[odf-discuss] Miguel on OXML

[Alex Hudson]

Pamela Jones wrote:
> http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/01/more-matter-with-less-art.html
>
> He answers Miguel ably.

That's slightly in the eye of the beholder; I think he misses many of 
Miguel's points (particularly, what Miguel said on formulas has been 
completely misunderstood).

Rob's final point is very strong though:

    "The resulting standard of OOXML on top of OOXML (sic) would be
    smaller, simpler, higher quality and more interoperable than the
    mess that we'll end up with by having OOXML as a standard, in
    addition to ODF."


(It's a mistake, but an obvious one :)

As I understand what the Foundation are doing with their plugin, this is 
basically the approach they've taken: they translate to some level of 
ODF, but then everything else is essentially Microsoft-specific tags 
added in. More or less, OXML on top of ODF.

Whatever you think of that specific approach (it's very much how 
Microsoft output HTML, for example, with their mso- additions in CSS), 
it does make OXML less necessary. I would also love to see ODF take the 
better parts of OXML too (as much stick as it gets, the spreadsheet part 
of OXML is by expert opinion _very_ well designed - Microsoft know Excel 
users extremely well).

I personally think we may have missed a trick with the contradictions 
stuff: I suspect we're sending ISO the wrong message. I do think, 
though, all the materials that have been put together will be _very_ 
useful in the next stage.

One problem that Microsoft have, that Miguel correctly identified, is 
that they've shipped Office 2007. That means they have _very little 
room_ in which to resolve ballots.

I don't know if we've understood the Microsoft position well enough, but 
I wonder if their backs are somewhat against the wall here. These are 
the logical outcomes:

   1. OXML passed, as-is, with few or minor changes (ODF only required
      "editorial" changes - and even that was a stretch - I'm not sure
      OXML will escape so easily)
   2. OXML passed, but with "significant" changes
   3. OXML not passed

Look at it from Microsoft's point of view. 3. is obviously not a great 
outcome for them; but is 2. preferable? If OXML was passed, but in a 
format that was basically incompatible with Office 2007, that would be a 
*huge* problem. I think the choices open to Microsoft are more or less 1 
or 3. That helps us immensely.

Cheers,

Alex.