On 8/24/07, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:

On 23-Aug-07, at 8:04 PM, Nagarjuna G. wrote:

...

India votes against ooxml unanimously. the decision of the committee was to disapprove ooxml with comments

which committee is this?

BIS?

On 24/08/07, jtd jtd@mtnl.net.in wrote:

"The goal of Open XML is to have compatibility with the existing base of Office documents. In the cases such as this, it uses capabilities to best enable interoperability between implementing applications. The syntax for identifying these properties are fully specified in the standard, which provides for better interoperability than if they had been left out. As these represent legacy behavior though, the TC decided that it was not valuable to fully specify how an implementer would actually mimic this behavior, and the use of these settings are completely optional. If an application already knows how this behavior is implemented, then the spec gives them guidance on how to read and write that setting. If they do not understand the behavior though, they can just ignore the setting."

haha, "just ignore the settings!" this is the first standards which claim that if you don't understand then just ignore. has microsoft decided to change the dictionary meaning of the word "standards"?

The above is an oft repeated argument in the reply to .comments. From the statement I understand that in order to convert old documents (MSOffice <2007 ) one needs to refer to some other MS documentation, which are not part of the standard (and by implication not unencumbered). Also only applications which already understand these legacy docs are capable of accurately mimicing the presentation.

this is the criminal history of microsoft nothing new. today if at all I have to read m$ word95 documents, I have to either use open office or will have to get a converter which I don't know exists or not. so if I have a very old but important document I am helpless unless I use open office.

Therefore it is not possible to write a converter to convert a legacy doc to OOXML or anything else. What M$ is saying is a typical two faced M$ speak - to other non M$ vendors pay us for the legacy specs so that you can covert legacy docs to something useable and to the customer pay us for M$2007 and you can use your old docs and interoperate.

nothing wrong in paying also. let's asume for a moment that I am paying for this (by the way standards are not products so charging is unethical), but what will I get? again in a few years the same situation will come for this office 2007 version and again new "standards" will be proposed and again things will be outdated or will require us to pay again for getting our own documents incripted or dicripted..

One of the most important requirements would be to reuse and interoperate with old documents, which M$ says is not important/ unneccessary / need not be addressed etc.

again this is criminal history of microsoft that they think past is useless or history or culture is of no use. "why are you doing a foolish thing of reading an old document in word 95? no matter how important the information is, but this format is pritty old and you need to upgrade and pay us, no matter you loos information". this is microsoft for you. and I leave it to the readers to think for themselves, whether microsoft ever created any standard except rtf, which it was probably forced and pressurised to create. my personal recommendation is not just to stay away from OO xml but also any word or excel or ppt formats. these are popular but no way near to be called a "standard". regards, Krishnakant.