Re: [ITPOLITIK] Høringsvar til Dansk Sta ndard vedr. ISO og OOXML

[Erik Josefsson <sslug@sslug>]

Skal ikke argumentet at "der må vare en standard på standarder" lyftes
op noget? Se siste afsnit her ("6. Summary - Standards have standards."):

http://www.noooxml.org/local--files/arguments/TheCaseAgainstOOXML.pdf

//Erik

Martin Schlander wrote:
> Martin Schlander wrote:
>> Dansk Standard er blandt de ca. 30 nationale standardiseringsorganer der
>> skal afgøre hvorvidt OOXML skal ISO-certificeres. De kører høring frem til
>> 2/7.
> 
> Nyt udkast. Jeg har erstattet "gratis" med "free of charge" og tilføjet et
> afsnit om at OOXML anvender for korte intetsigende XML-tags. Derudover er
> der kun rettet lidt i sidste afsnit. Jeg regner med at sende svaret afsted
> på torsdag.
> 
> 
> ------------
> 
> We believe OOXML should not be ISO-certified at all. There's already an
> ISO-standard for document formats. Having two different standards with huge
> overlaps goes against the whole idea of standardization. Doing so could
> damage the credibility of ISO as well as Dansk Standard assuming they voted
> in favour of it.
> 
> Of course the feature set of the formats are not completely identical, but
> it would be better to expand existing standards than to create new ones
> everytime someone needs some feature.
> 
> ISO is a very respected and influential organization. Having two
> ISO-standards for office documtents, would effectively mean that all
> developers of office software, would have to implement both standards to
> compete in the market place. This would lead to a big waste of resources,
> bad for businesses and more expensive and complex for customers than having
> just one standard. It would also be imbalanced and favour large vendors.
> Having two different ISO-standards would most likely lead to more
> interoperability problems than having only one.
> 
> The market share of Microsoft Office is not a viable argument either. At
> least two plugins that provide ODF-support exist already and are available
> free of charge ? and nothing is stopping Microsoft from implementing native
> support for the existing ISO standard in the field.
> 
> Besides the above points of why two duplicate standards is a bad idea, there
> are a number of reasons why OOXML is a bad format in itself. If an ISO
> certification should happen at least these problems should be adressed.
> The sheer size of the specification is a problem. This complexity means
> it'll be very difficult to implement properly ? perhaps impossible. And
> again it will favour large vendors over smaller ones.
> 
> The specification has numerous undocumented sections which is well known.
> Apparently for reasons of backwards compatibilty. We must insist that these
> sections be fully documented.
> 
> OOXML specifies it's own standards instead of re-using existing standards,
> for example wrt. handling calendaring, dates and mathematical markup.
> Leading to unnecessary complexity.
> 
> OOXML uses very short XML tags, making it cryptic to read. Generally XML
> tags are expected to be descriptive. This makes the format difficult to
> implement and maintain.
> 
> The only argument for it seems to be the promised backwards compatibility
> with existing binary Microsoft document formats, but even this  backwards
> compatibility is questionable. And even if it were true, 100% backwards
> compatibility couldn't justify having dual standards ? and imposing
> Microsofts past design flaws on the future.
> 
> 
> 
> sslug-itpolitik er, som SSLUGs øvrige emaillister, et frit debatforum 
> hvor hvert enkelt medlem er ansvarlig for sine egne indlæg. Indlæg #20389
> 
>