Alex Brown: Microsoft Fails the Standards Test http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-231455/alex-brown:microsoft-fails-the-standards-test Posts in the discussion thread "Alex Brown: Microsoft Fails the Standards Test" - The second anniversary of the approval of ISO/IEC 29500 (aka OOXML) is upon us. [...] we can fill out a report card for a couple of these promises and determine how well Microsoft is doing … On this count Microsoft seems set for failure. In its pre-release form Office™ 2010 supports not the approved Strict variant of OOXML, but the very format the global community rejected in September 2007, and subsequently marked as not for use in new documents – the Transitional variant. Microsoft are behaving as if the JTC 1 standardisation process never happened [...]. Sat, 07 Mar 2026 14:37:02 +0000 http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-231455#post-741112 Re: Alex Brown: Microsoft Fails the Standards Test http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-231455/alex-brown:microsoft-fails-the-standards-test#post-741112 Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:53:05 +0000 ggiedke 32664 Andy Updegrove has some comments on Brown's article
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20100401074623393

"It’s not easy to look back at decisions that you helped to form and conclude that they may have been ill-conceived, or at least bad bets. I applaud Alex for the candor that he shows in this blog entry, and for sharing the details that only first-hand participants in the ongoing OOXML maintenance process would know."

"Which leaves, of course, one question remaining: with no general awareness of the facts, will Alex’s blog entry drop like a pebble into the pond of the Internet, leaving few, if any ripples? Or will others pick up on it? "

]]> http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-231455#post-741108 Alex Brown: Microsoft Fails the Standards Test http://noooxml.wikidot.com/forum/t-231455/alex-brown:microsoft-fails-the-standards-test#post-741108 Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:46:29 +0000 ggiedke 32664 Alex Brown, the convener of the 2008 Ballot Resolution Meeting, on the status of the MS-OOXML standard (ISO/IEC 29500) and how Microsoft has lived up to its commitments. I guess no-one here is surprised (also Brown genuinely is, it seems), that things do not look well:
http://www.adjb.net/post/Microsoft-Fails-the-Standards-Test.aspx

"Danish expert and BRM delegate Jesper Lund Stocholm, running an analysis of Office 2010 files wrote: “It has been the fear of many that Microsoft will never, ever care at all about the strict conformance clause of ISO/IEC 29500, and my tests clearly [are] a sign that they were right.”"

"Most worrying of all, it appears than Ecma have ceased any proactive attempt to improve the text, leaving just a handful of national experts wrestling with this activity. It seems to me that Microsoft/Ecma believe 95% of the work has been done to ensure the standard is “useful and relevant”. Looking at the text, I reckon it is more like 95% that remains to be done, as it is still lousy with defects."

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