SABS tackles Microsoft

[SlappY]

Not as many as OOXML from what I hear. Seems like the better choice on both fronts. Can you give me a good reason of why you are in favour of a proprietary standard?

Regardless, a flaw is a flaw. You cant stand on one side and argue in favor of something cause the other has a problem when they both have problems.

Again, it is hypocritical. And the hype around it has hidden these facts away and made ODF out ot be this miricle standard. That is misinformation.

If ODF had gone through all the correct procedures and cynisim that OOXML has, the bug would have been picked up prior to approval.

 

[LazyLion]

Well #1 it is not proprietry. Thats the first misconception.
#2: I like options. Dont like the idea of someone dictating to me what I can use simply cause they got a beef with MS
#3: Go dig out my other posts for a techical breakdown.

oh really? And which other Office Software developers use and have access to the complete API?

nobody ever said we can't have more than one standard, the more the better. I just don't see why I should have to pay R4000.00 to be able to use that standard.

 

[chiskop]

If ODF had gone through all the correct procedures and cynisim that OOXML has, the bug would have been picked up prior to approval.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

If only the FOSS community had the same kind of bribe money as MS...

Have you read the various articles posted in the other ODF/OOXML thread yet? Yeah, ODF has some problems but they pale in comparison to the problems with OOXML.

 

[SlappY]

oh really? And which other Office Software developers use and have access to the complete API?

Here is where your misunderstanding comes in. A document standard does not mean you have access to an API, it simply means it is a free file format people can use. You are allowed to develop your own API without paying royalties. You can write your own word processor or whatever that uses the format.

MS will make money on their software and people who want to use THEIR API. Doesnt mean you have to...options...

 

[SlappY]

Yeah, ODF has some problems but they pale in comparison to the problems with OOXML.

Still proves my point. Cant say one bridge is better than the other cause it half fell down. It is a process of refinement. Even ODF has gone through changes since, so why not extend the same courtisey to OOXML. But no, cause it is MS we all have to crush it before it can stand.

Look we argued this pretty exhaustively in the last thread on this topic. Not about to do that all over again.
I say if everyone werent out to get MS then they would not have to resort to pushing things through as fast as possible.
Things should be evaluated on their merits, not on a personal vendetta against the vendor. OOXML has its merits, give it a chance.
At the end of the day when ODF or OOXML doesnt support something you want to do, or you battle to translate from your data model or something, there will be another option.
And at the end of the day the consumer will weed out the weaker contender.

 

[chiskop]

Still proves my point. Cant say one bridge is better than the other cause it half fell down. It is a process of refinement. Even ODF has gone through changes since, so why not extend the same courtisey to OOXML. But no, cause it is MS we all have to crush it before it can stand.

One bridge needs a bolt tightened, the other bridge is not yet complete...

I'm not saying we should crush OOXML - but it needs to be completed and properly considered before becoming a standard. (Just like ODF was)

 

[LazyLion]

Here is where your misunderstanding comes in. A document standard does not mean you have access to an API, it simply means it is a free file format people can use. You are allowed to develop your own API without paying royalties. You can write your own word processor or whatever that uses the format.

MS will make money on their software and people who want to use THEIR API. Doesnt mean you have to...options...

and this is where your misunderstanding comes in. What is it that reads the document? A program, an Interface, the decoding of the document is handled in the program. If MS does not release that part of the API, then you can try and read the document all you want it is gonna make no sense to you. MS does allow basic reading, but they keep the last little 10% proprietary, and that is what frustrates other users.

Microsoft is still subject to the terms of the injunction in the US federal anti-trust case, which requires the company to disclose certain middleware API specs, yet it has not released the specs for the intermediary file formats used by the Office native file support APIs -- more walled gardens.

http://www.linux.com/feature/125630

 

[SlappY]

and this is where your misunderstanding comes in. What is it that reads the document? A program, an Interface, the decoding of the document is handled in the program. If MS does not release that part of the API, then you can try and read the document all you want it is gonna make no sense to you. MS does allow basic reading, but they keep the last little 10% proprietary, and that is what frustrates other users.

Which is why we use XML and shemas...a non-binary format..ugh...never mind...

 

[SlappY]

One bridge needs a bolt tightened, the other bridge is not yet complete...

hehe...

