Detailed Analysis of the file formats for M$ Office 2007 -"Microsoft Office XML Formats? Defective b

http://www.arstdesign.com/articles/OOXML-is-defective-by-design.html

"" They insist on the fact that, provided you make a valid use of the XML,
pretty much changing the content of anything in an existing document can
be achieved by sequentially 1) unzipping the content 2) making appropriate
changes to one or more XML parts that are compatible with the provided XML
schemas and open packaging relationships 3) zipping the content back .

Let's see if that's true.

1) Self-exploding spreadsheets
2) Entered versus stored values
3) Optimization artefacts become a feature instead of an embarrasment
4) VML isn't XML
5) Open packaging parts minefield
6) International, but US English first and foremost
7) Many ways to get in trouble
8) Windows dates
9) All roads lead to Office 2007
10) A world of ZIP+OLE files
11) BIFF is gone...not!
12) Document backwards compatibility subject to neutrino radioactivity
13) ECMA 376 documents just do not exist ""

The article examines in quite some detail the above 13 points, and makes
for very interesting reading about how M$ Office 2007 uses, or does not
use, XML.

 

"Defective by design" - goodness me, so MS is deliberately designing Office
files to obstruct interoperability. The quote from the email from Bill
Gates only further illustrates the point.

As Prof Moglen puts it ...
".. the theory of the firm and the economic theory of the 1890s are
sufficient to the explanation. Monopolies, as we all know and were taught,
produce inferior goods at high prices and stifle innovation. The wealthiest
and most deeply-funded monopoly in the history of the world spent literally
billions of dollars over the last two decades trying to convince you and
everybody else in the world that the laws of our economics had been
repealed for the special benefit of Mr Gates and Mr Ballmer. This was, of
course, false - like all other monopolies, they obeyed the laws of the free
market. They produced lousy goods at very high prices and they stifled
innovation - as they became more and more dominant in the world of
software, quality enhancement in the world of software first ceased and
then began to reverse itself."

Interoperability in file formats would permit the possibility of innovation,
customer choice and competition - all things that MS wishes to prevent.


Peter