{"id":39,"date":"2006-11-06T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-06T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2d823b65bb.nxcli.io\/2006\/11\/two-simple-questions.html"},"modified":"2006-11-06T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-06T21:00:00","slug":"two-simple-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/two-simple-questions.html","title":{"rendered":"Two simple questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some pertinent quotes from Microsoft&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/brian_jones\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Brian Jones<\/a>,  thematic quotes made over a sustained period of time:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe Open XML formats were designed to be 100% backward compatible with the existing set of Office binary formats, and that was really a goal that we can&#8217;t compromise on.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIt needs to be 100% full fidelity\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201c[F]rom our point of view, in order to use an XML format as the *default* format for Office it needs to be 100% compatible\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWe need to make sure that the format is documented 100% and there are no barrier to interoperability\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThis format is 100% compatible with the existing base of Microsoft Office documents, so nobody will need to worry about losing features\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Get the idea?<\/p>\n<p>Now these quotes were all made before OOXML was completed.  I understand engineering and deadlines and such, and that things don&#8217;t always all get done as planned.   But I would like to know, now that we have 1.5 OOXML \u201cfinal draft\u201d, and <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/dancer\/date\/20061106\">Office 2007 has released to shipping<\/a>, is it indeed indeed indeed 100% backwards compatible.<\/p>\n<p>Two simple questions.   I&#8217;m hoping Microsoft or Ecma can give a straightforward and unequivocal answer:<\/p>\n<p>1) Is the Office Open XML specification (1.5 \u201cfinal draft\u201d) 100% compatible with all legacy Microsoft Office documents, meaning that a 3rd party, using solely information in this specification (and  publicly available open standards), can create a utility on a non-Windows platform, say Linux, to convert any legacy Office document into OOXML without loss of data, function or appearance?<\/p>\n<p>2) Does the OOXML specification (1.5 \u201cfinal draft\u201d)  document the format sufficiently for someone to create a 100% compatible editor (spreadsheet, word processor, presentation) implementation on a non-Windows platform, say Linux?  By 100% compatible I mean that it can load and interpret and display all OOXML documents without loss of data, function or appearance?<\/p>\n<p>I note that everything we&#8217;ve heard up to now merely says that OOXML was <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">designed<\/span> to be 100% compatible.    But I&#8217;d like to hear whether it in fact <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">succeeded<\/span> at doing these things.  That&#8217;s the important question, right?  We can talk intent all we want, but the results are what counts.<\/p>\n<p>I believe that the criterion should be whether a 3rd party can create a conversion tool and editor based on the documented format.  That fact that Office itself may do a conversion is not proof of anything.  They could submit a specification both incomplete and erroneous but still do a good conversion job in Office based on private information.  The proof of sufficiency for the specification only comes with independent 3rd party implementations.<\/p>\n<p>These are simple questions.  I&#8217;m hoping for a simple answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some pertinent quotes from Microsoft&#8217;s Brian Jones, thematic quotes made over a sustained period of time: \u201cThe Open XML formats were designed to be 100% backward compatible with the existing set of Office binary formats, and that was really a goal that we can&#8217;t compromise on.\u201d \u201cIt needs to be 100% full fidelity\u201d \u201c[F]rom our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-39","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ooxml","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}