NoOOXML

1. re: Spreadsheet formula bugs

Daniel,

I think it's pretty clear if you read that article that Joe doesn't really understand XML. He keeps talking about proprietary schemas and a dependency on XSD. We use XSD to help provide validation information for our XML, but the file format isn't dependent on XSD (we also include RelaxNG for folks who'd rather use that).

He also says that translation is necessary only because we use "proprietary schemas". Moving from one format into another always requires translation. I've talked to Joe before about this, and he mistakenly believes that once everything is XML no translation should be necessary. That's obviously not true, translation will always be needed to go from one format into another. By using XML it just gets much easier.

Andrea,

I'll go talk to some of the DrawingML folks and see if they can post a reply to your answer. I'll also see if that's something we should recommend to Ecma to put more info into the spec.

hAl,

I just hate the thought of someone having to spend their time trying to halt progress, not help it. I can't imagine any engineer getting satisfaction out of that. I don't care how much you get paid, life is too short.

We've definitely been talking within Ecma about how to deal with all of these errata, and requests for more information. I agree with you about the depth of this review, it's incredible.

To your last point, it's hard for Microsoft to commit to what comes out of Ecma in the coming years, because we don't know what direction they will take the formats. We'll of course stay active and propose changes based on where we want to go with Office 14. At the end of the day though, the other Ecma members could decide to take the spec in a completely different direction. Now my impression is that won't happen, as the folks on the TC all have pretty similar visions for the future of the spec, but since it's not guaranteed it would be hard for us to make any sort of official statement.

In terms of licensing, we can't provide licenses for new stuff Ecma adds, since Ecma owns it. Our license applies to everything we've submitted, and if we submit anything new we would probably just use the same license.

What kind of statement do you think would be useful (given the fact that we can't predict the future)?

-Brian

http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/07/12/spreadsheet-formula-bugs.aspx#3850252