I don't find it credible that Microsoft would intentionally deviate in ways to 
"break" a format, considering the level of scrutiny they receive from 
regulatory authorities and everyone else.

I find it more creditable that they didn't do a terrific job in their first 
effort and it might not have been something the developers were keen about.  
But I have no way of knowing nor of knowing the difficulties there are for 
mapping in and out of their own internal processing model.  They obviously 
can't support a feature that the native application can't support (as is the 
case for LibreOffice as well, of course).

In any case, Microsoft produced public implementation notes about their support 
for ODF 1.1 in Office 2007 (it was SP2, not the SP1 I mentioned in another 
message).  There are also implementation notes for Office 2010 support of ODF 
(and OOXML, etc.).
 
My old links to the Implementation Notes failed me yesterday, but I've now 
learned that they've moved!  (Deep linking into microsoft.com, even searching 
into microsoft.com, is one of my more frustrating experiences.)

Here is relevant information for those interested in the details:

<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dmahugh/archive/2008/12/16/odf-implementation-notes-for-office-2007-sp2.aspx>
 is a December 2008 blog post about the original implementation notes and their 
purpose.  (There are similar notes for OOXML.)

<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dmahugh/archive/2011/07/13/new-dii-website-locations.aspx>
 explains the change in location and format.

The actual notes are here:
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee908651.aspx>
You can get a PDF or you can get a Zip that has *all* of the Microsoft Office 
standards implementations and also disclosure of the formats, etc.  There are 
two versions of the notes for ODF, one for Office 2007, one for Office 2010.

What I'd like to point out about these implementation notes is (1) they are a 
fledgling effort and could use a lot more work too, but (2) these seem to be 
the only ODF implementation notes that *anyone* has ever produced.  They are 
nailed to the ODF specification. 

 - Dennis

DIGGING DEEPER

On the web site you can explore the implementation notes for Office 2010 ODF 
on-line.

If you go into 2 Conformance Statements in the sidebar contents, you can then 
go into 2.1 Normative Variations.  

If you get to 2.1.209 Section 8.1.3, Table Cell, you'll see that table:formula 
is not supported in table cells of Word documents (and I suspect the same is 
true for LibreOffice Write document).  (The table:formula attribute is an 
optional attribute on any ODF table cell.)

Here is the text about table:formula for Excel 2010:

"iii. The standard defines the attribute table:formula, contained within the 
element <table:table-cell>, contained within the parent element 
<office:spreadsheet \ table:table-row>

"This attribute is supported in core Excel 2010.


"When saving the table:formula attribute, Excel 2010 precedes the formula 
string with the "msoxl" namespace.

"When saving the table:formula attribute, Excel 2010 saves a formula string 
that follows [ISO/IEC-29500-1] section 18.17, except workbook-names are written 
as literal values instead of tokens given the lack of a relationship part.

"When loading the attribute table:formula, Excel 2010 first looks at the 
namespace. If the namespace is “msoxl”, Excel 2010 will load the value of 
table:formula as a formula in Excel 2010.

"When loading the table:formula attribute, if the namespace is missing or 
unknown, the table:formula attribute is not loaded, and the value 
“office:value” is used instead. If the result of the formula is an error, Excel 
2010 loads the <text:p> element and maps the element to an Error data type. 
Error data types that Excel 2010 does not support are mapped to #VALUE!"

Note that the formula syntax and semantics used is defined in the OOXML 
standard (IS 29500).


-----Original Message-----
From: e-letter [mailto:inp...@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 07:33
To: discuss@documentfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] ignore m$ legacy?

On 21/07/2011, Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamil...@acm.org> wrote:
> Yes, don't confuse ODF compatibility with OpenOffice.org (or LibreOffice)
> compatibility.  I was in the room on one occasion when Microsoft was asking
> for advice on their approach to ODF 1.1 Spreadsheet documents.
>
> Unfortunately, none of us blinked about how this would work for users who
> are unaware that ODF 1.1 has no standard for calculation formulas but think
> that OpenOffice.org Calc is the standard.
>
> I don't believe that ODF support was "broken."  The ODF support in Office
> 2007 is the first time that integrated ODF support appeared in Microsoft
> Office.  I know there are bugs, some of them rather
> surprising/disappointing.
>

Or deliberate..?

[ ... ]


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