Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's 'Interoperability' Already Broken on All Fronts

IE8: broken; Exchange: broken; OOXML: broken

So many promises, yet so little progress. Microsoft continues to show that its half-hearted attempts may be little more than a PR bubble which pleases journalists but hardly enables counterparts to compete under fair terms (standards).

Goodbye to Web (Browser) Interoperability



Yes, have a look before allowing the press to get your hopes up.

There are quite a few good things about the Microsoft release, such as showing that HTML5 is looked at, Acid2 is (almost) being passed, and CSS support is improving, but there are quite a few evil things as well...


We warned about this last week. IE8 promises a lot but offers very little. In fact, according to ACID3 tests, Internet Explorer (all versions) remains by far the least standards-complaint Web browser. Antitrust action in Europe over such neglect is to proceed as planned.

Goodbye to Exchange Interoperability



Exchange interoperability? Forget about it. Shades of the Microsoft "undocumentation" saga (and that is Microsoft's own term -- "undocumentation" -- which is a word used internally).

Speaking to ZDNet.co.uk at the CeBIT conference, Joseph said Microsoft's start is not promising: "This could definitely make life easier for developers, but we have spotted over 200 undocumented exceptions, including one that allows you to create recurring calendar appointments in Exchange. It was in the documentation for Exchange 2000, but they forgot to document it for Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007."


Goodbye to OOXML Interoperability



BetaNews took Microsoft's plug-in for a spin and... splat.

Microsoft also announced this afternoon the release of the first 1.1 edition of a stand-alone translator between ODF and OOXML documents. This project is currently being hosted on SourceForge. BetaNews located the project, and noted that only the command-line version of the translator has thus far been upgraded to version 1.1.

A check of the release notes show that many formatting features between Word 2007 and ODF documents are lost in the translation, even for the 1.1 version. Page background colors, background images for tables, variable font weight, blinking text (a holdover from the MS-DOS era), text rotation, capitalized or lower-case text as an applied format, embedded objects, and hidden sections are among the 41 known formatting elements that the newest build of the translator does not currently support.


Two other experiments with Microsoft's plug-in had similar issues reported, if the plug-in even worked at all. We covered these in:

  1. Microsoft API Pledge Worse Than Useless, Real Standards Needed
  2. Broken Promises: Microsoft Interoperability Already Broken (No GNU/Linux, No ODF)


At the end of the day, Microsoft prefers signing deals with companies like Novell and even Sun. They don't truly cater for a decentralised control using standards. Microsoft wants total dependency upon itself. Here is the latest about Sun.

Efforts announced last September to improve interoperability of Sun's hardware and Microsoft's software continue to take form with the official opening of the Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center.


Microsoft's idea of interoperability continues to be that of taxoperability, based on tightened cooperation and royalties. But that's not the way standards work. The next post delves deeper into this issue.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 06/07/2025: Climate Change and "The Right to Criticise"
Links for the day
The Mainstream Media Took 4 Days to Realise Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan and Fired Everybody
We estimate that Microsoft has had about 29,000 layoffs since January
“Twibel” Actions Against Comedians (and Why It's a Truly Low Blow)
they try to make up in quantities for a lack of merit or quality
 
For the Second Time, Bryan Lunduke From Microsoft is Siccing Racist Trolls and Vandals at Me
You're only reinforcing the point we made yesterday
Links 06/07/2025: End to End Encryption at Risk, Reuters Twitter ("X") Account Withheld in India
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/07/2025: Tinylog and Certification Rotation
Links for the day
PCLinuxOS Sites Coming Back, Gradually
let's just be patient
Social Control Media, Even If Based on Free Software, Still Has Many Problems
a distraction from what actually mattered and still matters
IBM is Not Your Master
IBM makes friends with people who exclude the majority of the population: women
Help Fund the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
If you have some dollars to spare, go support the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 05, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 05, 2025
A Short History of Attacks on Techrights (and Boycott Novell Before That)
good opportunity to tell again the story of several (not all) attempts to silence us
Leadership in Free Software
Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.
Linux Foundation Apparently Flirting With Slop (Marketing by LLM-Generated SPAM)
The Web is in a really bad state!
COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
A few months later we created our very own IRC network
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: Negative Questions and 'Touching Grass' (Going Outside)
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Dalai Lama Succession as 90th Birthday Approaches, 40 deg C in China
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
Links for the day
How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
"[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
X.Org Server is alive and well
Rewriting Things in Rust
How far would you go?
In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
Monopolies and Scalping
Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
"August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
LLM slop disguised as news
Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
Links for the day
Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
Via the GNU Web site this week
Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
Links for the day
Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
We'll write about this for a long time to come
Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
Slop videos aren't a new thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
What Digital Independence Means
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
NVidia is a Bubble
they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead