Hello everyone.
Yes, the meeting took place yesterday. Apparently FFII had their date wrong.
I received an invitation from Michael Cassar of MSA, since I had already participated in a number of technical committees with MSA related to language and localization. I didn't realise others could attend.
The meeting was the first one for the newly-being-set-up technical committee (TC) which will mirror the JTC1, an ISO committee for all things IT related. It was set up rather hurriedly, with some pressure from Microsoft, to vote on the OOXML standard however that will only be its first task - it's an ongoing committee which will have other meetings to decide on other matters.
The meeting was attended by Michael Cassar, Frank Balzan and George Cutajar from MSA itself, Pierre Mallia (Microsoft Malta), Antonio Ghio (laywer, Fenech & Fenech), John Abela from University, Pierre Vella from MITTS, Sandro Grech from Exigy (a Microsoft Gold Partner), and yours truly.
At the start of the meeting, Michael Cassar (MSA) explained something about the composition of such TCs - namely that companies are not represented on TCs, but only NGOs and other bodies, like the FOI and Chamber of Commerce. Each of these can send more than one representative but they will have one vote each. Thus, Microsoft Malta or Exigy cannot be represented as such, but the FOI can select an individual from Microsoft Malta as its nominee. The MLUG is an NGO. MITTS seems to be kinda "not exactly a company". For the rest, they will need to produce something - even an email - from the respective body such as FOI, confirming them as their nominee. Once on the TC however, all individuals are supposed to be working for the common good, not representing their own companies or groups. All this seems to have taken Pierre Mallia by surprise, and they have some reservations about whether they will manage to get the requisite approval from University, FOI, Chamber etc.
Afterwards, Pierre Mallia introduced the only topic on the agenda - the OOXML proposed standard. After giving a brief introduction about the proposed standard, I moved a 3-point objection. The text of a document I distributed is found below:
----start
Arguments about DIS 29500 (OOXML)
One standard, one test, accepted everywhere?
Item 2.2 in the "fast track procedure" is "to ascertain that there is no evident contradiction with other International Standards". ISO's own aim is for "one standard, one test, and one conformity assessment procedure accepted everywhere". However, ISO already has an existing standard for an XML office document format. ISO/IEC 26300 describes the document format commonly known as ODF (Open Document Format). This format is already used by a number of software packages, including OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Google Documents and others - a total of over 30 applications.
Even Microsoft Office 2007 has the ability to store its documents in the ODF format, through a Microsoft-sponsored ODF converter. The site for this project states as its goal "to provide translators to allow for interoperability between applications based on ODF (OpenDocument) 1.0 standards and Microsoft OpenXML based Office applications."
In addition to needlessly defining a new document standard, OOXML defines several new formats instead of using existing and established standards. For example:
* SpreadsheetML uses decimal time instead of ISO8601. The decimal time format contains errors such as treating 1900 as a leap year. In fact the OOXML specification forbids applications from supporting dates before 1900.
* DrawingML is used instead of SVG (W3C standard) or ISO/IEC 26300:2006.
* a new mathematical format instead of MathML (W3C standard)
* book 4 section 2.18.66 uses a new numbering format instead of ISO 10646.
* OOXML uses its own list of language codes instead of ISO639.
* OOXML defines its own hashing algorithms instead of ISO/IEC 10118-3 or W3C XML-ENC.
In part due to its failure to use existing standards, the full OOXML standard is over 6,000 pages long (about 10 times the ODF standard). To fast-track this specification leaves insufficient time for proper evaluation - a mere 30 day evaluation period. In addition, the JTC directives state that "the specification shall have had sufficient review over an extended time period to characterise it as being stable."
The new proposed format "was designed from the start to be capable of faithfully representing the pre-existing corpus of word-processing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that are encoded in binary formats defined by Microsoft Corporation." However a standard must not be tied to any specific vendor or product. By comparison, the ODF was created by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), a wide consortium which includes many representatives of the IT industry - including Microsoft - to be able to represent documents from any vendor or product.
The document is full of proprietary elements and attributes like autoSpaceLikeWord95, useWord97LineBreakRules, useWord2002TableStyleRules. Some elements require implementers to implement certain proprietary binary formats, including Microsoft's own older document formats, which are not open standards, often undocumented and sold under licenses that specifically prohibit reverse-engineering or reimplementation.
The OOXML standard leaves many elements undefined. For example in book 4 section 6.1.2.19, in the equationxml attribute of the shape element the "actual format of the contents of this attribute are application-defined". Similarly, it refers to styles like apples, scaredCat, heebieJeebies, which are incompletely defined (e.g missing height, width, color-depth, orientation). Line styles babyRattle, balloonsHotair, etc provide no details on horizontal, vertical and corner scenarios.
Resources and references
Comprehensive list of objections to OOXML: http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_objections
Microsoft's ODF plugin for Office: http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter
Applications supporting ODF: http://www.opendocumentfellowship.org/applications
----end
During this discussion, the first argument was pretty much discarded. However there was quite a bit of interest about the other points - namely that the specification is incomplete, and that it depends on proprietary products. In view of this, I am preparing a more comprehensive document concentrating on the flaws in the specification itself. I've found quite a few resources on the web.
The next meeting is slated for Monday 20th August.
Ramon Casha
Software Services
Megabyte Limited (www.megabyte.net)
F4, The Technopark, Mosta MST3000, Malta
tel (+356) 21421600 - fax (+356) 21421590
Megabyte
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Gregory Smirnov
Sent: Il-Ħamis, 9 ta' Awissu 2007 09:23
To: Malta Linux User Group - general list
Subject: Re: [LINUX.ORG.MT] Fwd: URGENT: OOXML in Malta: meeting tomorrow
Philip,
Fist, my apologies for delayed post. But I was far from Internet and found it
only today morning. I think more people in Malta received same post, but
nobody forwarded it here.
Huh! As I just learned now, meeting actually happend yesterday...
I think we will hear from them today, and get some light on what has happened.
Gregory.
On Thursday 09 August 2007 08:53:26 Philip Serracino Inglott wrote:
Why do we get to know about this now? Is there more info? Who will attend
etc... Can I? Should I attend?
Philip
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