5 ms·

Docx is an open standard built on Open XML. It is not Propietary. There is no licesnse to build an editor that supports it, and it is well documented. The auth

by drakaal 14y ago

Docx is an open standard built on Open XML. It is not Propietary. There is no licesnse to build an editor that supports it, and it is well documented. The author contends that this is Proprietary. If they got this very obvious thing wrong and it is one of their biggest points for why you shouldn't use Office 365 I think it is safe to say they didn't go in to this with an impartial view.

gorain 14y ago
Is DOCX really an open standard? - http://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/is-docx-really-an-open-standard/ http://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/is-docx-really-an...
- fakeer 14y ago
  For those who follow tl;dr religiously, the answer is: Yes it is.
  - networked 14y ago
    >For those who follow tl;dr religiously, the answer is: Yes it is. You should have noted that that is not actually a tl;dr of the blog post linked to by the GP. In fact, that post comes to the opposite conclusion: "[A] problem arose when Microsoft decided not to fully implement the Strict version of the standard in Office 2010. As published by Microsoft [...] and stated by Wikipedia [...]: >Microsoft Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, read/write support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict. What this means is that when you save a document in MS Office 2010 or prior in any of the ‘X’ formats, you are not saving them in the advertised OpenXML format. [...]"
  - ralfn 14y ago
    Too bad no application in the world implements it. Oh, and "implement as MS product X" isnt actually a specification. We often complain when source code is the only real spec. But unless you are an MS employee, "implement as MS product X" comes down to reverse engineering. We dont even get the source code. Also, if you remember back in the day .. How they even got this status .. MS was considered to be bribing institutions and blackmailing partners. The downside of self regulation, is that messing with related institutions isnt actually illegal.
Someone 14y ago
There are dark corners of Open XML. In particular, one has compatibility settings with names such as "autoSpaceLikeWord95", "footnoteLayoutLikeWW8", "lineWrapLikeWord6", "shapeLayoutLikeWW8", "truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6", "useWord2002TableStyleRules", "useWord97LineBreakRules" Reading the spec, I get the impression that they made a serious attempt to document what these mean. However, some might still find it troublesome that, in practice, the only way to figure out what to do in the presence of such settings is to look at how those applications displayed text or, in many cases, how some Office version emulating WordPerfect or an older version of Word handled them. Also, some will feel these should not have been part of the spec, or that the spec should be more explicit in stating that new documents should not write them (but then, what is a new document? Say, I do File-New, then paste in a few pages from a document having those settings, then save? Alternatively, I open a document, delete all content, then do File-Save As?)
- derefr 14y ago
  > some might still find it troublesome that, in practice, the only way to figure out what to do in the presence of such settings is to look at how those applications displayed text Well, presumably, if you want to give your word processor the ability to "autoSpaceLikeWord95"--for a business use-case, not just as a feature to tick off on a checklist--then you already know what it means to "autoSpaceLikeWord95", because your clients are pointing to documents your program has created and saying that right here, there, and here too, the Word95-like autospacing is missing. Basically, these compat flags are suggestions to activate the compat functionality it turns out you needed to build anyway; if you're adding compat for some old version of some app because the hook is there, without any of your own clients needing to preserve the old behavior in their documents, you're Doing It Wrong. It would be like Firefox parsing  tags just because there's a standard for how IE should handle them.
  - anonymfus 14y ago
    Looks like autoSpaceLikeWord95 is defined in ISO/IEC 29500-4:2012 "Information technology -- Document description and processing languages -- Office Open XML File Formats -- Part 4: Transitional Migration Features" as compatibility feature for unicode handling bug and ever has full name "Incorrectly Adjust Text Spacing for Specific Unicode Ranges".

by drakaal 14y ago

gorain 14y ago

Is DOCX really an open standard? - http://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/is-docx-really-an-open-standard/ http://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/is-docx-really-an...

fakeer 14y ago
For those who follow tl;dr religiously, the answer is: Yes it is.
- networked 14y ago
  >For those who follow tl;dr religiously, the answer is: Yes it is. You should have noted that that is not actually a tl;dr of the blog post linked to by the GP. In fact, that post comes to the opposite conclusion: "[A] problem arose when Microsoft decided not to fully implement the Strict version of the standard in Office 2010. As published by Microsoft [...] and stated by Wikipedia [...]: >Microsoft Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, read/write support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict. What this means is that when you save a document in MS Office 2010 or prior in any of the ‘X’ formats, you are not saving them in the advertised OpenXML format. [...]"
- ralfn 14y ago
  Too bad no application in the world implements it. Oh, and "implement as MS product X" isnt actually a specification. We often complain when source code is the only real spec. But unless you are an MS employee, "implement as MS product X" comes down to reverse engineering. We dont even get the source code. Also, if you remember back in the day .. How they even got this status .. MS was considered to be bribing institutions and blackmailing partners. The downside of self regulation, is that messing with related institutions isnt actually illegal.

Someone 14y ago

There are dark corners of Open XML. In particular, one has compatibility settings with names such as "autoSpaceLikeWord95", "footnoteLayoutLikeWW8", "lineWrapLikeWord6", "shapeLayoutLikeWW8", "truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6", "useWord2002TableStyleRules", "useWord97LineBreakRules" Reading the spec, I get the impression that they made a serious attempt to document what these mean. However, some might still find it troublesome that, in practice, the only way to figure out what to do in the presence of such settings is to look at how those applications displayed text or, in many cases, how some Office version emulating WordPerfect or an older version of Word handled them. Also, some will feel these should not have been part of the spec, or that the spec should be more explicit in stating that new documents should not write them (but then, what is a new document? Say, I do File-New, then paste in a few pages from a document having those settings, then save? Alternatively, I open a document, delete all content, then do File-Save As?)

derefr 14y ago
> some might still find it troublesome that, in practice, the only way to figure out what to do in the presence of such settings is to look at how those applications displayed text Well, presumably, if you want to give your word processor the ability to "autoSpaceLikeWord95"--for a business use-case, not just as a feature to tick off on a checklist--then you already know what it means to "autoSpaceLikeWord95", because your clients are pointing to documents your program has created and saying that right here, there, and here too, the Word95-like autospacing is missing. Basically, these compat flags are suggestions to activate the compat functionality it turns out you needed to build anyway; if you're adding compat for some old version of some app because the hook is there, without any of your own clients needing to preserve the old behavior in their documents, you're Doing It Wrong. It would be like Firefox parsing  tags just because there's a standard for how IE should handle them.
- anonymfus 14y ago
  Looks like autoSpaceLikeWord95 is defined in ISO/IEC 29500-4:2012 "Information technology -- Document description and processing languages -- Office Open XML File Formats -- Part 4: Transitional Migration Features" as compatibility feature for unicode handling bug and ever has full name "Incorrectly Adjust Text Spacing for Specific Unicode Ranges".