XML - General discussions

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5 Comments

Comment by John Hanratty on April 3, 2008 at 5:13am

I don't think this will make any difference to XML as a standard. It's been around for 10 years, and dominates in publishing and e-commerce.

OOXML is, like ODF, a format for capturing the presentation attributes of office productivity applications. In terms of interopability it offers little more than RTF - it's just part of an ongoing war between Microsoft and Sun/IBM. MS is clearly out to do to to OpenOffice what it did to Netscape. No-one, especially ECMA, comes out of this with any credit Microsoft, having no credit to start with, had nothing to lose and are the only winners.
In terms of concrete actions, I'd like to see ISO end it's "special relationship" with ECMA, as it's "fast track" back-door to ratification is clearly a loophole which the ruthless will exploit.
By the way, Mike, I doubt whether most of us would describe ourselves "purists" - I certainly wouldn't. Does that mean I shouldn't post?

Comment by Ant Davey on April 3, 2008 at 3:40am

Let's hope it's not a final ratification. While the purists will continue to use an open standard such as XML, there will be commercial pressures from those who don't understand technology as much as some of us (many CEOs and CFOs for example) to adopt the MS style once the bandwagon starts rolling.

However, I don't see that MS's OOXML can be adopted as an ISO Standard, if the IPR belongs to MS, how can it be an international standard. It will change only to reflect what MS wants it to, when MS wants it to, and could only be changed by people whom MS lets change it. Does it have the specialization functionality and inheritance that DITA provides? I don't know anything about it, and can only have opinion based on MS's previous activities in areas of 'interoperability'. Which leads me to believe that I probably should worry a bit.

One hope is that those who know (us) will propose a different XML architecture for their organisations, that provides greater freedom and presumably flexibility, and that those who make the decisions will actually listen to rational argument.

Comment by Eric Landes on April 2, 2008 at 12:29pm

I wouldn't count on the OOXML ratification being final yet. There are already two protests against yes votes by members of the NBs that submitted those very votes. This vote has forever tarnished ISO as a standards body.

Of course, the biggest issue with OOXML as a "standard" is that nothing implements it as written. Not even Office '07.

I could go on, but I'm WAY too cynical about this particular issue.

The biggest issue is that ODF will suffer. Those places that were going to use ODF as it was the only standard format will be shoved around now that Microsoft can say "Yes, but ours is a standard, too."

Comment by Phill Barratt on April 2, 2008 at 12:11pm

I'm worried about whether I should be worried about this... what impact will this have on other standards and organisations like OpenOffice etc.?

Comment by Mike McNamara on April 2, 2008 at 9:55am

Office Open XML ratified as ISO standard!!!

What will be the ramifications of this to the progress of XML in general and in particular how Microsoft continues to develop its own products.

What do the purists thinks. More room for discussions I think.