Hi Gary, Is this capitulation by Microsoft? J

Quotes:

Microsoft Watch - Interoperability - Microsoft Pledges Real ODF Support in Office

active participants in all these formats

• Is this capitulation??

• Service Pack 2 built-in support for: ODF (Open Document Format)


• , ISO (International Organization for Standardization) announced the ratification of OOXML as ISO/IEC 29500. But Microsoft made lots and lots of changes to get the votes for approval. Turns out, Office 2007 has big problems with ISO/IEC 29500, based on testing done by ISO's Griffin Brown. (To be fair, Griffin also found problems with ODF and its standards version, ISO/IEC 26300.)


• Microsoft plans to join the ISO working group responsible for ISO/IEC,


• I want to believe him.
  

Hi John,

Marbux and i were discussing this recently and he made the rather interesting observation that the media message behind this issue looks like the work of a professsional propagandist.  I hardly think however that this is the work of Microsoft.  More likely than not, it's the work of the IBM-Oracle-Google coallition.  Just my humble opinion though.

My own inclination is that Microsoft made a deal with ISO NB's, agreeing to support ODF-OOXML harmonization efforts in exchange for ISO approval of the application-platform-vendor specific MSOffice-OOXML.

Okay.  So you know how i feel about MSOffice-OOXML.  I also believe that ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML is the final piece of a very complex puzzle.  A piece that Microsof twas willing to agree to almost anything to get in place.

What we're seeing now is Microsoft fullfilling their end of the bargain.  It's a small price to pay for what Microsoft gets in exchange for supporting ODF.  They get to put aside antitrust as they launch into the end game of all end games: the take over the Web's future.

I've posted some in-depth opinion's on this in the bookmarked documents and comments you can find at the diigo "Future of the Web" group.  Check out "Running beyond the Browser" for a summary type explanation.

The short story is that for Microsoft, it's all about the Web.  ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML is the final piece of an intricate and complex puzzle tha twill enable Microsoft to control the great transition from MSOffice client/server business systems to that of an MS dominated client/ Web-Stack /server model.

Those who think this all about the document war between ODF and OOXML are sadly mistaken.  Someday they will realize that they were the unwitting marks in a game of three card monty, where the future of the open web was at stake.

As for the ISO harmonization of ODF and OOXML plans?  Can't work, as a recently released ISO commissioned DIN Report concluded after a year of study.  The truth is that both OpenOffice-ODF and MSOffice-OOXML are based on the XML encoding of the application specific binary representation.  While the content packages of both these formats is designed for clean interchange, the presentation layers are impossibly problematic.  It's impossible to map from one layout engine to another if they differ in significant ways how they work with basic and feature advanced document structures.

What i believe is needed to achieve reasonable document interchange is to map not to another application specific format, but to a totally neutral, application-platform-vendor independent presentation layer.  It is entirely possbile to achieve interchange and interop at that higher level.

My neutral format of choice is WebKit.  First of all, it's web ready.  Well, beyond Web ready in that it's got "flow", and is the layout model of both Adobe AIR/Flex and, Apple iPhone.  Second, the webkit layout engine is the most advanced and systematically architected model for (X)HTML-CSS-Javascript-DOM appoaches.  There is no such thing as a document, digital book, report, magazine or micro document that can't be perfectly represented in webkit.  Third, webkit is quite independent of the hapless and wayward W3C, and all the vendor-browser conflicts that entails.

The drawback of course is that even though webkit is OSS, Adobe and Apple are driving the bus.

The future of the Open Web hangs in a precarious balance.  RIA is going to dominate future developement.  The W3C battles with browsers over the direction of important technologies has left developers in a vacuum that RIA has exploded into.  Microsoft RIA in particular concerns me in that it is the most coherent set of technologies out there, but all the key formats, protocols and collabortive interfaces are proprietary.

Complain as we might about Adobe being proprietary, my guess is that about 75% of the underlying technologies used in Adobe RIA are open Web based.  Adobe for sure doesn't ahve anywhere near the platform convergence reach of Microsoft's desktop, Web-Stack, server alignment of WPF-.NET technologies, but i'm not so sure there are too many other options.  XUL and XForms - SVG are going nowhere.  OpenLazlo lacks any market uptake.  JavaFX is too little too late.  Adobe and Microsoft are the only players with sweeping initiatives that include IDE's and, most importantly, end user "editors".

So there you go.  It's going to be quite the ride.  Don't buy into this stuff that somehow MSOffice-ODF is going to be the equivalent of MSOffice-OOXML.  The conversion fidelity problems are due to application layout engine differences that can only be resolved by re writing the layout engines.  And don't buy into the idea that somehow ODF will solve the problems of zero interoperability.  Not going to happen.  The next time someone suggests that, ask them why it is that, after five years of direct particpation on the OASIS ODF, there is zero interop between KOffice and OpenOffice.  Nuff said.

Hope this helps,

~ge~