You are pathetic.

Why is he pathetic? He's stating a fact that Microsoft has decided to add more support for ODF, and he's pointing out that it seems Microsoft may be planning to let go of its own OOXML. He's probably right.

That's just wishful thinking.

Dear All

This is just another extend and embrace scenario. They will not support it fully and will give warnings that common features your trying to use will not save into the ODF standard thus giving users the impression that ODF cannot handle lots of things they do everyday when in fact its microsofts programmin that wont handle the format. They are using the old shifting standards again to kill a very successful and open standard. They are criminals and should be treated as such by everyone.

We all see what a success Office 2007 is, it is very much possible that Microsoft could make OOXML the default in Office 14 and make Office 2007 SP2 default to OOXML through the update. I still believe Microsoft still wants to have some control over the document formats Office uses, so .docx, .xlsx and .pptx remain the defaults going into the next release. If there is a torrent of pressure from businesses and the next Administration depending on who wins the 2008 Election, then Microsoft could make OOXML the default for Office 14 depending on the stage of development or hold out until Office 15.

What if ISO warned Microsoft some weeks ago that OOXML will be rejected as an international standard (South Africa Bureau of Standards just submited an official appeal to ISO and IEC against OOXML) ?

Andre Da Costa:
> We all see what a success Office 2007 is

..aye, in that 9/11 way. Like it or not,
whoever ordered the Twin Towers down, was successful in that.

Why are you talking as if OOXML is (present tense) an ISO standard? It is not. The final marked-up document has not even been released. South Africa has filed an appeal. It may be the case that Microsoft has enough money to bribe their way to an ISO standard ... but OOXML is NOT a standard yet.

Jason-

It's a nice update by you. The final assertion that OOXML will die on the vine, however, seems wishfull thinking. It could use some factual support, or testimonial data coming from enterprise CIOs.

Having spent a lot of money & time on the theatrical ISO process, Microsoft will keep OOXML alive as long as it provides a marketing check-box for government procurement of Office 20xy.

In the procurement / software sales context, no one needs to use that format for it to be successful (, although their particular use of XML in it has large implications for Microsoft's migration of the desktop monopoly to their new proprietary Web stack).

At this point, it's too early for any factual support, other than Microsoft's track record for abandoning "standards" that they worked hard to produce, whenever they became inconvenient (that is, either their competitors had figured them out, or their potential users had rejected them.)

However, that having been said, OOXML has little of the main advantage of Microsoft's old binary formats (that is, already in the right structure, so just allocate a block of memory the size of the file, slurp it into memory, and you're done loading), it's the best officially documented Microsoft format to date, despite being very new, and most of the people for whom it was made have rejected it - the ingrates, wanting their open standards to be, well, open and standard.

I think the real indication is that the changes to the OOXML spec were slight enough it really shouldn't take Microsoft very long to make them - the open source community would be nearly done already, if ODF were to have that amount of change made to it - yet Microsoft is doing ODF first. Microsoft is taking more of a wait and see attitude on OOXML, and I think this is very prudent of them.

I am not making any predictions about how soon OOXML will die, but I'm going to predict that Microsoft will not, in fact, actually make the next major Office revision fully compliant with ISO 29500, even if it does make it through the standardization process as it is now. If something happens in that process - which I consider likely, given the formal appeal and the number of irregularities reported - then there's almost no way they'll be implementing the changes in Office 14.

@ Sam Hiser -- I think that MS will drop OOXML because OOXML does nothing to benefit Microsoft. Sure, MS gets to control OOXML, and thereby ensure that the format will suit Microsoft's needs, and conform to Office's particular set of features.

However, Microsoft's binary formats already serve that purpose. If core MS customers don't care about OOXML (do we have evidence that they do?), and if OOXML doesn't satisfy the open formats crowd, then what's its reason for being?

MS has oft demonstrated its willingness to dump its initiatives. Why should OOXML be any different?

Nicely said, Jason.

I want to add that Microsoft so-called troubles getting the final OOXML implemented in Office 2007 is just a lie. The changes are cosmetic ones, just a matter of days of work.

Let's take two examples :
- ISO 8601 dates : ISO 8601 dates were implemented in Excel 2003 already. Only Microsoft changed their mind in Excel 2007.
- VML : Microsoft will simply put VML under a DrawingML namespace and call it part of DrawingML despite the fact that implementers will continue to be burdened by a redundant graphics file format. In addition, the existing documents containing VML generated by Microsoft Office (MHTML, WordML 2003, ExcelML 2003, PowerpointML 2003, some substantial features in WordML 2007, some substantial features in ExcelML 2007, some substantial features in PowerpointML 2007) guarantees that VML has to implemented by any serious competitor. Worse, with VML and its variants over the years, this is as much variants to implement. This has a name : fire and motion. And the goal is to protect Microsoft Office's bottom line.

The FUD in their announcement is part of a bigger plan at the center of which, unsurprisingly, the defense of Microsoft Office licenses at all cost. Example : the ODF implementation will be done by an intern, and it will lack all what is expected by their users, such as application interoperability (copy/paste just one example).

More information on my blog, OOXML is defective by design.

jacob wright Says :
"This is just another extend and embrace scenario."

@jacob wright :
Is the "extend and embrace scenario" Microsoft's only play in their play book? They are using that play on a lot of fronts these days, eg. Yahoo and the UMPC market.

Why they don't give innovating a try for a change?

"Microsoft OOXML: Dead Format Walking"

"Microsoft, Dead Company Walking"

MicroSoft support for ODF could prove to be more disruptive than supportive. Even if MicroSoft's motives were pure (against all evidence), its needs to support the features of its own software would require its implementation of the standard to be nonstandard. As soon as that happens, the "ODF"-standard will cease to be a standard. The "ODF"-format will be no assurance that the files can be fully recognized by non MicroSoft software, unless programmers constantly scramble to adapt to the changes imposed by MicroSoft. Chaos will reign. It should be obvious that MicroSoft would have the clear advantage in this, whether by killing ODF or by co-opting it.

I wrote The Perfect Manual book for two reasons. First, I wanted to help companies overcome the tedious and time-consuming task of developing a quality or environmental manual by showing an example of a manual for ISO 9001:2000 (ISO 9001) standard. Second, and more important, the purpose of this book is to show a method for creating a quality or environmental manual, so that in the future, you can develop a manual for any standard or regulation, whether it is ISO 13485, AS 9100, FDA’s 21 CFR 820, European Council Directive 93/42/EEC or any other.