More about OOXML and Denmark

Andy Updegrove have posted more info about OOXML and ISO, here is a snippet:

Q: Got it. So let's get down to business. I hear that Microsoft's Tom Robertson was quoted in eWeek saying that 103 nations have standards bodies "with the authority to act at the ISO on behalf of that country," and that ,"What we see is that only a small handful have submitted comments." MS' Brian Jones also says at his blog that " It sounds like about 18 of the 100+ countries reviewing the standard came back with comments."

So just how big a deal is that, anyway?

A: Well, let's start with the denominator, which is really 66 – not 100+ or 103. Only Principle Members and Observer Members can offer contradictions under the JTC 1 rules, and there are only 27 Principal and 39 Observer Members. By my count, that's 66 – less than 2/3's of Robertson's and Jones' numbers. How about the numerator? Is it 18? Nope. 19? Keep going. It's actually 20.

What these contradictions are isn't known, but they should be made public late this month. It will be quite interesting to see them.

Not too long ago we got a law here in Denmark that made open standards a requirement. How valuable that is depends on how you define "open standards". I would say that in general this is a positive step. In regards to document formats, it seems they are already using PDF 1.5 (which isn't really an open standard, but Adobe has just decided to make it an open standard) and according to this danish article, both ODF and OOXML will be supported and used. It is good to see that ODF is going to be used/supported and to be honest, it is not surprising that OOXML is too because Microsoft Office formats is simply used everywhere. It sucks and it would have been nice if they skipped OOXML and used ODF only + a plugin for MS Office that allowed them to save documents in the ODF format since Microsoft isn't willing to support it natively in their otherwise quite fine Office suite.

Microsoft ODF Translator v1.0

So, it has been released, but is it any good? The answer seems to be a big NO and maybe more interesting to know is that it will never work:

The abridged version of the story is that XSLT methods for transforming from one dialect of W3C-conforming XML to another dialect of W3C-conforming XML will always work. It is definitional. If it does not work, then one of the "W3C-conforming" dialects is a punk. Well, we and Microsoft know XSLT well enough to know in advance that the design of Microsoft Office Open XML would make it impossible for this, the Clever Age approach, to work for the Translator. Let me say this clearly: Microsoft knew in advance that XSLT would provide shitty tranform from Microsoft Office Open XML to ODF and they funded the Clever Age project to use this method.

None of that is surprising of course, Microsoft is simply trying to protect their big cash cow (MS Office) and they will use any and all tricks in the book to keep their lock-in.

More on Microsoft's Office Open XML

Here is another article about how bad this "standard" is. It contains quite a few examples that really shows why it is bad and that it will be very difficult for anyone but Microsoft to implement it. Here is a nice quote:

This is not a specification; this is a DNA sequence.