NoOOXML

There is one point that no one, as yet, seems to have mentioned. I refer to the
connection between the OOXML ISO submission and the trouble MS is having with
Vista.

MS itself appears to have been forced to admit that Vista was released
prematurely and is in very bad shape. The situation is that many people have
bought PCs with Vista pre-installed so that they get a Vista license but then
reverted to Windows XP for actual day to day usage in the hope that Vista will
eventually be user ready.

But surely Vista and the .docx and other formats are the
closest thing to an actual implementation of OOXML which exists. So how can MS
have the nerve to pretend that the 6000 pages purporting to describe OOXML in
full detail are in a fit state for submission to ISO as a potential standard? If
MS themselves are having trouble with .docx files how can anyone else — even
remotely — be in a position to implement such an apology for a standard?

So we have a situation in which even MS Windows users are sticking to the .doc
format rather than the .docx format and MS is trying to make .docx an ISO
standard. What a joke.

It seems as if MS's consistent policy, down the years, of deliberately avoiding
backwards compatibility is tripping them up in a truly major way. The contrast
with WordPerfect is quite sriking since the very latest versions of Corel
software can read Wordperfect .wpd files going back at least as far as version
8.