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Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability
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| We'll probably also hear that 100% compatibility with legacy documents is
| critical to Microsoft users and that it is dangerous to try to save Excel
| formulas into interoperable ODF formulas because there is no guarantees that
| OpenOffice or any other ODF application will interpret them the same as Excel
| does. So one might try to claim that Microsoft is protecting their customers
| by preventing them from saving interoperable spreadsheet formulas. But we
| should note that fully-licensed Microsoft Office users have already been
| creating legacy documents in ODF format, using the Microsoft/CleverAge ODF
| Add-in. These paying Microsoft Office customers will now see their existing
| investment in ODF documents, created using Microsoft-sanctioned code, get
| corrupted when loaded in Excel 2007 SP2. Why are paying Microsoft customers
| who used ODF less important than Microsoft customers who used OOXML? That is
| the shocking thing here, the way in which users of the ODF Add-in are being
| sacrificed.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/update-on-odf-spreadsheet.html
What OOXML is for?
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| If, they follow that statement through, it means OOXML will only work for
| compatibility with previous versions of office documents and this stops at
| MSOfiice 2007.
|
| Of course it is easy to rewrite the charter, as it is only words. However, a
| charter sets the guideline and scope for one’s work, in agreement with a
| third party. That is why people do not like to alter the charter. Think about
| a charter like the consitution for the group, it can be amended if there is
| consensus, but should not be attempted with great caution, i.e., much greater
| care than amending a rule.
`----
http://ctrambler.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/what-ooxml-is-for/
Does MS Office SP2 With ODF Support Really Work? Test Results Point to No.
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| I tried the updated Microsoft Office 2007 SP2, which supports ODF, or says it
| does. I created a document in Office 2007 SP2 and saved it as ODF. I got an
| ominous Microsoft warning that if I persisted, I might lose some
| formatting -- "Document [name] may contain features that are not compatible
| with this format. Do you want to continue to save in this format?" -- but it
| saved the document when I clicked Yes. I reasoned that OpenOffice, which I
| intended to use to test the result, does have the features I wanted. I had
| included one footnote, a photo, and a text block, all of which OpenOffice can
| do, but when I opened the saved document in OpenOffice, none of it looked
| right. You couldn't read the footnote at all, because it's cut horizontally
| in the middle of the text. You can see it's there, but you can't make out the
| words.
|
| I thought most of the problems, and there were others, might be my fault
| though, because I've never used Office 2007 before, since I don't own it, and
| I found it very confusing. Because I don't own Office 2007, and I had limited
| access time to test on someone else's, I looked around to see if anyone else
| was reporting results in the new SP2. I asked Groklaw members if they had
| tried it out yet and how it worked for them. A Groklaw member, Dobbo, did a
| test working on a spreadsheet with a client, and his experience was also a
| failure.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090503215045379
OOXML: Nobody knows (or cares) what it is for or why.
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| Microsoft implemented OOXML (their XML based file format which is essentially
| a binary dump of the memory footprint of your document wrapped in an
| amazingly obscure and illegible XML schema) in Office 2007. You may have even
| received the odd file with a .docx or .xlsx extension. Then some kind of
| panic happened in MS and they decided that because Governments and other
| public bodies were asking for ODF (ISO/IEC 26300 Open Document Format
| supported by many applications including OpenOffice.org) they’d better get
| OOXML standardised too. So in a rush job, Microsoft’s specification publicist
| ECMA took the format used on Office 2007, got the developer documentation and
| wrote a bit more stuff around it and published it as ECMA 376. It then got
| submitted to the ISO for “fast tracking”.
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http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2009/04/30/ooxml-nobody-knows-what-it-is-for-or-why/
Related:
Martin Bryan: we are getting “standardization by corporation”
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| A November informative report of Martin Bryan, Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34
| WG1 highlights the fallout of the ECMA-376 fast-track process for ISO. He
| says he is 'glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible'
|
| [...]
|
| In what is an astonishingly outspoken report, Martin Bryan, Convenor, ISO/IEC
| JTC1/SC34 WG1 has given us insight into the total mess that Microsoft/ECMA
| have caused during their scandalous, underhand and unremitting attempts to
| get - what is a very poorly written specification {i.e. DIS 29500 aka OOXML,
| AR} - approved as an ISO standard. …
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http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-30107/martin-bryan:we-are-getting-standardization-by-corporation
Dysfunctional ISO - Courtesy of Microsoft
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2007/12/dysfunctional-iso-courtesy-of-microsoft.html
Microsoft accused of stacking ISO committee
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| In a memo sent following his last meeting as head of the working group on
| WG1, which is handling Microsoft’s application to make the Word format an ISO
| standard as ECMA 376, outgoing Governor Martin Bryan (above), an expert on
| SGML and XML, accused the company of stacking his group.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1777
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