[odf-discuss] Office 2007 is not using ECMA Spec

[Russell Ossendryver]

 This is an interesting comment from a discussion from this article:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/carroll/?p=1697

*There is no editor reference application for Office Open XML*

 I think you'd be well advised to launch Micorosoft Office and try to save a
file in the format specified by the draft standard at ISO. You can't. There
is no compatibility mode in Office that limits input to the feature set
specified in the official Office Open XML draft ISO standard.

I have spent hundreds of hours poring through those 6,000-plus pages and
comparing them to the undocumented APIs used by Office recently disclosed in
litigation. http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Supp_Rpt_Andrew_Schulman.pdf

It is beyond question that in the Office Open XML draft standard, Microsoft
disclosed only a crippled subset of the markup and functionality of its new
file formats. But Microsoft has not enabled a compatibility mode for the
feature set it put in the draft standard. Office can read Office Open XML,
but is only a file viewer for that draft standard.

How can you rationally suggest that there can be interoperability if
everyone supports the Office Open XML specification? Particularly when
Microsoft itself won't allow its customers to write to that format?

Even when Microsoft released the feature crippled RTF format for
interoperability, it supported both read and write capabilities in Office.
But the new feature crippled Office Open format is a one-way format.
Applications can send Office Open files to Microsoft Office, Office can open
those files, but any edits are saved in a different format!

May I respectfully suggest that your company is beyond question attempting
to have a vendor lock-in format adopted as an international standard? The
claims of openness are absurd. Even Microsoft Office doesn't write to that
format
http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-11048-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=33784&messageID=621428&start=-9910



On Dec 18, 2007 7:43 PM, <robert_weir at us.ibm.com> wrote:

>
> You can look at this from a few angles:
>
> 1) First, Office 2007 writes out things that are not described in the
> OOXML standard,such as scripts, macros, DRM, etc.  Try encrypting a document
> in Office 2007.  It is not longer even a zip file + XML at that point.
>
> 2) Also, I've heard reports that Office 2007 does not implement all of the
> features described in the OOXML specification. I haven't verified this
> myself, but I've seen reports that using some of the extensibility features
> of Part 5 of the standard will cause Word to crash.
>
> 3) Keep in mind as well that Office 14 (Office 2009) has been in progress
> for over a year now.  The beta 1 release will be in early 2008.  Presumably
> this has already extended OOXML as needed to handle the new features of
> Office 2009.
>
> -Rob
>
>
> odf-discuss-bounces at opendocumentfellowship.com wrote on 12/18/2007
> 06:15:11 PM:
>
> > A question, apparently Office 2007 is not using the ECMA standard:
>
> >
> > Does anyone know the specifics of the difference between the ECMA
> > Standard or for that matter DIS29500 and the OOXML being used in Office?
> >
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