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OOX-ODF: The ECMA Response to ISO Comments

I much prefer to find and work with original source materials, not the digested and spun reports of others.  I’m perfectly happy to develop my own perspective from the original materials.

Various bloggers have said the National Body comments on the ISO submission of Office Open XML would become available and that there would be a response from ECMA.  I’ve ignored the reports from others who claim access to the materials until I can see them for myself when there is a public release of some kind.

Today, I notice that there apparently is an ECMA response and those who are critical of Office Open XML moving forward at ISO already have much to say about it.  So where is the silly thing?

1. Sam Hiser provided the first clue this morning.  Sam doesn’t say where to find the material, but he links to an article that talks about it, providing his analysis of that Matthew Aslett article.
      
2. Matthew Aslett’s article, “‘Legitimate concerns’ raised over Microsoft’s Office Formats,” appeared March 7 in Computer Business Review Online.  Aslett quotes Microsoft’s Jason Matusow and then observes “According to details of the responses published by ECMA, 12 national bodies noted that Open XML overlaps the ODF standard, which was ratified by ISO in May 2006, while nine raised concerns about date and time representation, and eight about inconsistencies regarding picture metafiles.”  There are quotes from the response, wherever it is, and further reporting on Matusow’s perspective.  There is not any link to an ECMA report.
     
3. I looked under every rock I could think of at ECMA.  I couldn’t find any response document.  I did confirm that the corrupted Zip containing the ECMA-376 part 4 in Word 2007 .docx format was finally replaced by a good one on March 7, though.
     
4. Well, when it doubt, Google (or, in this case, Live Search) to the rescue.  Walt Hucks has a lot of his own March 3 analysis of the ECMA response, and there is a deep link to a 53-page (plus i-iv) ECMA TC45/2007/006 PDF on the ComputerWorld site.  This document has extracts of the 20 ISO National Body responses along with responses to each of them (mostly by mapping issues to sections where common topics are addressed) a set as well as the detailing of common issues and a one-sentence conclusion.  I’ve not read through it.
     
5. I also see that Hasan on the Open Malaysia blog has a brief March 35 summary of the response and a link to the document at the ComputerWorld site.  Hasan links to the Walt Hucks post and a lengthy March 3 Edward MacNaghten point-by-point post.  MacNaghten does not provide a source for the ECMA response document.  [There’s also a March 3 Hasan post that does link to the ComputerWorld article and that I missed when I first researched this post.  There Hasan goes on about what constitutes an objection, so we’ll have to see how ISO rules on the matter.]
      
6. As part of a March 1 Open Malaysia post about whether the world needs (only?) two office document format standards at ISO, Hasan provides an Open Text Livelink URL that finds JTC001-N-8530 on the ISO/IEC JTC1 site.  This is a 1.3 MB Zip (posted on February 28) of the National Body Comments and the ECMA response.  Unfortunately, this material is protected and can’t be downloaded without a Livelink user name and password.
      
7. But Hasan does link to Andy Updegrove, who posted his own February 28 analysis without providing the documents.  He reports that they came to him from undisclosed sources.  In a March 3 update to that post, Updegrove also provides a link to the ComputerWorld site and we finally learn it’s source: A March 1 article by Eric Lai (no link to that).  Updegrove also adds a link to another copy of the PDF on the Groklaw site.  Updegrove does not link to the source of that link either, a March 3 post by MathFox.  (Why do people like to deep link directly to PDF and Zip files?)
     
8. Fortunately, MathFox does link to the March 1 Eric Lai article in ComputerWorld.  

At last, I found an acknowledged source.  Now why was that so hard?

Could it be because these are Eric Lai’s opening sentences:

“Microsoft Corp.’s Open XML file format cleared a small hurdle Wednesday, after documents released by the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) showed fewer countries harboring strong objections than had been expected.

“But the number of countries with reservations about Open XML in its current form remains large enough that the format might not be approved by ISO if it were put to a vote today.”

Later on, Lai gives the box score:

“Documents obtained by Computerworld (PDF format) show that six countries -- Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Kenya, New Zealand and the United Kingdom -- strongly opposed putting Open XML to a vote in five months. Kenya, for instance, identified thirteen reasons why it opposed putting Open XML on a fast path.

“Another five countries -- Australia, France, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore -- also identified problems they saw with Open XML’s current proposal. But none stated outright their opposition to putting Open XML on an accelerated process.

“The remaining countries expressed comments that ranged from neutral to divided, or even positive.”

As I said, I haven’t reviewed the document.  I did scan through the extracts of the National Body Responses.  These seem to be complete and extensive representations of responses with no complaint withheld, organized for matching to the responses.  Eric Lai’s interpretation of their significance appears quite sound based on my experience of standards-body procedures [although others provide different interpretations in their comments].

Now we have access to the document and some reason to believe its pedigree.  Now we can assess the response document’s analysis for ourselves without eager filtering by so many willing interpreters.

Where is Microsoft in all of this?  Here’s what Matthew Aslett passes on to us: “While Microsoft remains involved in the approval, or not, of Open XML by ISO as an ECMA member, Matusow said the company will not get involved in responding directly to complaints and responses.”

I await the dropping of the next ISO shoe.