Amazing! After all the dirty tricks and bullying to get it approved, they don't even comply themselves!
But then, who would ever trust Microsoft to do anything openly and fairly.
Amazing, but not surprising.

On a side note there were protests by people in Norway over the way OOXML was approved. We are not going to hear the end of this just yet.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207001016

"The chairman of a Norwegian technology committee tasked with studying Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s controversial new document format has filed a protest against his country's decision to vote to approve the format as an international standard.

In a letter to the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Steve Pepper said "serious irregularities" were behind Norway's main standards body's decision to approve the Microsoft Office Open XML format as an ISO-recognized standard. "

This is a ridiculous post.

Since when is a year-and-a-half old piece of software supposed to be 100% compatible with a standard that is yet to be published? You should be ashamed of yourself. You didn't even bother to read the original blog, because if you did, you wouldn't have made this post.

As for your comment that "It's time Microsoft went on record about its plans to support ISO/IEC 29500.", it already did, when it officially announced a month ago that Office will be 100% compliant ASAP. I guess you didn't know that.

Ian Easson wrote: "You should be ashamed of yourself. You didn't even bother to read the original blog, because if you did, you wouldn't have made this post."

Hi, Ian,

Of course, I read the original post. Did you? If you read judgment in my post, you are mistaken. Microsoft needs to clear up the confusion. The company quite loudly and publicly pushed for ISO approval. Now, someone intimately associated with ISO and the new standard says that Office 2007 doesn't support it.

Microsoft has to just as loudly and publicly communicate its standards support plan to its customers and partners. There is risk to Microsoft: Some businesses might delay Office 2007 deployments until there is standards support.

Joe

There is also the possibility that MicroSoft will both promote Office with OOXML and taut OOXML as an ISO standard, without even mentioning whether or not Office OOXML meets those standards.

It is a lot easier to deceive with what you do not say than with what you do say, because the hearer's skepticism is less when he himself supplies the misinformation.

Alex Brown is (more than any other single person) pretty much responsible for this mess:

- The use of "Fast Track Process" for an extremely complicated standard may thousands of pages long;

- The packing of his committee with new "P-members", represented by people with almost no expertise in the area and with no interest in actually taking part in anything (the committee has a hard time getting a quorum of participants to do anything anymore, because they only joined to vote for MS-OOXML, and do NOTHING else);

- Worst of all, the bizarre voting trick at the end of the meeting to resolve the comments, when hundreds and hundreds (well over a thousand, actually) of comments were dismissed as "resolved" by forcing the meeting participants to either declare them *ALL* as fixed/resolved, *OR* basically undo all their work of the entire week.
- - - - -

I see a Ziff-Davis seminar listing below, so I hope that it's OK to mention another site here. (I don't remember if Microsoft-Watch is a Ziff-Davis affiliate.) Mr. Brown sent a statement to zdnet.uk (article at http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39388229,00.htm) in which he is quoted: "The question behind the question, for a lot of the current OOXML debate, seems to be: can Microsoft really be trusted to behave? We shall see."

Either he is rubbing our noses in his power to destroy the ISO by creating this standard, or he is utterly stupid: We have ALREADY seen whether Microsoft can be trusted to "behave" in a fair and cooperative manner, they can't. They used every trick they could, ANYTHING which wasn't expllicitly excluded by the rules, to get MS-OOXML approved.

Mr. Brown has utterly massive evidence of whether "Microsoft can really be trusted to behave", the answer is obviously NO. I think that Mr. Brown is NOT stupid, and so, I think that he's just rubbing our noses in it when he says, ala that wonderful move "Casablanca",

"I'm shocked, utterly shocked to see that Microsoft software doesn't implement this standard in a friendly and compliant way".

Yeah, sure, you had no idea at all.

Joe,

Of course I read it. And you still don't get it.

There is NO WAY that ANY software can support a new standard the day it is published (and this one hasn't even been published yet!), unless there were NO CHANGES TO THE STANDARD DURING THE STANDARDS PROCESS. In the case of OOXML, there were 1000 accepted changes.

The only confusion is in your own mind.

Microsoft has "... just as loudly and publicly communicate(d) its standards support plan to its customers and partners", as I pointed out.

All it hasn't done is communicate the release date. It has said it will talk about that as soon as it can.

Ian I think Joe has it right and you're missing the point. I don't think anybody in their right mind would believe Office 2007 would out of the blue support a recently ratified standard. I believe all are implicitly or explicitly familiar with the laws of thermodynamics and the way time flows. But I could be mistaken, it seems like the folks at MS Marketing are not aware of these phenomenons.

