NoOOXML

Rick Jelliffe says: "Here is a little diagram showing the major modules (namespaces) used in the Ecma 376 Office Open XML schemas. (A member of a nation standards body’s technical committee asked me if I had anything to help his review: the schemas are quite complex, with about 27 namespaces organized into about 86 different schema documents.) Here is the diagram in ISO PDF/A format: Download file (Updated with namespace names and schema modules.)

Onlamp says: "OOXML shows relative weakness in each criteria and offers fundamental flaws that undermine its candidacy as a global standard. OOXML elements require an application to emulate Microsoft Office... OOXML is therefore unlikely to ever be fully implemented by any application other than Microsoft's Office, for which it was created."

Historian as well as any user may be in trouble : following the study below, OOXML does not accept dates before 1900

There are approximately 2300 XML examples in the WordProcessingML section. It's clearly not feasible for the (volunteer) BSI committee to check all of them manually, so I've written some code to automatically extract the examples from the OOXML source, check them for well-formedness, and for validation errors. The results are below. Approximately 300 of the examples are in error - more than 10% !!!

Florida Rep. Ed Homan: "Microsoft sees what's coming. Things like Word and Excel are sort of like a drug now getting ready to go generic."

Can you imagine better way to spend 4 hours of your Friday afternoon time than discussing OOXML problems with non-techies from Microsoft? I can't. Thus I decided to spend this Friday afternoon at Czech standardisation institute, attending the workshop with Microsoft about OOXML specification and its fast-track process.

The workshop at the Czech Institute has been invaded by a lof of well known Microsoft proxies, such as their Gold Partners companies, or the well known Brussels based Microsoft proxy association CompTIA.

The FFII has sent an open letter to all delegations of the International Standardization Organization (ISO) to oppose with contradictions the "fast track" adoption of the Microsoft's 6000-page OOXML specification (ECMA-376) before the deadline of February, 5th. Microsoft's proposal damages the adoption of the existing ISO 26300 standard (OpenDocument) that covers almost the same functionality in just 600 pages.

Jeremy Allison reports on his experiences with MS Office 2007. Quote: "If you use the trial version of Office 2007 for thirty days, all documents you create will be completely unreadable by any other software unless you buy back access to your documents by purchasing the full version of the software. No easy way to get your documents out."