October 2006

Ass-backwards Compatibility

October 27, 2006

I refer you to Ben Langhinrichs at Genii Software with his post on “Self deprecating standards”. After you’ve read that, then I hope you’ll return back here for some additional thoughts. From what Ben writes, it seems that one source of OOXML’s length and complexity is that it had grandfathered in all sorts of special [...]

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The Chernobyl Design Pattern

October 26, 2006

In 1994, the world learned that the Intel Pentium chip had a bug. In certain cases it gave the wrong answer when calculating floating-point division. These cases were rare, only 1 in 9 billion divisions, and typically only resulted in errors past the 8th decimal place. What did Intel do about this? Well, there was [...]

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Why is OOXML Slow?

October 19, 2006

Of course, one could simply dismiss this question, saying that a specification for an XML vocabulary does not have performance as such, since a specification cannot be executed. However, the choices one makes in designing an XML language will impact the performance of the applications that work with the format. For example, both ODF and [...]

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The Celerity of Verbosity

October 17, 2006

I’ve been hearing some rumblings from the north-west that Ecma Office Open XML (OOXML) format has better performance characteristics than OpenDocument Format (ODF), specifically because OOXML uses shorter tag names. Putting aside for the moment the question of whether OOXML is in fact faster than ODF (something I happen not to believe), let’s take a [...]

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A bit about the bit with the bits

October 15, 2006

I had an interesting meal in Paris a few weeks ago at a small bistro. I like Louisiana Cajun-style food, especially spicy andouille sausage, so when I saw “andouillette” on the menu, my stomach grumbled in anticipation. Certainly, the word ended in “ette”, but even my limited knowledge of French told me that this is [...]

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When language goes on holiday

October 15, 2006

This apt phrase is from Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, section 38, “Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday”. One cannot be sloppy in language without at the same time being sloppy in thought. Of course, this thought is not new. In Analects 13:3, Confucius is given a hypothetical question by a disciple: “If the ruler [...]

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A Leap Back

October 12, 2006

1/23/2007 — A translation of this post, in Spanish has been provided by a reader. You can find it in the Los Trylobytes blog. I’ve also taken this opportunity to update page and section references to refer to the final approved version of the Ecma Office Open XML specification, as well as providing a link [...]

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Lingua franca, lingua exposita

October 5, 2006

Via Bob Sutor’s Open Blog, news that a French Government report is recommending that all government publications be made available in ODF format. It also encourages their European partners to do the same when exchanging documents. More, from InfoWorld.

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In Dublin’s Fair City

October 2, 2006

I am back from KDE’s aKademy 2006 held this year on the campus of Trinity College in Dublin. Tuesday the 26th was “OpenDocument Day” and we heard from a variety of speakers on that topic. The keynote was by Barbara Held from the EC’s IDABC (Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses [...]

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