5 ms·

No, not against open standards. Microsoft OOXML is an open format. You might recall it's (controversially) the Ecma, ISO and IEC standard format, and is support

by pidg 11y ago

No, not against open standards. Microsoft OOXML is an open format. You might recall it's (controversially) the Ecma, ISO and IEC standard format, and is supported by LibreOffice and OpenOffice. So even if MS did something terrible, the documents would still be editable when everyone switches over to LibreOffice - dependent on how well they've implemented OOXML. And I'm not even against what Collabora are doing, I think it's very clever. It's an interesting way of hitting back at Microsoft by lobbying for open standards in order to create an alternative solution and a profitable business. I just don't think LibreOffice stands up to MS Office as a product (yes, I've worked with both) for day-to-day use by normal humans.

merb 11y ago
OOXML is a broken standard. It is bigger than the PDF spec, which already is ridicoulus. Also some crazy bugs inside older versions aren't always reflected inside the spec. I've seen documents render differntly between Office 2007, 2010, 2013. Mostly between 2010 and 2013 since 2013 is way more correct than the previous versions, still Microsoft use a compability layer to still have a "correct" view. However that is really really aweful.
vidarh 11y ago
As far as I'm aware there are no complete implementations of OOXML other than Microsoft Office, and given the complexity of the specification and the huge gaping holes, it is unclear if it ever will be, or if it is even possible to implement for parties other than Microsoft without reverse engineering large chunks of Microsoft Office. Until there are other complete implementations, calling it an open format is pretty much a bad joke. > I just don't think LibreOffice stands up to MS Office as a product That may be so. But a government has many other requirements than the day to day use. They also, for example, have archiving requirements (with timelines measured in decades) that are hard enough to deal with without the risks incurred of locking documents into poorly documented formats only fully supported by a single vendor.
- mkrfox 11y ago
  Word can work in the same formats LibreOffice uses. Microsoft even provides a chart so you know what to expect based on your choice: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between-the-OpenDocument-Text-odt-format-and-the-Word-docx-format-d9d51a92-56d1-4794-8b68-5efb57aebfdc https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between...
  - vidarh 11y ago
    Yes, and that's one more reason not to use OOXML.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
Microsoft's OOXML is a joke, no matter who rubber-stamped it. It's effectively the binary Office formats expressed via XML. Any office suite adding support for it still has to include the myriad piles of compatibility hacks they did for binary Office documents. OOXML contains several "transitional purposes only" formats that were obsolete before they ever went through the joke of a "standardization process", rather than standardizing a single format; as a result, anything wanting to read real-world documents in the format has to handle all of those "transitional" formats. And OOXML contains elements like "lineWrapLikeWord6" and "useWord2002TableStyleRules". OOXML was designed, effectively, to be the easiest possible transition from the binary Office formats rather than being the best possible document standard, or even a good document standard. Direct quote from the proponents of the standard: "OpenXML was designed from the start to be capable of faithfully representing the pre-existing corpus of word-processing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that are encoded in binary formats defined by Microsoft Corporation." That doesn't make it a bad representation format for a vendor's proprietary office suite, but it does make it a bad standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open... is worth reading; the "standardization" process itself was effectively politics, not technology. By contrast, there are multiple independent implementations of ODF.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > the "standardization" process itself was effectively politics, not technology. All standardization processes are politics, pretty much by definition; defining a spec is technical, agreeing to a standard is political. Not to say that the standardization of OOXML wasn't a particularly bad outcome, but "bad" vs. "good" is a different distinction than "politics" vs. "technical". > By contrast, there are multiple independent implementations of ODF. IIRC, OOXML is implemented by OOo/LO and Google Docs as well as Microsoft Office, the former two are independent implementations from the latter, if not also from each other. (I'm not sure any of those implementations are bug-free as compared to anything that has been standardized, much less fully compatible with each other -- ISTR even the Microsoft one early on had significant reported divergences from the standard.)
  - 11y ago

by pidg 11y ago

merb 11y ago

OOXML is a broken standard. It is bigger than the PDF spec, which already is ridicoulus. Also some crazy bugs inside older versions aren't always reflected inside the spec. I've seen documents render differntly between Office 2007, 2010, 2013. Mostly between 2010 and 2013 since 2013 is way more correct than the previous versions, still Microsoft use a compability layer to still have a "correct" view. However that is really really aweful.

vidarh 11y ago

As far as I'm aware there are no complete implementations of OOXML other than Microsoft Office, and given the complexity of the specification and the huge gaping holes, it is unclear if it ever will be, or if it is even possible to implement for parties other than Microsoft without reverse engineering large chunks of Microsoft Office. Until there are other complete implementations, calling it an open format is pretty much a bad joke. > I just don't think LibreOffice stands up to MS Office as a product That may be so. But a government has many other requirements than the day to day use. They also, for example, have archiving requirements (with timelines measured in decades) that are hard enough to deal with without the risks incurred of locking documents into poorly documented formats only fully supported by a single vendor.

mkrfox 11y ago
Word can work in the same formats LibreOffice uses. Microsoft even provides a chart so you know what to expect based on your choice: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between-the-OpenDocument-Text-odt-format-and-the-Word-docx-format-d9d51a92-56d1-4794-8b68-5efb57aebfdc https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between...
- vidarh 11y ago
  Yes, and that's one more reason not to use OOXML.

JoshTriplett 11y ago

Microsoft's OOXML is a joke, no matter who rubber-stamped it. It's effectively the binary Office formats expressed via XML. Any office suite adding support for it still has to include the myriad piles of compatibility hacks they did for binary Office documents. OOXML contains several "transitional purposes only" formats that were obsolete before they ever went through the joke of a "standardization process", rather than standardizing a single format; as a result, anything wanting to read real-world documents in the format has to handle all of those "transitional" formats. And OOXML contains elements like "lineWrapLikeWord6" and "useWord2002TableStyleRules". OOXML was designed, effectively, to be the easiest possible transition from the binary Office formats rather than being the best possible document standard, or even a good document standard. Direct quote from the proponents of the standard: "OpenXML was designed from the start to be capable of faithfully representing the pre-existing corpus of word-processing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that are encoded in binary formats defined by Microsoft Corporation." That doesn't make it a bad representation format for a vendor's proprietary office suite, but it does make it a bad standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open... is worth reading; the "standardization" process itself was effectively politics, not technology. By contrast, there are multiple independent implementations of ODF.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> the "standardization" process itself was effectively politics, not technology. All standardization processes are politics, pretty much by definition; defining a spec is technical, agreeing to a standard is political. Not to say that the standardization of OOXML wasn't a particularly bad outcome, but "bad" vs. "good" is a different distinction than "politics" vs. "technical". > By contrast, there are multiple independent implementations of ODF. IIRC, OOXML is implemented by OOo/LO and Google Docs as well as Microsoft Office, the former two are independent implementations from the latter, if not also from each other. (I'm not sure any of those implementations are bug-free as compared to anything that has been standardized, much less fully compatible with each other -- ISTR even the Microsoft one early on had significant reported divergences from the standard.)
- 11y ago