ISO 29500 (Office "Open" "XML") is still far from over, as there's still tons of questions to be resolved in the BRMs. Now we have a broken "standard" that cannot be implemented HONESTLY AND FULLY by anyone other than MS.
Honestly, I really don't like the level of corruption that they did for standardizing OpenXML... OpenXML clearly does not deserve to be an ISO standard. Now if they just let the documentation out and let an honest to goodness peer review guide OOXML as a public specification that can be implemented (more like how the JCP works) then I'm for it.Things like bad date and locale handling, incomplete specifications for VML and DrawingML, do not deserve to be standardized. These could, however, be used to document properly the behavior of old MS Office and the formats that they conquered through the years (such as WordPerfect, Lotus 123, etc) for possible conversion to ODF in the future. It's just that one year is NOT enough to do this. I sure have wished that MS took their time to fully document and fix issues with their "standard" rather than bastardizing the process. If MS will be able to create a really decent ODF-compliant (ODF 1.1 first, then subsequent versions of the standard in subsequent versions of Office), they will still make money. They will have competition, albeit, but given the familiarity of the Office UI, together with the many companies that do create extensions for MS Office, and collaborative features (that dont need an extension of the standard, btw) that is necessary in many large businesses (that doesn't exist in the free variants), MS will still rule the roost even with ODF as the default file format. They have a head-start already, and they can still price MS Office at a premium. Or maybe they can sell MS Office in twice as many editions as Windows Vista (hehehehe :D) with varying degree of features. As long as it will implement the standard correctly, and they will submit their extensions that can be freely implemented as a standard to OASIS, it will be a major force for enterprises to stick to Windows as Office may have the best of breed implementation of ODF. I hope this becomes true, but I SINCERELY DOUBT IT. It'll always be a pipe dream... On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Peter Plug <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'll believe it when I see it... right now it looks like the embrace, > extend, and extinguish strategy applied once more. > > > On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 12:58 PM, Michael Cole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> On Thursday 22 May 2008 12:43:11 pm Marvin Pascual wrote: >> > For more information, kindly visit http://tinyurl.com/5scd9l >> > >> > Marvin >> Its only a press release, and support ODF, yes how much and how well... >> >> Then they will, break it like the HTML standards, or other standards that >> they >> have promised to support.. >> >> Maybe I am skeptical but see it too many times.. >> >> >> -- >> Regards, >> >> Michael Cole >> LPIC-1 >> >> >> >> "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who >> can't >> read them. " >> - Mark Twain >> >> "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our >> abilities." >> — J. K. Rowling >> >> "Wear the old coat and buy the new book." >> — Austin Phelps >> >> "I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I >> pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you." >> — George Bernard Shaw >> >> >> _________________________________________________ >> Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List >> http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug >> Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph > > _________________________________________________ > Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List > http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug > Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph > _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
