MOOXML Paper Sizes are Non-Standard

Yoon Kit & Hasan Saidin at the Open Malaysia blog, again, point to another problem with the Microsoft Office Open XML specification which Ecma has handed off too fast to ISO.

The problem is that the paper sizes used in the new MS Office document formats are non-standard. The appropriate paper sizes are already established by ISO 216 (and for North America ANSI/ASME Y14.1).

Microsoft's paper sizes in the new MS Office formats, Yoon Kit points out, are dictated by the Windows operating system. He explains with some rather pleasant visuals how the paper settings are based on Widows registry codes. Bad.

Yoon Kit...

This is unreadable for someone who is unaware of the Operating System specific “PaperSize Registry Value Table” maintained by Microsoft.

It is unreadable by someone implementing the Microsoft Office Open XML formats on an operating system other than Windows. Private OS dependencies embedded within document formats are not the kind of things we want in an international standard!

This particular behavior is consistent with monopoly preservation. And the Ecma TC45 (the hosting standards body for the Microsoft Office Open XML specification) doesn't even hide the proprietary intentions of the formats.

Here's part 1 of the Ecma TC45 Programme of Work...

1. To Produce a formal Standard for office productivity documents which is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats
             This includes:
                  
   • Produce a standard which is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats, including full and comprehensive documentation of those formats in the style of an international standard, with particular attention given to enabling the implementation of the Office Open XML Formats by a wide set of tools and platforms in order to foster interoperability across office productivity applications and with line-of-business systems.

[emphasis added]

"...fully compatible with..." a privately developed and pre-ordained non-standard set of formats is rather amusing.

"...in the style of..." just about kills me. It is apparently too much to actually create an international standard?

Microsoft rather relies on the lobbyists, salesforce and the captive press to put over the lie that these formats somehow respect the idea of a open universal device that anyone can use when they are intended only for Windows and for Microsoft parters who execute partial implementations. (There is simply no comparison to the objectives and achievement of ODF.)

Any country standards body members voting 'affirmative' on Ecma 376 at ISO this week will be publicly embarassed before the world. The affirmative vote is such a dereliction of the duty of a steward of standards that it is either prima facie evidence of an accepted bribe or a betrayal of a thorough lack of understanding of standards and their purpose.

ISO. It is very clear and simple. Unlock the world from bondage to an American corporation!!!

Comments

[Gary Edwards]

Hi Sam,

As a fellow American, prepare yourself for humiliation and shame. ANSI/INCiTS has decided that they will not object to MS Ecma 376 on the ISO/IEC Fast Track Ballot. This in spite of the massive compilation of contradictions and inconsistencies compiled by GrokDoc, whose members raced through the weekend just to have the document ready for the ANSI/INCiTS meetings.

Rather than confront the clear evidence of contradictions and inconsistencies, the brave hearts at ANSI/INCiTS choose to narrow the definition of what a contradiction is. And narrow it they did.

They decided that one standard contradicts another standard only if the proposed standard causes the existing standard not to work.

Sounds good doesn't it? Au contraire mon ami. This is the kind of self serving maneuvering only a bureaucrat could love.

Using the analogy of the Chinese WAPI WiFi networking standard, which was was defeated last year because the protocol caused radio interference with existing 801.11 networks, our standards champions came up with a reference for their mechanical interference measure of “contradiction”.

Because both files can physically exist on the same disk without interfering with each other, our champions determined that OOXML did not contradict ODF.

Maybe they thought this would go unnoticed, but as one disheartened friend of open standards pointed out, “this argument can be used for every XML format, every programming language, every operating system, in fact every software standard, since software is ultimately data, and data can be segregated on disks. So they essentially chose a definition so narrow that it nullified the concept of "contradiction" for most of what JTC1 has authority over”.

So narrow a definition of “contradiction” that you can drive a fleet of monopolist trucks through the hole they've carved out of the ISO/IEC standards process.

So here we are. The champions appointed by our National Institute of Standards and Technology to represent our interest in the International Standards process have carved out a dangerous and possibly enduring loophole in the ISO/IEC fast track process. A loophole desinged to serve the interest of a single proprietary monopolist seeking to control mankind's digital future.

Sam, where do we hide?

To our friends abroad, fighting desperately to preserve the integrity of international open standards, with our digital freedom and the future of open Internet on the line, we ask that they dig in their heels and fight this to the end. Those yankees you see striding into the Court of King Arthur are not from Connecticut, and the Camelot of ISO had better beware.

Stalking standards to the tune of that ugliest of all Americans, the corporation from Redmond, ANSI/INCiTS has sold our souls that the world might be fodder for Vista.

Dig in your heels friends,

~ge~

[yoonkit]

Good news from Malaysia,
we managed to clarify the "contradiction" word; to base it on technical contradictions and not the narrow term which the vedor insisted on defining.

Everyone (bar one) voted not to approve the fast track process, and will be submitting comments in.

yk.