Open Document Format (ODF) and OpenXML Microsoft Lie

Thursday, 25 January 2007 23:10

The Specification of both format are currently being reviewed, OpenXML is containing a lot of details about Office features bugs (sorry any developer can not call them differently). Extract of the OpenXMl specifications are popping up on the web, one site is trying to bring a view on the problem.

"The Open XML specification comes in 5 different PDF files with an 6 accompanying electronic annexes in excess of 43 megabytes. For comparison the ODF specification is a single 11 megabyte PDF, with 3 separate XML schemas. The ODF specification weighs in at a mere 722 pages, where as, the largest PDF in the Open XML specification is 5219 pages long." read more

The reason why the document is so looong, is that it will force all developer that want to support OpenXML to reproduce Microsoft Office fully (a program code base being 10 years old so good luck), as a result, Open XML will be nearly fully read and written only by Microsoft products.

That exactly the contrary we would expect from an open standard

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) approved ODF as a standard in 2005, and it is now supported by IBM, Sun (OpenOffice) and Novell. IBM decide to stand against Microsoft OpenXML format lin december 2006.

Suprisingly (not for me) Microsoft has agreed only to support the Open XML Translator, a project on Sourceforge which currently offers translations ONLY between ODF and Word 2007, in clear text they help user migrate from ODF to their closed open format. Things never change, they want to control Your file format, in order to force users staying with them...It is all about choice, support ODF

WikiPedia OpenXML article Attention article is being reviewed since it may be biased
WikiPedia Open Document article
Groklaw has also an interesting article Searching for Openness in Microsoft's OOXML and Finding Contradictions
For all courageous people digging through the 7000 pages of Microsoft specs, and wanting to publish their findings, there is an online WIKI and 2 pages at Groklaw, The first Wiki page allows interested parties to find and log in contradictions and objections to OpenXML, while the second page tracks the ISO/IEC process.

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Last Updated ( Thursday, 25 January 2007 23:41 )

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3.20 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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