 

[The_Unbeliever]

oh really? And which other Office Software developers use and have access to the complete API?

nobody ever said we can't have more than one standard, the more the better. I just don't see why I should have to pay R4000.00 to be able to use that standard.

Imagine you've paid R4000 for the privilege to install and use M$ Office on your system.

All you'll do is basic wordprocessing and a bit of spreadsheeting.

What a waste of money. Instead of using OpenOffice to serve your needs, and using the R4000 for a holiday, or some fancy new hardware, or deposit on a new car, you wasted it on something you'll never use to its full potential.

Now imagine that the guys who've sold you the Office package was a bit, errr... unethical, and copied the product key before giving it to you, and they caused it to be locked, so you can't install your expensive copy of MS office anymore. Now what do you do? Complaining won't help - you've broken the seal, and the software cannot be returned.

Also, the same for WinXP and Vista's product key - you send your PC in for repairs, the key gets copied and published on some warez server where it's downloaded and used, and locked. Now you need to reinstall your Winders, but cannot activate it as it is locked.

With Linux and OpenOffice I don't have this sort of hassle and schlepp.

 

[LazyLion]

Imagine you've paid R4000 for the privilege to install and use M$ Office on your system.

All you'll do is basic wordprocessing and a bit of spreadsheeting.

What a waste of money. Instead of using OpenOffice to serve your needs, and using the R4000 for a holiday, or some fancy new hardware, or deposit on a new car, you wasted it on something you'll never use to its full potential.

Now imagine that the guys who've sold you the Office package was a bit, errr... unethical, and copied the product key before giving it to you, and they caused it to be locked, so you can't install your expensive copy of MS office anymore. Now what do you do? Complaining won't help - you've broken the seal, and the software cannot be returned.

Also, the same for WinXP and Vista's product key - you send your PC in for repairs, the key gets copied and published on some warez server where it's downloaded and used, and locked. Now you need to reinstall your Winders, but cannot activate it as it is locked.

With Linux and OpenOffice I don't have this sort of hassle and schlepp.

but what if I really, really wanted all that hassle? What if I like paying R4000.00 for a round piece of plastic, a few pieces of paper and some cardboard? (that I never really get to own anyway, cos Microsoft are just "lending" it to me). What if I really believe that Microsoft are doing me a favour by allowing me the privelege of doing that? Please? Pretty Please?

Oops... sorry.. .I actually meant R6000.00 ...

http://www.pcshopping.co.za/pages/4370976/details.asp?uID=73409

 

[SlappY]

Imagine you've paid R4000 for the privilege to install and use M$ Office on your system.

All you'll do is basic wordprocessing and a bit of spreadsheeting.

What a waste of money. Instead of using OpenOffice to serve your needs, and using the R4000 for a holiday, or some fancy new hardware, or deposit on a new car, you wasted it on something you'll never use to its full potential.

Now imagine that the guys who've sold you the Office package was a bit, errr... unethical, and copied the product key before giving it to you, and they caused it to be locked, so you can't install your expensive copy of MS office anymore. Now what do you do? Complaining won't help - you've broken the seal, and the software cannot be returned.

Also, the same for WinXP and Vista's product key - you send your PC in for repairs, the key gets copied and published on some warez server where it's downloaded and used, and locked. Now you need to reinstall your Winders, but cannot activate it as it is locked.

With Linux and OpenOffice I don't have this sort of hassle and schlepp.

Seems the troll is indulging in a little derailing of his own now. Now you are talking about anti piracy meassures.

 

[SlappY]

but what if I really, really wanted all that hassle? What if I like paying R4000.00 for a round piece of plastic, a few pieces of paper and some cardboard?

Err.. yeah, cause thats what you are paying for...not the software?

 

[Wiehan]

The only reason MS went as far as submitting the horrid piece of junk that ooxml is, is because it needs to have an "ISO certified open standard" to keep its Office cash cow alive amidst pressure amongst governments worldwide for open and interoperable standards.

I find it ironic how eager people on this forum are to bash Telkom, and yet they regularly defend and even glorify Microsoft, whose monopolistic trangressions against society eclipses Telkom by far.

The OOXML standard, available from ECMA, is distributed as a set of PDF documents, totaling around 6000 pages. That's a lot of specification, and it goes into comprehensive detail. The reason it's so huge is simple: OOXML is essentially a complete replication of every chunk of data that a Microsoft Office application might possibly save in a file.

