People Implementing Ecma Office Open XML

Over on Rod's blog the comments wage on and there is another common question popping up - 'no one can implement this standard other than Microsoft'.

Luckily this is not true - we even have people in NZ who have used it to render documents and build solutions. 

Implementing the entire standard is not easy - you need to build a fully featured productivity suite however - and that's why the standard is quite detailed.  however many, many other vendors have already implemented Open XML. 

If you want to get started and se how easy it can be just pop over to this page for a great guide with (very) short example of how to do it.

https://openxmldeveloper.org/articles/1970.aspx

Here is a short subset:

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 23, 2007
  PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2007/08/24/people-implementing-ecma-office-open-xml/

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2007
  Hi Scott, The good people working on OpenOffice.org have heroically reverse engineered the current crop of disparate MS Office files in hopes of offering the world market a competing office suite.  Until now, Microsoft has absolutely refused to offer anything like an "open" document standard for MS Office documents, as this would've made the OO.org developers' job too easy. Their OOXML support efforts - driven by the possibility that Microsoft will be able to influence enough government standards groups to cave in an accept OOXML for consideration as an ISO standard - <a href="are'>http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/office_open_xml_ooxml_filters">are making minimal progress</a> due to the fact that OOXML is orders of magnitude more complex than the real international standard, ODF (which they already support).  Luckily, OO.org already offers compatibility (no thanks to Microsoft) with the legacy MS Office formats that aren't defined in the OOXML spec. In fact, Microsoft has been keen to stymie OpenOffice.org compatibility efforts all along.  In addition to keeping their file formats closed, Microsoft have been particularly hearty supporters of anti-reverse engineering legislation around the world (the "TPMs" in NZ's copyright act amendment, and the DMCA and other legislation in the US and similar legislation in just about every other jurisdiction worldwide).  Competing is much easier when the government is protecting your marketshare, I guess.  Makes perfect sense for businesses afraid of competing on a level playing field, but it's certainly isn't very consistent with market capitalism. So why is MS only now attempting to create an "Open" file format - and why in such a hurry?  Why not just go through the normal ISO approval process?  Why the need to fast-track?  Is it because increasing numbers of jurisdictions around the world are considering legislation to require open file formats for official documents?  Is it because Microsoft Office could soon be ineligible for government tenders due to Microsoft's current insistence on using proprietary, patent-encumbered file formats like variant of DOC, XLS, and PPT that ever existed?   Why does Microsoft refuse to make ODF a file format option in MS Office 2007?  Clearly it would be easy to do.  There are already several open source reference implementations that would save Microsoft developers a lot of time.  Why is it that Microsoft can do that alongside it's OOXML format?  Surely if OOXML offers any advantages in the marketplace, Microsoft Office users will choose to use it.   I'd love to hear your response.   Sincerely, Dave

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2007
  Hi again, Sean, I was wondering if you could clarify Microsoft's position on <a href="http://www.arstdesign.com/articles/OOXML-is-defective-by-design.html">this article</a> which asserts that OOXML is "defective by design".  Teething pains?  A rushed specification process?  Interesting stuff. Regards, Dave

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2007
  Sorry, Sean - just realised my previous comment was addressed to Scott.  Apologies for that.   Regards, Dave

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2007
  Dave, Some good points and I see quite a few posts from you over on Rod's blog as well. Hopefully I’ve addressed a number of those questions already. I will answer a few of them but also point to a few key resources to help – this is probably not the right place to go deep on technical questions.   Let me take Office 2007 support for ODF first up – Microsoft has announced support for an Open source project to do just this as an add-in for Office. http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter http://www.openxmlcommunity.org/multiple.aspx#key One thing that should help resolve that concern (me stepping out of the technical debate) is the Open Letter re the standards process from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/letters/openxmliso.mspx This clearly outlines that any issues in the spec that are feed back as comments with any standard body votes will be followed up.  This is an Ecma and Microsoft commitment. On the errors front - standards do evolve and that vasy majority (all?) have a few errors in the first iteration. The good news is we do have many people building on the standard today and making it work and testing it out well.  I like this post as an example: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/08/15/why-there-s-no-microsoft-in-open-xml.aspx   The ISO standardisation process is also giving a lot of good feedback in relation to the specification as well. The intention is to absolutely fix the errors up. In relation to the speed of standardisation, I think this is pretty common ODF has moved past its first version, I beleive that v1.1 was largely about ‘accessibility updates’ and 1.2 and 1.3 are in progress.   To my knowledge ODF was also fast tracked.   My personal point of view is that due to the fast pace that technology moves at you need to move/approve these standards quickly to allow innovation to keep a pace.   As long as there is commitment to evolve a standard and address errors then approving them is the right thing to do. We created the open file format in response to customer feedback - which also included the requirement for backward compatibility.  I'm 100% confident this was the right thing to do - I work for Microsoft so you could argue I would say that however. Multiple formats exist everywhere today this is not about the need to have one, it's not about one being better than the other it's about the need to have open formats that are fit for purpose - Ecma Office Open XML is a great step forward in that regard. Sean

• Anonymous
  August 26, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  Hi Dave, Sorry I was out of the office yesterday for a board meeting for a local business inclubator. I'll work on a reply to address each of these points and post it today.  Some of these are great questions - others I might struggle with ;) Cheers, Sean

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2007
  Hi Dave, As always I am open to your strongly-held views. And while we are disappointed this is just one step in the process and we look toward next year’s final decision. Thank you to all who have offered their opinion on this blog. At the end of the day we should all be looking at what is right for New Zealand businesses and how we can best build a local IT industry that is competitive on the global stage. Sean

• Anonymous
  August 30, 2007
  The comment has been removed