12.27.07

OOXML Watch: Latest Articles Include ECMA’s New Tricks

Posted in ECMA, Microsoft, Open XML at 11:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Keeping an eye on the very latest…

Over at ZDNet, a new article covering OOXML has just been published.

“OOXML is philosophically a problem,” says StandardsNZ’s Jackson. “The world already had a standard [in ODF].”

“There has been insufficient technical rationale as to why we need another standard,” added open source advocate Jeff Waugh.

But Jelliffe insists that it is unexceptional for there to be multiple standards in document processing languages, just as there are in graphics, programming languages, schema languages, even screwdrivers.

In relation to Rob Weir’s recent essay on the ECMA-Microsoft bait-and-switch maneuver, noooxml.org has just published the following:

So what Ecma is offering SC34 is nothing close to what was promised. Ecma is really seeking to transfer to SC34 the responsibility of spending the next 3 years fixing errors in OOXML 1.0, while future versions of OOXML (“technical revisions”) are controlled by Microsoft, in Ecma, in a process without transparency, and as should now be obvious to all, without sufficient quality controls.

Here is the ECMA press release [via Andy Updegrove] which corresponds to a short article that we mentioned only a few days ago.

21 December 2007 – Ecma TC45 has been making continued progress on the comment review process, supporting the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Project Editor’s mid-January deadline to deliver a comprehensive report of Ecma’s proposed dispositions.

[...]

b) Leap year calculation

ECMA-376, the original Open XML standard adopted by Ecma, treats 1900 as a leap year in order to maintain compatibility with earlier spreadsheet applications that included this error. This is an important compatibility consideration, but based on the comments received by many National Bodies on this issue, Ecma acknowledges that the date system should be correct. The newly defined date system described in the previous item treats 1900 correctly. The leap-year bug will be deprecated, as described in the next item.
2 Functionality extracted from the main specification

Many National Bodies identified specific functionality within the specification that reflected existing product defects or legacy application behaviors. These behaviors are important because they reflect the content in existing documents, but should not be perpetuated when creating new documents from scratch.

Deprecation as part of a newly-proposed ‘standard’ seems absurd. Of course, if a standard was to evolve, then deprecation can be expected, but herein, as you can hopefully see, it’s all broken before it was even born. Only in ECMA can such absurdity be seen as acceptable. The whole thing is sham. █

Share this post: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Permalink Mail Send this to a friend

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

Pages that cross-reference this one

What Else is New

USPTO and EPO Both Slammed for Abandoning Patent Quality and Violating the Law/Caselaw in Order to Grant Illegitimate Patents on Life/Nature and Mathematics

Mr. Iancu, the ‘American Battistelli’ (appointed owing to nepotism), mirrors the ‘Battistelli operandi’, which boils down to treating judges like they’re stooges and justices like an ignorable nuisance — all this in the name of litigation profits, which necessitate constant wars over illegitimate patents (it is expensive to prove their illegitimacy)
IRC Proceedings: January 27th, 2019 – March 24th, 2019

Many IRC logs
IRC Proceedings: December 2nd, 2018 – January 26th, 2019

Many IRC logs
Links 21/4/2019: SuperTuxKart's 1.0 Release, Sam Hartman Is Debian’s Newest Project Leader (DPL)

Links for the day
The EPO's Use of Phrases Like “High-Quality Patent Services” Means They Know High-Quality European Patents Are 'Bygones'

The EPO does a really poor job hiding the fact that its last remaining objective is to grant as many European Patents as possible (and as fast as possible), conveniently conflating quality with pace
A Reader's Suggestion: Directions for Techrights

Guest post by figosdev
Links 20/4/2019: Weblate 3.6 and Pop!_OS 19.04

Links for the day
The Likes of Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA), Team Campinos and Team UPC Don't Represent Europe But Hurt Europe

The abject disinterest in patent quality and patent validity (as judged by courts) threatens Europe but not to the detriment of those who are in the 'business' of suing and printing lots of worthless patents
The Linux Foundation Needs to Change Course Before GNU/Linux (as a Free Operating System) is Dead

The issues associated with the Linux Foundation are not entirely new; but Linux now incorporates so many restrictions and contains so many binary blobs that one begins to wonder what "Linux" even means
Largest Patent Offices Try to Leave Courts in a State of Disarray to Enable the Granting of Fake Patents in the US and Europe

Like a monarchy that effectively runs all branches of government the management of the EPO is trying to work around the judiciary; the same is increasingly happening (or at least attempted) in the United States
Links 19/4/2019: PyPy 7.1.1, LabPlot 2.6, Kipi Plugins 5.9.1 Released

