OOX-ODF: National Body Review Comments on Office Open XML File Formats, ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (ECMA-376)
Thanks to a post by Bob Sutor, we can now find the original National Body Review Comments to which ECMA responded prior to the clock being started on the current five–month ballot period (go here for the ECMA response too, or obtain it from the National Body Review Comments package, below).
The National Body Review Comments can now be examined and assessed along with the ECMA response to ascertain what the range of perspectives are within which ISO/IEC JTC1 has proceeded to go ahead and kick off the fast-track clock.
For context and to satisfy yourself about the source of the materials, follow this path:
- ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) Subcommittee 32 (SC32) on Standards for Data Management and Interchange: home page.
- Follow the SC32 Recent Documents link (currently for documents from N1403 [February 2006] onward). I see documents as far back as June 2005, so the documents we are interested, JTC001–N-8350, posted on 2007–03–05 are likely here for a while.
- Scroll down to near the end of the recent list and find JTC001–N-8350.zip (1.3MB download). This archive contains 28 PDF files, including the ECMA Response of 2007–02–28.
[Historical note: today, that directory contains one PowerPoint presentation, 206 Microsoft Word .doc documents, and about 250 Adobe Acrobat PDF files]
Now I want to nit-pick a little:
- Sutor’s announcement of this material has this title: “OOXML contradictions are online.” That’s not what this is Bob and you know better. I wonder how many of the ODFhideen echo chamber will blissfully perpetuate that spin.
- Then there’s this snarky last sentence, “I still find it funny that the OOXML supporters (plural?) early on tried to say that the comments were all going to be nice and congratulatory.” I don’t know what supporter(s) said that. I think Brian Jones’ observation (some in support and others seeking further clarification) was straightforward, with some allowance for windage and interpretation of the ones that did not explicitly request that the process should be halted or assert a contradiction. I daresay I can find a few of the ODFhideen who exulted in the claim that the review comments would all claim contradiction, would be universally damning, and that DIS 29500 was doomed. (It may well be, but not yet.)
- It also concerns me that anything — even the most incompetent and blind-eyed hip-shot — offered as an objection is claimed as powerful evidence of the inadequacies of ECMA-376, and this is happily echoed by people I’m certain are otherwise-competent technical experts. I find this willingness to take honest differences as prisoners of a fabricated war between good and evil to be irresponsible at best.
posted by orcmid
at 4/16/2007 04:12:00 PM
