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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: MS filters
From:       Sebastian Sauer <mail () dipe ! org>
Date:       2008-03-13 17:00:15
Message-ID: 200803131800.15786.mail () dipe ! org
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On Thursday 13 March 2008, Jaroslaw Staniek wrote:
> Cyrille Berger said the following, On 2008-03-13 13:56:
> > On Thursday 13 March 2008, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> >> On Thu, 13 Mar 2008, Sebastian Sauer wrote:
> >>> that format is so much over-designed that it will be very hard to
> >>> deliver anything working soon. It starts with the sharedstring-tables,
> >>> continues with the client-server logic oox comes with (funny they put
> >>> it into the format itself rather then moving it up the stack to the
> >>> application-level) and all those additional "optimizations" that
> >>> increase the complexity even more. Guess I am atm very depressed how
> >>> bad that format is and how difficult it is to get anything working out
> >>> of it that is more then translation of some tags :-/
> >>> imho clearly something that can't be done within ~3 or even ~6 months
> >>> (I don't talk of styles and other things here, just of not losing
> >>> content during import).
> >>
> >> Ouch! That sounds even worse than what I had heard before.
> >
> > And now might not be a good time to start working on this. ooxml is not
> > yet an ISO standard, it might as well never become one. They might as
> > well resubmit it under the normal ISO procedure in which case ooxml will
> > be very different than it is now. Besides there are very few ooxml
> > documents in cirulation compared to doc/xls/ppt ;)
>
> My 0.02€:
>
> After changes forced by deposition-for-comments, Ecma (not ISO) as an
> editor of the standard draft, would turn ooxml into something seriously
> different than the format people demand here and there -- namely --
> msooxml.
>
> For example, the final ooxml would mention the embedded objects can be
> KParts-compatible (or based any other technology, e.g. Flake), and thus no
> longer directly mention MS OLE. This is only an example, you have more such
> "fixes" delivered by removing concrete information on related standards.
> Do not expect MS to fix already released MSO2007 for ooxml compatibility...
>
> So there's even more time before someone can realize whether "ooxml
> support" means "support for on of the standards" or "following the white
> 'msooxl' rabbit in rather the same way as the community has followed the
> old binary office formats" :)

Guess everybody has to take the red pile here (or was it the green one? 
anyway).

In fact ISO doesn't matter at all (for us). It's only relevant for the 
Microsoft-marketing area to gain an official stamp on there format to be able 
to sell it better. Office2007 is out, that file-format is the only one that 
matters :-(

I don't believe that there will be any bigger changes to the specs since that 
would mean, that Office2007 would produce non-ISO ooxml and therefore 1) the 
selling-advantage would be gone and 2) I doubt that MS would adjust there 
Office and switch the default fileformat before the next big Office(2009?) 
rollout and 3) till then there would be no Software that uses those 
new "standard" what would render all the ISO-fasttrack game even more 
illogical.

The alternate is that it goes ISO (atm it looks so and may it only to limit 
the damage done to the whole ISO-adventure) and then there would be no reason 
any longer for Microsoft to increase the quality of those specs. Even more 
worse, once they got the approval, they may just "upgrade" the existing 
standard with each new Office-release.

In any case, ISO and everybody else are the losers of all of this :-(
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