Comments on: Legacy Inflation

By: Yoon Kit

Yoon Kit — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:22:00 +0000

fenilsen,

Ive heard it from a MS rep here in Malaysia too. I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/02/existing-corpus.html

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:38:00 +0000

fenilsen:
“I’ve been reading most of the MS blogs for the last few weeks and I have seen no such claims. Do you have any links to such claims?”

Got to Rick Jelliffe’s blog post “ODF Alliance now loves me!”:
“Now that OOXML has a year’s worth of documents out, Ecma apparantly thinks it is important that (critical parts of) existing valid documents don’t become invalid, as far as I can see.”
http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/01/odf_alliance_now_loves_me.html

If you want to know MS’ position on MS OOXML, you cannot do without Rick’s opinion. And he is in the Australian NB.

Winter

By: funnybroad

funnybroad — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:31:00 +0000

From the Word Team at Microsoft: An absolutely perfect example of the confusion and pain they’ve caused their customers by introducing this new file format too soon, and how blind they are to it: http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_office_word/archive/2007/08/14/a-compatibility-guide-for-the-end-user.aspx

By: funnybroad

funnybroad — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:31:00 +0000

I have an addition to your 5th paragraph:

They could have waited until they were able to get the 3 primary applications (Word, PowerPoint and Excel) to deal with their own OOXML formats in a CONSISTENT and ACCURATE manner. They could have also been more forthcoming regarding these issues, but instead, customers are left to get burned on their own, and have to pay Microsoft $$$ to file bug reports if they have any hopes of getting at the very least an acknowledgement that Microsoft is aware of them.

But I'm not bitter...

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:41:00 +0000

Fredrik, If your sole source of information on Microsoft’s position is Microsoft bloggers, then you are missing most of the debate. Join an NB and you’ll hear many a curious tale.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:35:00 +0000

The point is that they are capable of telling the different file versions apart,and the claim that they are unable to change the schema of DIS 29500 because of legacy compatibility issues is a false.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:28:00 +0000

I don’t think they will use the AppVersion metadata (formerly stored as OLE SummaryInformation stream). The reason why is because they never did in the past, and I see it more natural to have a different root namespace, i.e. http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main

I would not be surprised to see

http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2009/main

in Office 2009 files.

In Excel BIFF, records for disambiguating versions where BOF (0809) and RECALCID (01C1). RECALCID was undocumented until last week. It’s a euphemism to say that Microsoft wanted to keep it for them.

-Stephane Rodriguez

By: fenilsen

fenilsen — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:40:00 +0000

Rob Weir wrote:

"Microsoft's unwillingness to fix errors in OOXML is now being defended because the fixes (Microsoft claims) would break compatibility with Ecma-376."

I've been reading most of the MS blogs for the last few weeks and I have seen no such claims. Do you have any links to such claims?

"Microsoft wants ISO to bail them out, and not make any changes that would result in even a single attribute in OOXML differing from Ecma-376."

I've seen no sign of this either. Where can I find information about this?

"In any case, the argument that DIS 29500 must remain identical to Ecma-376 is technically deficient."

I have not seen this argument being used by anyone from Microsoft. Any links?