Links for the day
Links 18/4/2019: Ubuntu and Derivatives Have Releases, digiKam 6.1.0, OpenSSH 8.0 and LibreOffice 6.2.3

Links for the day
Freedom is Not a Business and Those Who Make 'Business' by Giving it Away Deserve Naming

Free software is being parceled and sold to private monopolisers; those who facilitate the process enrich themselves and pose a growing threat to freedom in general — a subject we intend to tackle in the near future
Concluding the Linux Foundation (LF) “Putting the CON in Conference!” (Part 3)

Conferences constructed or put together based on payments rather than merit pose a risk to the freedom of free software; we conclude our series about events set up by the largest of culprits, which profits from this erosion of freedom
“Mention the War” (of Microsoft Against GNU/Linux)

The GNU/Linux desktop (or laptops) seems to be languishing or deteriorating, making way for proprietary takeover in the form of Vista 10 and Chrome OS and “web apps” (surveillance); nobody seems too bothered — certainly not the Linux Foundation — by the fact that GNU/Linux itself is being relegated or demoted to a mere “app” on these surveillance platforms (WSL, Croûton and so on)
The European Patent Office Does Not Care About the Law, Today's Management Constantly Attempts to Bypass the Law

Many EPs (European Patents) are actually "IPs" (invalid patents); the EPO doesn't seem to care and it is again paying for corrupt scholars to toe the party line
The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Once Again Pours Cold Water on Patent Maximalists

Any hopes of a rebound or turnaround have just been shattered because a bizarre attack on the appeal process (misusing tribal immunity) fell on deaf ears and software patents definitely don't interest the highest court, which already deemed them invalid half a decade ago
Links 17/4/2019: Qt 5.12.3 Released, Ola Bini Arrested (Political Stunts)

Links for the day
Links 16/4/2019: CentOS Turns 15, Qt Creator 4.9.0 Released

Links for the day
GNU/Linux is Being Eaten Alive by Large Corporations With Their Agenda

A sort of corporate takeover, or moneyed interests at the expense of our freedom, can be seen as a 'soft coup' whose eventual outcome would involve all or most servers in 'the cloud' (surveillance with patent tax as part of the rental fees) and almost no laptops/desktops which aren't remotely controlled (and limit what's run on them, using something like UEFI 'secure boot')
Reader's Claim That Rules Similar to the Code of Conduct (CoC) Were 'Imposed' on LibrePlanet and the FSF

Restrictions on speech are said to have been spread and reached some of the most liberal circles, according to a credible veteran who opposes illiberal censorship
Corporate Media Will Never Cover the EPO's Violations of the Law With Respect to Patent Scope

The greed-driven gold rush for patents has resulted in a large pool of European Patents that have no legitimacy and are nowadays associated with low legal certainty; the media isn't interested in covering such a monumental disaster that poses a threat to the whole of Europe
A Linux Foundation Run by People Who Reject Linux is Like a Children's Charity Whose Management Dislikes Children

We remain concerned about the lack of commitment that the Linux Foundation has for Linux; much of the Linux Foundation's Board, for example, comes from hostile companies
Links 15/4/2019: Linux 5.1 RC5 and SolydXK Reviewed

Links for the day
Links 14/4/2019: Blender 2.80 Release Plan and Ducktype 1.0

Links for the day
'Poor' (Multi-Millionaire) Novell CEO, Who Colluded With Steve Ballmer Against GNU/Linux, is Trying to Censor Techrights

Novell’s last CEO, a former IBMer who just like IBM decided to leverage software patents against the competition (threatening loads of companies using "platoons of patent lawyers"), has decided that siccing lawyers at us would be a good idea
Guest Post: The Linux Foundation (LF) is “Putting the CON in Conference!” (Part 2)

Calls for papers (CfP) and who gets to assess what's presented or what's not presented is a lesser-explored aspect, especially in this age when large corporate sponsors get to indirectly run entire 'community' events
Patent Maximalists Are Enabling Injustices and Frauds

It's time to come to grips with the simple fact that extreme patent lenience causes society to suffer and is mostly beneficial to bad actors; for the patent profession to maintain a level of credibility and legitimacy it must reject the deplorable, condemnable zealots
Further Decreasing Focus on Software Patents in the United States as They Barely Exist in Valid Form Anymore

No headway made after almost 4 months of Iancu-led stunts; software patents remain largely dead and buried, so we’re moving on to other topics
Links 13/4/2019: Wine 4.6 and Emacs 26.2 Released

Links for the day