Archives


Atom Feed

Associated Blogs
 
Edge City
 
Numbering Peano
 
Praxis101
 
Prof. von Clueless in the Blunder Dome

Recent Items
 
California Won’t Be Outdone: Banning Zip, PDF, Tex...
 
The Future of Microsoft Office? I couldn't help my...
 
At My Age, It’s Time To Get Busy Find inspiration ...
 
Peter Naur: Science for Computer Science Peter Nau...
 
OOX-ODF: Is that an XML I See Before Me? Stephane ...
 
Blogger: Sudden-Death Updating
 
OOX-ODF: Artillery Duels and Document Sleuthing
 
OOX-ODF and the Mystery Document Flavors
 
How Publicly-Owned Document Standards Matter
 
OOX-ODF: The Danger of Finding Only What You're Lo...

OOX-ODF: The WOES of ODF

Emerging Discussion of Heterogeneous Interoperability

While the ISO ECMA-376 opposition FUD rally was in full swing, there were also interesting discussions of interoperability and the availability of multiple implementations.  These are important matters that require concerted attention, especially by those agencies that have to figure out how to implement the enactment of open document formats in civil administration and other governmental operations. 

Among recent posts on the topic, Gary Edwards provides an interesting analysis of the challenges that Microsoft’s Windows-Office-Exchange-Sharepoint (WOES) cluster presents to the simplistic idea of simply substituting ODF as the default format in the appropriate Microsoft Office System components: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (not to mention, at some point, Publisher, OneNote, InfoPath, Outlook, Visio, XPS, and more).  Edwards also opines that Groove is a factor.  Nice catch.

Now, it is some cause for concern that whenever Bill Gates talks about the Microsoft commitment to interoperability, he tends to offer Sharepoint Server as his example.  When I hear “interoperability” I expect to learn something about heterogeneity and protocols for open-system, cross-platform, multi-vendor/implementation integration.  “Interoperability == Sharepoint”  is not what I’m expecting any more than “Interoperability == Lotus Notes.”

Doug Mahugh points out that interoperability is a multi-faceted term.  That needs to be understood better all around, especially where heterogeneity is a factor (and also where the trend of enterprise is to erode isolated vertical approaches and the resulting uncoordinated and incoherent islands of information).

I want to give this latest Edwards’ ramble a more-careful examination, along with Mahugh’s offering and some others that, when shorn of their advocacy bent, point to important concerns that must be addressed in the real-world enactment of flexible, document-based interoperability arrangements. 

Into Monopolistic-Deviousness Limbo

Meanwhile, and my reason for this preliminary statement on the matter, I notice that Microsoft is being accused, yet one more time, of technical measures designed to undermine the introduction of ODF and somehow exclude critical information from the corresponding Open Office XML formats.  

After being unable to duplicate previous claims (e.g., about a “well-known secret binary key”), and in the absence of any submission of confirmable technical evidence, I am dubious about this new round of claims. 

I am so dubious that I just mailed a dated and sealed envelope to myself that holds my prediction about how this will all turn out, especially with regards to claims about document-conversion fidelity.  (Of course, I could have mailed several different envelopes to myself, so I will have to find some third-party to hold onto it as the one-and-only one that holds my official prediction.)

For those evil-monopolist-deviousness theory subscribers who want to play along at home, the current round of Microsoft dirty-tricks claims seems to have started in a comment by Gary Edwards on his Open Document Foundation partner Sam Hiser’s blog.  It is fleshed out in the bowels of the ODF-WOES post under the general theme of how “the promise and expectations of XML are broken by the proprietary application, platform and system specific dependencies that make up MS Ecma OOXML.”  The evidence is some vague problem with interpretation of file associations with ODF-format Zip files on Vista and also assertion that there are OOX extensions and deviations implemented in the official (non-beta) version of Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) 2005.

This would not be worthy of much mention until someone trustworthy provides a verifiable demonstration of what is (or is not) happening.  I don’t see the Zip problem on my installation of Office Ultimate 2007 on Vista Ultimate, and I really don’t want to install VSTO if I can help it.   (For personal reasons, I stick with the free Visual Studio Express Editions whenever possible, even though I also possess the commercial, professional versions).

Unfortunately, these off-hand claims have reached the state of being “newsworthy.”  Dana Blankenhorn’s “Microsoft playing three card monte with XML conversion” article distills a strange extract of the Edwards’ article that ends up with “interoperability by design” (what other kind is there?) being a term of condemnation.  So now we have Bob Sutor linking to Blankenhorn and Sam Hiser remashing the Edwards claims in a belligerent “open letter” to Mary Jo Foley.  I especially like Sam’s claim that Microsoft has “stopped all community people and managers from blogging.”  I assume he means blogging about the OASIS JTC1 ECMA-375 responses (which are still not available for public consumption), because I don’t think this blog is stopped (nor this one or this one or this one or …).  Now that I see it, I wonder who are those “community people” that Microsoft can have stop blogging?

Ah, yes, the beat goes on …