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Thursday 13 March 2008, 11:27 AM
Microsoft presses on regardless with OOXML SDK
OOXML is in the balance as a formal standard, but that's no reason for Microsoft not to launch tools for the document standard. However, the OOXML kit which is on its way could cause confusion, as it won't meet the standard being considered at ISO.
Microsoft will have a beta version of the OOXML SDK next month, and a 1.0 release in May, but that won't include the changes currently on the table at ISO, or any subsequent ones.
This means that people who use the kit to build OOXML functionality into applications, won't comply with the formal standard - if OOXML does become one.
Microsoft says this is good: it will "put Microsoft on the hook to keep your app in line with the OOXML standard" according to Miucrosoft evangelist Doug Mahugh. Which is one way of putting it.
Meanwhile, CNet reports that the US is likely to keep its recommendation that OOXML be accepted as a standard. At least that's the view of Mahugh, who is on the committee, and the chair, Patrick Durusau, who also edits the rival OpenDocument standard.
Durusau has an interesting take: oponents to OOXML are just being nasty: ""What is puzzling in this day and age of quarterly reports and returns is that any corporate-governance structure would long tolerate spite as a business strategy. Or that investors would stay with companies that follow such strategies," he wrote in a PDF.
PreviousComments on this post
If they're willing to release versions that will not comply with ISO standards why bother to get OOXML approved at all?
To be fair, Microsoft has said that the products will comply with ISO standards when there are ISO standards to comply with.
Any product that implements a standard runs a risk that the product and the standard may be out of step, because the two processes go in parallel.
Where the product meets an existing standard, you often have the case that the current product implements the last release of the standard (say WiMax 2004) or implements a draft version of the next version , that is still being worked on (say 802.11n Wi-Fi).
In this case though, there isn't an existing OOXML standard, and it's not clear that there will be one with an ISO rubber-stamp, so it's not like either case. There's no previous version to comply with (though obviously complying with ODF would be an option) and what we do have isn't a "draft standard" becuase we don't know for sure there will be an ISO standard.
As anyone in favour of the Microsoft approach would say, (and please come back, anonymous ECMA supporters!) what else could they do?