There have been a number of technical complaints made about OOXML. Every one of them comes down to the same base complaint: Rather than specifying a reasonable common interchange format, OOXML specifies the whole feature set of Microsoft Office, down to bug compatibility. This creates a burden on other implementors which is simply unreasonable (and in fact impossible) to meet, while conveniently being precisely what Microsoft is already shipping. That raises a lot of concerns.

Probably the most famous example is one of the optional settings provided in OOXML. The setting is called "useWord97LineBreakRules", and it specifies to use the line-break rules that were used in Word '97 for East Asian documents. Much like the previous examples, this is of course impossible for anyone else to do, as no specification of these rules is provided. In fact, the OOXML standard even warns implementors not to implement this:

Listing 1. The OOXML standard's guidance for useWord97LineBreakRules

[Guidance: To faithfully replicate this behavior, applications must imitate the behavior of that application, which involves many possible behaviors and cannot be faithfully placed into narrative for this Office Open XML Standard. If applications wish to match this behavior, they must utilize and duplicate the output of those applications. It is recommended that applications not intentionally replicate this behavior as it was deprecated due to issues with its output, and is maintained only for compatibility with existing documents from that application. end guidance]

This guidance is excellent. Given that there is no specification available of this feature, and it is deprecated, it makes all kinds of sense for people not to implement it. But wait; if it shouldn't be implemented, why is it in the spec? Compatibility with existing documents is not a reason to add a feature to a standard aimed at interchanging data; users are worried about whether their text can be opened at all in another program, not whether every line break is in the exact same location!

This feature is in the spec because OOXML is not a document interchange format; it's a careful, bit-for-bit, replication of Microsoft's historical binary formats, wrapped up in angle brackets.

If Microsoft wants OOXML to be taken seriously as a proposal for a document standard, only one option is on the table. Rather than try to develop a specification with every possible feature of any version of Microsoft Office, every flag or quirk that some document might use, focus on building a smaller, leaner, interchange format which provides core functionality in a fully-described and implementable fashion. Don't expose implementation quirks, such as Excel® calculation chains, to people who just want to copy a spreadsheet's data and formulas. Don't expose, or even refer to, the details of the VML library, or the DrawingML library, or anything like that; instead, provide a brand new, open, and completely specified, description of the data.

Brussels, 2 April 2008 — ISO members failed to disapprove the Open XML format. Microsoft has compromised the International Standards Organisation (ISO) during the rush to get a stamp for their Office OpenXML (OOXML), using unfair practices such as committee stuffing in several countries and political interventions of ministers in the standardization process.

OOXML received 75 percent approval votes of p-members of JTC1, among them many nations of questionable expertise in standardization. In September a first attempt to approve the 6000 page standard Open XML failed with more than 3500 submitted comments. As in September many of the new approval votes were won by political high level intervention and the vendors dominance in national technical committees.

Some irregularities in the process: (apart from the fact that the fast-track process is reserved for mature, tested standards, which you would agree ooxml is not one of, unless you are high, ignorant, in bed with microsoft, or have some other judgement-impairing handicap.)

Netherlands [isoc.nl] (translation/summary: they worked very hard to stay professional and to stay away from all the turmoil and study the document, and then came to a almost consensus decision to vote "disapproval with comments". Almost consensus because Microsoft alone decided to vote "yes" (with no technical reasons given) so there was no consensus, so in effect the vote of the Netherlands was vetoed. According to the NEN rules, the Netherlands had to abstain, without comments, in this case. [N.B.: I think this means also that all of the dutch technical comments (5 months of work) will not be permitted to be sent on to ISO for review - me]

The working group within SIS responsible for DIS 29500 was originally 9 members, later expanded to 12. The group had discussed DIS29500 for months, and was reportedly very likely to decide on "disapprove with comments", with a reasonably sized list of agreed-upon comments. At the final meeting, 23 new members (Google Sweden plus 22 Swedish Microsoft partners) showed up and registered for participation. Instead of reaching a consensus on "disapprove with comments" a vote was forced, and the result was, not surprisingly, "approve" without comments. With this sudden last-minute change to the committee, the vote was effectively bought by Microsoft partners, and all the work in the committee was ignored. Registration for SIS and group membership was SEK 17,000 per member (approx. EUR 1,700), so the vote was changed by paying for 22 members, a total of less than €40,000.

