OOXML: More than Just a Specification...

...a fraud & a hoax wrapped in a practical joke.

The OOXML Specification -- boon for Kinko's

Would you like to implement this in software? Pre - CISE - ly!

I haven't seen a practical joke this inspired since college when we disassembled Smitty's motorcycle and put it back together on the third-story fire escape.

Microsoft people are always working the slight of hand: The notorious Spec is higher than my head when placed on the desk. They of course will take every advantage by putting it on a chair. Here's Pavel...

I simply can't believe that developers and or TC45 members from Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, Toshiba, and the United States Library of Congress actually read the final document. I can't believe it. If I ever write such document, I surely won't sign it by my name. Why?

It is very simple and I wrote it several times. I do not like to look like idiot. After reading few pages of the specification, I think TC45 members simply like it OR they never read the specification OR something else ($$$$$)...

Do the footnotes align with the text? No one actually knows, since no single person has a sense of humor adequate to take responsibility for the whole thing.

The national bodies voting at ISO this year will not pass this fraud. No matter how many people Microsoft infiltrate onto the voting bodies, no responsible person will pass what they either cannot read or -- making the Herculean effort to read 6,000 pages without pay -- what they cannot possibly understand.

Why? Because there is no example of this documented specification in software -- certainly not in Office 2007. Anyone voting to approve will face the question: "What did you just approve?" and they will be hard-pressed to say without speculating. The future of universal document software shall not be guesswork.

Comments

[Wesley Parish]

FWIW, I went to the openxml.biz website and had a look at OpenXML Writer, touted as an open source Open XML editor. They've put up the license that it's released under, now, after I pestered them about it. That license is the one thing that Microsoft has managed to get right about its "rapprochement" with the F/LOSS world.

But on my MS Windows XP computer, I can neither run OpenXML Writer, nor compile it.

I'm not a C# hacker, so I can't rewrite it from the ground up ... I'm not a practised MS Visual Studio user, so again, I'm not sure of what to do.

I asked the openxml.biz people who I should go to with bug reports, and they ignored that question.

So, Microsoft's proven one thing, and one thing very, very well - they're experts at dropping the ball when for them it should really matter. I'd be surprised if that file format specification is 90% implemented in MS Office 2k7, they've proven so hamfisted in a relatively minor text implementation of that specification.

[Stephane Rodriguez]

Wesley, I have answered your comment on Bob Sutor's blog, where you cross-posted it. It's a .NET 3.0 application.