NOOOXML says: “Down with XML”

re: NOOOXML says: “Down with XML”

Gareth Horton — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:18:25 GMT

Gray,

This is not the first time that OOXML is being attacked by the pro-ODF crowd in a "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" kind of way and I'm sure it won't be the last.

There have been complaints about "rushing", but I contend that there have been more man-hours expended on Open XML than ODF, most likely both on design and review.

I also posted on Brian's or Jason's blog about the issue raised by an NB on the term "ole" which they didn't like. This exists in ODF, as does "DDE".

Did they lie awake at night after the ODF finalisation saying "damn, I wish I'd made sure they didn't use the term "ole" in there, I must make sure I stamp this kind of thing out in the next open document format that comes along"

It would be so refreshing to hear them come out with some honesty like:

ODF is based on Sun OpenOffice functionality, Open XML is based on Microsoft Office functionality. They were both reviewed and refined based on feedback by experts and both allow developers a much easier way to create and interact with office documents than was previously possible.

They both have their strengths and weaknesses, with ODF being probably easier to implement, but currently less functionally rich, Open XML probably more difficult, but currently more functionally rich.

Both standards have been implemented by third parties in their commercial software.

If your target is mainly users of Microsoft Office or applications that interact with Microsoft Office, then it makes good business sense to implement Open XML support.

If your target is mainly users of OpenOffice and it's derivatives, or IBMs products and the applications that interact with them, then it makes good business sense to implement ODF support.

If you have a very wide target market, then you should implement support for both.

We will certainly consider implementing ODF in addition to our existing Open XML support, should customer demand change for ODF from when we last measured it.

- An amusing typo (don't know if it was in the original) - "OOXML allows the inclusion of arbitrary binary blobs of data in ways that could be abused, MY MALICIOUS DOCUMENT AUTHORS"

Was this a statement, or an invitation?

Gareth

re: NOOOXML says: “Down with XML”

lori — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 04:05:41 GMT

Maybe someone should really write a virus that will make all *.docx viruses themselves.

So that we should what should be and what should not be there...

re: NOOOXML says: “Down with XML”

Gray Knowlton — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:21:28 GMT

Hi Gareth,

From my standpoint, what's interesting is the opportunity Open XML opponents have missed... Open file formats that support Office functionality are an opportunity for others to more fully integrate file formats, much like the countless implementations of Microsoft Office binary formats.

It's worth taking these formats and committing them to standardization for a lot of reasons. Regardless of market, potential, etc., it's just smart to take Open XML as a standard, if only to commit the current spec to the public record.

re: NOOOXML says: “Down with XML”

Gray Knowlton — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:40:38 GMT

Hi Andre,

I'd be surprised if anything positive was said... given the rest of the deck, (is that really a dead bear?) it doesn't seem like it was intended to improve the perception of Open XML.

But I think we're agreed on many points. Parsing of document formats makes a huge difference in their security. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935865 is an example of some of the work we've done in that area. Parsing is critically important to both binary and XML implementations.

Also, I'd agree that binary formats are going to be around for a while, given how many there are, and their widespread use today.

On the relative maturity of XML vs binary implementations, remember Office has been parsing both since Office 2000 (with XML taking an increasingly prominent role). So even the XML implementations in Office are fairly mature.

But I think we're saying similar things here. ALL XML formats reference binary data, and (at least it seems to me) that the parsing / implementation matters a lot.

re: NOOOXML says: “Down with XML”

Gareth Horton — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:55:35 GMT

Gray,

See my post from back in June-

http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/06/13/open-xml-in-science-and-nature-deploying-office-2007-and-more.aspx#3445179

Gareth

re: NOOOXML says: “Down with XML”

Gray Knowlton — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:10:45 GMT

Thanks Gareth... that comment makes a lot of sense, and I couldn't agree more. (and isn't it the whole point? :)

ODF Alliance: The widening gap between fact and fiction

Gray Matter — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:47:42 GMT

I was pointed at a document created by the ODF alliance (with a creation date of Feb 6 th ) that discusses

re: NOOOXML says: “Down with XML”

hAl — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:38:07 GMT

@andre

[quote]This should be stored in XML, not in some undefined application-dependent format.[/quote]

If the devmode data is loaded directly into a driver the format will be defined by that driver. Storing the data in XML would mean putting tags around driver defined data formats and would only hide the fact that the dataformat is still an application/driver defined binary format and still allows data manipulation and has the same security risk as having the data being defined as binary data.

If the data were truly driver indepent XML data than it would require either arbitrary conversion to each and every kind of printerdriver format or for each and every printerdriver to be able to accept standardized XML settings.