Good Bye Interoperability with MacroButton

Summary:

ECMA and Microsoft proposes to leave the way you handle macros in OOXML up to each software implementation. Good Bye interoperability!

Good Bye Interoperability with MacroButton

zoobab 14 Feb 2008 16:53

ECMA/Microsoft did not provide how to handle macros in OOXML. Some standard bodies made some remarks (CZ-0028 and CA-0026) about the lack of documentation on how to handle this "MacroButton":

This describes a "MACROBUTTON" field which can run a designated macro or command. But there is no mention of what programming language or API’s are allowed for such a designated macro or command.

The ECMA/Microsoft's answer is not providing anything to be sure your macro will be interpreted in the same way on all platforms (Windows, Linux, OSX, Plan9, VxWorks, etc…):

The mechanism by which the command specified by text in field-argument-1 is located and/or executed by an application is implementation-defined.

Implementation-defined means competitors of Office 2007 will be left in the dark on how to provide macro compatibility with the dominant office suite.

Good Bye interoperability!

Last edited on 14 Feb 2008 17:45 by zoobab Show more

Re: Good Bye Interoperability with MacroButton

stegu 14 Feb 2008 23:32

Nice. The supported data formats for images, audio and video are implementation-defined, and so is the macro language. What exactly is it that those 6,000 pages do specify? It seems as if almost everything pertaining to actual interoperability with MS products is now optional, lots of other things are unspecified, and what is left is just plain bad.

It's pathetic how the ECMA/MS resolutions generally fail to address any real problems. Most can be correctly summarized by the phrase "yes but no". Many of the responses read something like "Agreed, this is a problem, however, we will not actually fix it." The word "agreed" is being heavily abused as a routine introduction to try to put a positive spin on their failure to address the comments.

Last edited on 14 Feb 2008 23:32 by stegu Show more

Re: Good Bye Interoperability with MacroButton

podmokle 15 Feb 2008 08:25

Exactly, the only thing that really creates headache when converting documents from one format to another (or reading old files) are macros. Their specification is not part of the OOXML DIS 29500 standard candidate.

In terms of Office 2007 we need to make the destinction between

• .docx, … the files without macros
• .docm … the files with macros

I don't know how its handled but it really sounds complicated to me. Imagine you add a macro to a docx file, does it then need to be saved as docm and would you have two files then?

Re: Good Bye Interoperability with MacroButton

stegu 15 Feb 2008 14:16

does it then need to be saved as docm and would you have two files then ?

Another wonderful side-effect of Microsoft Windows, where file types are distinguished exclusively by file name extensions. This is the 21st century, and I think that changing the name of a file should not change its type, and changing its type should not need to affect its name. It's an embarrassing leftover from DOS and the 1980's. However, I'm off topic here, so I should shut up.