While you and I might be in the understanding that you can't implement a standard which doesn't exist yet. It seems that the marketing guys at Redmond do think its proper to market a standard which doesn't exist yet.

You and I might have followed the whole fast track closely, but most people didn't. The storm I see coming is sprung from the winds of confusion.

The average Joe will have Office 2007 and will receive a new Office 2007 file that supports ISO/IEC 29500. Yet he will not be able to open it. Because as you clearly state a year old piece of software can not support a recently ratified standard. The new patched Office 2007 will support both with no problem, but how do you tell the difference?

Is a new Office Format coined? Office 2007bis Format? Confusion can and certainly will arise from all the people who downloaded those "compatibility packs" to open the new Office 2007 format. What will they say when they suddenly can't open a file?

It is the same ol' nightmare we had with Capable and Ready. Current Office 2007 are ISO/IEC 29500 Capable, but not Ready yet. Some will be Ready soon and will send files to those Capable who will ask why they're not Ready to open those files. When they thought they were Ready, but were only Capable and what is that ISO fasttrack anyway?

On top of that we have the OGA (Office Genuine Advantage). Which I have the feeling will be funneled with the ISO/IEC 29500 update. This lovely extra "genome" in the Microsoft tree of life will add a lovely spin to things. With false positives firing of with those wanting to get Ready.

All of this because it is getting marketed as the same ol' thing. As Joe says Microsoft has to make it really clear that the current XML format is NOT a standard and once the standard ships and people start to distribute it, old Office 2007 will not be able to open the NEW Office format unless they get updated.

What a surprise! I just hope that the EU investigation fines the right people at M$ enough to really hurt.

It's interesting how you casually bypass the comment at the bottom:

"To repeat the exercise with ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (ODF 1.0) and a popular implementation of OpenDocument. Will anybody be brave enough to predict what kind of result that exercise will have?"

I'll put money on the table that, over a year after ODF became a standard, OpenOffice does not generate valid ODF 1.0.

Gerardo,

Microsoft has dealt with file format changes quite well for about a decade now. They have multiple mechanisms for applying what will be a small patch to Office 2007 (MS Update, Office Update, downloads, etc.) And you can be sure that the Internet will be filled with stories about the update, so there is a very high chance that users will know about it.

I think their successful track record bodes well for the updates. You don't, other than there are opportunities for a mismatch. But, that has been true now for a decade, and it has gone relatively smoothly.

Time will tell whose guess (and it is a guess!!) is right.

Ian, I see two key elements here, coupled with a third which is wide acceptance of the product. The first key element is that contrary to prior releases this is the first time we see a distinct sub-version release. The second key element is OGA, which if pushed down the update channel together with the ISO format patch could lead to very devastating effects on Microsoft's image.

Like you say, it is anyones guess. Yet although Microsoft's track record in file formats for the last 10 years might be good. Its track record these last couple of years leaves a lot to be desired. My bet is they'll fumble it again.

Gerardo, there have always been sub-version releases for Office. They are called service packs. Micrsoft has a clean record in delivering them.

OGA is a different matter. MS would be best advised not to tie it to the ISO format patch (or pack). However, their marketing has been so screwed up the last few years, they might fumble this.

Why am I not surprised at this blatant effort by Microsoft to subvert, contort, and pervert the whole ISO standards process? We all saw something very similar with the Java run-times, causing Sun to pull the non-standard Java rug out from under Microsoft.

Microsoft seems to have learned its ways from the Watergate crew and IBM's fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) campaigns. Why can't ISO now simply unapprove the standard which Microsoft proposed and to which it now fails to conform? ... Ben

The scorpion asked the snake for a ride across the river. The snake said," No, you'll sting me." "No I won't.", said the scorpion. So snake gives the scorpion a lift across the river. Half way across, the scorpion stings the snake, "Why did you do that? Now we're both going to die." "I couldn't help it!", exclaimed the scorpion.

Microsoft has been bastardizing ever since it burned Dartmouth BASIC to a ROM. They just can't help it, it's their natural instink.

c/;-)

Some standardization efforts (e.g. Sun's JCP in the Java area) require the existence of at least two independent -and interoperable- implementations of it, as a proof that it can be done, and that different groups of people agree on what the standard means. It sounds as if there isn't even a single one in this case, which raises the question of what a standard is worth that is not implemented. Not much in technical terms, that's for sure, but if that had been the basis for standardization, they might just have gone with ODF to begin with.