601) accepted in all the world.
Also, the restriction to only two date bases is arbitrary and
based only on one vendor's applications. There are other
reasonable values for date bases, including earlier ones for
historical dates. Most SQL databases, which frequently
exchange data with spreadsheets, support a much more greater
range of dates.
Part 4, Section 7.4.2.4, , te
The presence of non-XML characters, escaped, or not escaped in
an OOXML document, is contrary to interoperability of XML and
XML-based tools. The W3C's Internationalization Activity
confirms this interpretation, saying "Control codes should be
replaced with appropriate markup. Since XML provides a
standard way of encoding structured data, representing control
codes other than as markup would undo the actual advantages of
using XML. Use of control codes in HTML and XHTML is never
appropriate, since these markup languages are for representing
text, not data."
The coup de grace:
Part 1, Introduction (page xii) and entire document, , te
It is not acceptable for an international standard to be
designed primarily around the goal of compatibility with a
particular company's products. This is particularly
inappropriate where, as in the present case, compatibility
with an existing international standard is neglected in favor
of the one-sided goal of maximal compatibility with document
file formats introduced by one company, and where the proposed
standard does not provide equal opportunities for
compatibility to that company's present and future
competitors. Unless this shortcoming of OOXML/DIS 29500 is
fixed, accepting this specification as a national or
international standard would be a violation of Spanish and
international law.
--
HPT
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