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OOXML

Top 10 Blog Posts of 2009

January 1, 2010

The 2009 wall calendar is now tossed in recycling bin, and I look to 2010 with renewed energy and dedication.  But I did want to take once last parting look at 2009, from the perspective of this blog’s server logs.
Top Blog Posts

Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability (May 2009)
ODF Lies and Whispers (June 2009)
A Game of [...]

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How Not to Read a Patent

August 13, 2009

There is perhaps no occasion where one can observe such profound ignorance, coupled with reckless profligacy, as when a software patent is discussed on the web. Note the recurring pattern, which is repeated every two weeks or so. A patent issues, or a patent application is published or patent infringement suit is brought, [...]

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The Battle for ODF Interoperability

May 17, 2009

Last year, when I was socializing the idea of creating the OASIS ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC, I gave a presentation I called “ODF Interoperability: The Price of Success”. The observation was that standards that fail never need to deal with interoperability. The creation of test suites, convening of multi-vendor interoperability workshops and [...]

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How to Write a Standard (If You Must)

December 6, 2006

Standards are generally a bad idea. They reduce freedom-of-action and limit choice. But sometimes you must have one in order to pacify an anti-business regulator or other socialist-leaning bureaucrat. So what should you do if you find you find yourself in the awkward position of coming up short in the [...]

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VML and OOXML: Cum mortuis in lingua mortua

July 24, 2006

In this post, I will look at the history of Vector Markup Language (VML), how it lost out to the W3C’s SVG back in the 1990’s, but has come back from the dead, showing up in the draft Ecma Office Open XML (OOXML) specification. I offer some opinions on why this is a bad thing.
First, [...]

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A Game of Zendo

July 18, 2006

It is the type of response that was crafted to end all debate and justify all sins: “Backward compatibility with billions of documents produced over decades”. Variations of this occur everywhere. Rather than cite them all, a simple Google query will bring up a representative sample.
Let’s take a deeper look at this argument.
There is a [...]

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