I would like to report irregularity in Egypt as well. I heard that MS asked as much as its partner to join the Egyptian Organization for Standards committee. MS has used those partners to vote Yes without comments and successfully gained majority inside the committee. They imposed the retaining of last Sept Egypt's vote Yes whatever the result of BRM meeting. This is clearly unclean play that MS used in most countries like in Sweden and other countries.

And some more reasons why ooxml just sucks in general.

 

[LazyLion]

Seems the troll is indulging in a little derailing of his own now. Now you are talking about anti piracy meassures.

Sounds like just another shortcoming of the proprietary business model to me. It's a flawed model and should justly be criticised. You have yet to give us ONE good reason why the proprietary system is better.

 

[LazyLion]

Err.. yeah, cause thats what you are paying for...not the software?

I ain't paying for nothing that I can get for free elsewhere. I will not be blackmailed into using their standards, and certainly would never do it willingly, unlike some other sheep out there in the market.

 

[SlappY]

I ain't paying for nothing that I can get for free elsewhere. I will not be blackmailed into using their standards, and certainly would never do it willingly, unlike some other sheep out there in the market.

Who is blackmailing you into using an open standard?

 

[SlappY]

but what if I really, really wanted all that hassle? What if I like paying R4000.00 for a round piece of plastic, a few pieces of paper and some cardboard? (that I never really get to own anyway, cos Microsoft are just "lending" it to me). What if I really believe that Microsoft are doing me a favour by allowing me the privelege of doing that? Please? Pretty Please?

Oops... sorry.. .I actually meant R6000.00 ...

http://www.pcshopping.co.za/pages/4370976/details.asp?uID=73409

Another thing, if you doing simple stuff, dont be a toss and buy the ultimate edition for 6K, rather go for the basic edition for 1K.

http://www.pricecheck.co.za/offers/148126/Microsoft+Office+2007+Home+and+Student+Edtion/

 

[icyrus]

MS Creates A Technology:
OS Community: "We want options"

MS Creates Options:
OS Community: "We want a single standard"

Hypocrits.

The point of the standard it to have on universally approved standard for a specific task, not competing standards that aren't necessary. If MS really cared about standards they would have joined ODF and contributed to it when they were asked to in the beginning, but MS has an extreme aversion to any platform they do not control.

What is worse is that they have implemented their document format without consideration for any existing ISO standards. Rather than adapt their document format to use existing standards for dates, graphics, etc... they have hobbled their standard with MS-only ways of dealing with things that could and should have used existing standards.

Regardless, a flaw is a flaw. You cant stand on one side and argue in favor of something cause the other has a problem when they both have problems.

Again, it is hypocritical. And the hype around it has hidden these facts away and made ODF out ot be this miricle standard. That is misinformation.

If ODF had gone through all the correct procedures and cynisim that OOXML has, the bug would have been picked up prior to approval.

ODF was not fast-tracked and in fact followed all the correct procedures, unlike OOXML. Which are the biggest problems you have with ODF, leaving aside your spurious mentioning of the fact that no ODF documents validating seeing as it is bunk.

Here is where your misunderstanding comes in. A document standard does not mean you have access to an API, it simply means it is a free file format people can use. You are allowed to develop your own API without paying royalties. You can write your own word processor or whatever that uses the format.

MS will make money on their software and people who want to use THEIR API. Doesnt mean you have to...options...

The problem a lot of people have with OOXML is that it gives microsoft the ability to implement proprietary features straight into the document, preventing any other non-ms-blessed program from working with the files. What good is an open standard if its encumbered by proprietary binary blobs?

Still proves my point. Cant say one bridge is better than the other cause it half fell down. It is a process of refinement. Even ODF has gone through changes since, so why not extend the same courtisey to OOXML. But no, cause it is MS we all have to crush it before it can stand.

Here is your fundamental misunderstanding of the complaints. The complaints are not that OOXML was approved as a standard, the complaints are that MS pushed it through as a standard (through various extremely dubious and dishonest methods) without addressing any of the raised concerns about it. It is not ready to be a standard, but got pushed through anyway due to microsoft corruption. This has complete devalued ISO.

 

[SlappY]

Sounds like just another shortcoming of the proprietary business model to me. It's a flawed model and should justly be criticised. You have yet to give us ONE good reason why the proprietary system is better.

Again, I reiterate, OOXML is not proprietry.