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Sun, 16 Sep 2007:

I'm officially starting to refer to Microsoft Office Open XML by its new acronym - MooXML. Its progress through the ISO process looks like a salmon rush - but it looks like a fish, moves like a slippery slippery fish and steers like a cow (with apologies to the late Douglas Adams).

Superb Standard: And then Miguel goes and calls it a "Superb Standard". Basing most of his justification on the fact that a large quantity of existing OO.org code can be re-used to implement MooXML - take a guess why that is so. And just because the current code can handle "autospace like Word95" specifications (IIRC,the 'sz' node) is no reason to call MooXML a good standard. And multiple implementations only add to the mess, with everyone including the creator interpreting the standard as they please. Implementing it would be yet another game of 'chase the lamespec' (well, grep -i lamespec mono-svn/).

Most people who have complained about the specification has been struck down with the "let the implementors speak". But somehow it seems odd that such a specification which has been sped through ISO got a 'YES' vote from *Cuba* - a country where Microsoft (and any other US company) is prohibited from exporting any software to. A good, proper standard doesn't really need a ballot stuffing to get approved.

I mean, I've previously commented about Miguel losing relevance in the world of Free software. But this time, this is not about his opinion or Novell's patent protections - in fact, not even about the format, but about the standard for an editable document, which renders the same everywhere.

So, don't say MooXML, say NoOoxml.

--
Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.
                -- Frederick Crane

posted at: 01:42 | path: /rants | permalink | Tags: ,