In recent months, there has been a growing support for and adoption of Ecma Office Open XML. Underlining the increasing usage of Open XML formats in application development, Intrasphere Technologies and MS Technology1 have developed solutions specific to customer needs based on Open XML schemas.
So far as I can see the format is only adopted by Microsoft and companies that are contractually obliged to provide products that support the format. No developer community is adopting the format.
Vinay Khubchandani, Lead Architect for Intrasphere Technologies said, "Open XML is a self describing XML format that allows easy conversion to other formats including other XML formats. It's great because it helps us embed our custom XML formats along with custom metadata inside [sic!] the Open XML document. And being able to edit an Open XML document right inside word-processing environment beats everything. Open XML cuts development time by at least 50% - it gives us so many more options to achieve the required functionality in the most optimum way
It is like these advert entries on Doug Mahugh's blog. This one is remarkable: Guy Greece produced an "objective" report.
… Guy Creese's blog has some information about a free report available from the Burton Group entitled "What’s Up, .DOC? ODF, OOXML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications." As Guy explains, "we'll probably ruffle some vendor feathers on this one, but we've tried hard to look into this objectively and in some detail (the report is 37 pages long)."
The trap here is that Burton asks you to register to get it.
Figures
A quantitative look at the media spinning wheel is kindly provides by Google Trends. Please keep blogging about the format. I get the impression that mainstream media is irrelevant in the current format struggle.
Sittin' down and talk
Reportedly Microsoft's Chris Capossela is on tour to meet critics to speak about open standards.
For more than two years Capossela served as speech assistant for Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. During that time Capossela worked closely with Gates, crafting material for more than 350 speeches and presentations. His experience with Gates taught him to think big and to never miss an opportunity to learn something new.
Facing Reality
Internet blogging can be a bit noisy, at times even baseless but it also keeps track of the real pearls. The Boycott Novell blog points us to an opinion of the the brilliant Office internals expert Stephane Rodriguez which we should frame for our <NO>OOXML living room:
The XML proposed in OOXML is not a general purpose language for Office documents. The whole point of XML is to design it in such a way that it interoperates with applications out there, including those which don’t exist yet. Therefore that XML should be designed in such a way, and those in the trenches should be able to find clues about that. Problem : there is no such clue, because it’s really a poor XML. A good example I like to come up with is that there is a gazillion ways to describe text formattings (no less than 6 for Excel spreadsheets alone). Microsoft designed a bad XML that puts the burden on implementors who will spend their time on those details rather than productive time bridging it with applications across platforms. That’s why it should be rejected : it does not really benefit anyone except Microsoft. And even that remains (Microsoft is the sole benefitor) to be seen : from my own personal experience of Office file formats, it appears that nothing in OOXML will help create the next big things coming for Office (those that I see coming given what the workplace is moving towards).
Another thing that should be reminded is that having to spend so much time on details because OOXML is poorly designed is just the tip of the iceberg. The reality is that we already have two OOXML variants, and two more are coming when Office 2009 ships.
- OOXML 1.0 (i.e. ECMA 376 today)
- Office 2007 (i.e. OOXML 1.0 + all undocumented bits + all fixes)
- OOXML 1.1 (whatever is the outcome of Feb’s BRM)
- Office 2009 (OOXML 1.1 + undocumented bits).
Implementors will have to implement all 4 or will be unable to open an arbitrary document based on this thing called “OOXML”.
Among undocumented bits : macros, macro bindings, DRM, encryption, sharepoint metadata, …
I found blogging very useful as it is more difficult to get polluted by baseless PR spin. It is easier to develop a view based on a dialogue with informed readers than by writing a paper for an invisible audience. You invite the wisdom and insanity of crowds:
But among the crowds a little child suddenly gasped out, "But he hasn't got anything on." And the people began to whisper to one another what the child had said. "He hasn't got anything on." "There's a little child saying he hasn't got anything on." Till everyone was saying, "But he hasn't got anything on." The Emperor himself had the uncomfortable feeling that what they were whispering was only too true. "But I will have to go through with the procession," he said to himself.