There’s some news today regarding Novell adding Open XML support into their flavor of OpenOffice.org. No disrespect intended, but I absolutely stand by what I said in my blog entry “Is Open XML a one way specification for most people?”.
I’m ready to stand corrected when they demonstrate full translation of arbitrary documents that use all the corner cases of the gargantuan Open XML spec. Presumably they would have a test suite that demonstrates full coverage. If they are just doing a partial translation, then this is just what I said would happen in the blog entry: the only consumers of complete Open XML will be Microsoft, and even that is questionable. The extreme bloat of the Open XML spec will only preserve the network effect when full fidelity is required. Gosh, do you think that could possibly be the point, I wonder?
By the end of 2007, I expect to see various corporate and government policies that say something like “thou shalt use no features in Open XML that cannot be translated perfectly into ODF.” At that point, ODF usage will further accelerate as more people realize they might as well use ODF in the first place. Open XML will then be headed onto that dusty shelf right next to Microsoft Office XML 2003 (or whatever it was called). Just my opinion, usual disclaimers apply.
FWIW, I made a few complaints about the non-interoperability and non-portability of an XML specification that relied on ActiveX controls. 8-!0 And I doubt I was the only one. it took a while, but they eventually saw the light and generalized the controls.
BTW, speaking of interoperability, etc, has IBM got any plans to move WAS CE over to the GPLed SUN Java? Or is it going to be the Apache Harmony Java clone? I would like to believe that IBM is going to present Microsoft with a challenge – either produce a full and complete implementation of MS Office Open XML under the Apache license for WAS CE, or shut up about its suitability as an international document standard. Since IBM is a member of ECMA, that should be possible.
Wesley, I don’t follow your last question about Open XML and WAS CE.
It’s simple, really. Microsoft has been touting its Open XML as a standard. The meaning of “ICT standard” is supposed to be that it can be re-implemented whenever, wherever, for no additional considerations besides a copy and description of the standard. FWIW, Linux is a good example of this, since it’s an independent re-implementation of the POSIX 1 standard.
Now WAS CE presents Microsoft with a make-or-break test of the quality of its proposed file format “standard”, MS Office Open XML, since WAS CE is based on freely available source code, thus Microsoft is not prevented from reading the code.
If Microsoft wishes to prove that its MS OO XML is soundly based, why should they themselves not come out with a WAS CE plug-in that reads and writes MS OO XML, fully and completely? And make it available under the Apache License, so people can see it and make use of ti as they see fit?
I don’t think it is likely, myself. Microsoft doesn’t bet on anything less than a 100% sure bet, and giving their customers the opportunity to migrate to someone else’s product, will go down like a led balloon in Redmond. Certainly, when I suggested something like this to Brian Jones, he suffered the online equivalent of breaking out into a rash.
Ergo it makes sense for IBM to suggest it publically to Microsoft, in the context of the ECMA standards-setting body.