Application-defined: promote 'innovation' and kill interoperability http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-46855/application-defined:promote-innovation-and-kill-interoperability Posts in the discussion thread "Application-defined: promote 'innovation' and kill interoperability" - Microsoft New Zealand representative wants competitors to make reverse engineering over their products. Standardizing the whole format would not permit Microsoft to have a 'competitive' advantage. Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:26:17 +0000 http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-46855#post-125055 Re: Application-defined: promote 'innovation' and kill interoperability http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-46855/application-defined:promote-innovation-and-kill-interoperability#post-125055 Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:00:12 +0000 podmokle 3547 I believe your interpretation is a bit over the top. We know for a long time that macros, the only thing that really creates trouble when you move to another document file format is not specified by DIs 29500.

But: have you seen the latest Rodriguez articles? It relates to the same problem for the binary formats.

http://openxmldeveloper.org/user/Profile.aspx?UserID=2141

http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/2008/03/bad-surprise-in-microsoft-office-binary.html

]]> http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-46855#post-125044 Application-defined: promote 'innovation' and kill interoperability http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-46855/application-defined:promote-innovation-and-kill-interoperability#post-125044 Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:45:55 +0000 zoobab 2946 Microsoft New Zealand representative wants competitors to make reverse engineering over their products. Standardizing the whole format would not permit Microsoft to have a 'competitive' advantage.

Here is what he says in ComputerWorld:

Why does OOXML not include macros, scripting, OLE serialisation, and leave so much to be application-defined?

Competition between Office Automation suites has always been an important factor in driving much of the innovation that we enjoy in the industry and as users today. The process to standardise OOXML is a process to standardise the data format, not an application. Standardising the full application would remove the ability for different office applications to compete with each other and slow that pace of innovation.

Sorry, but the macros are stored in a file format, so not defining how to interpret this data will lead to a competitive advantage for the company of Redmond, and will be a killer for interoperability. I don't want to buy a Windows license and an Intel PC just to be able to decode their crappy format.

]]>