[OpenISO] OOXML goal statement

[Norbert Bollow]

Janet Hawtin <lucychili at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes. It is hard to see how the standards bodies can process something
> like this with a straight face or with an appreciation of what it
> means for their brand.
> j

I strongly agree; this is an issue that definitely ought to be
explained in the OpenISO.org problem report document.

Draft text is below and also at
http://f29500.openiso.org/ms-only-compatibility


--snip--------------------------------------------------------------


Designed only for compabibility with old Microsoft formats
==========================================================

Part 1, introduction (page xii)


Problem description:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The OOXML document format has admittedly been designed with the
goal to be "fully compatible with the large existing investments in
Microsoft Office documents" without aiming at a similarly high
standard of compatibility with other exiting document formats
including the international standard ISO/IEC 29300 (OpenDocument
Format, ODF) used by all of Microsoft's major competitors.

Expected impact:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Due to the complexity of the subject matter, compatibility cannot
be achieved without explitly aiming for it.  Therefore, unless the
OOXML specification is first revised to add the required compatibility
features to allow representing ODF documents, OOXML is not technically
suitable for use as the native document format in any future version
of the document processing software of Microsoft's competitors.  This
clearly disqualifies OOXML as a standard.

Possible solutions:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Extending XML-based document formats to add compatibility features
for the benefit of compatibility with another document format is
fortunately possible without introducing interoperability problems.
If Microsoft was willing to cooperate, this problem could be solved
by means of either of the following two strategies: OOXML could be
extended to provide compatibility features to allow representing ODF
documents, or OOXML could be deprecated in its entirety, while ODF
would be extended by adding compatibility features which allow
convertting documents from Microsoft's document formats.  The latter
solution is preferable because it avoids the various problems which
inevitably result from having several competing document format
standards.

--snap--------------------------------------------------------------


Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org