Say no to the MS OOXML Standard

aso186 · Nov 6th, 2007, 20:31

Not sure if you're aware of this, but there's a petition you can sign against Microsoft filing their own ISO standard for Microsoft Office (Office OpenXML or OOXML).

You can read more about it at www.noooxml.org or go straight to the no-ooxml petition.

I know it's only a small piece on Microsoft's vast hold of the industry, but they won't keep getting away with it forever

Thanks for reading

alexgeek · Nov 11th, 2007, 17:35

I don't see what's wrong, can you explain this please?

aso186 · Nov 11th, 2007, 18:29

Quoted straight from the site

Quote:

There is already a standard ISO26300 named Open Document Format (ODF): a dual standard adds costs, uncertainty and confusion to industry, government and citizens;
There is no provable implementation of the OOXML specification: Microsoft Office 2007 produces a special version of OOXML, not a file format which complies with the OOXML specification;
There is information missing from the specification document, for example how to do a autoSpaceLikeWord95 or useWord97LineBreakRules;
More than 10% of the examples mentioned in the proposed standard do not validate as XML;
There is no guarantee that anybody can write software that fully or partially implements the OOXML specification without being liable to patent lawsuits or patent license fees by Microsoft;
This format conflicts with existing ISO standards, such as ISO 8601 (Representation of dates and times), ISO 639 (Codes for the Representation of Names and Languages) or ISO/IEC 10118-3 (cryptographic hash);
There is a bug in the spreadsheet file format which forbids any date before the year 1900: such bugs affect the OOXML specification as well as software applications like Microsoft Excel 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007.
This standard proposal was not created by bringing together the experience and expertise of all interested parties (such as the producers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators), but by Microsoft alone.

Need I say more?