Complex singularity versus openness?

Thu Jul 3 09:57:23 CEST 2014

Dear all,

My understanding is that it's a good topic for "ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34/WG
5 Document Interoperability"

Mohamed

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 9:32 AM, Jesper Lund Stocholm
<Jesper.LundStocholm at ciber.dk> wrote:
> Dear Murata-san,
>
>
>
> One of the thoughts that came to me while reading (some of) the article was,
> that up-front, the article seems thorough and fact-based. But if you examine
> the written text, you quickly realize that the article is one-sided, biased
> and even though the article is "fact-based", it only deals with a very
> limited part of the facts available. You really need a lot of knowledge (as
> Jim said, dating back to 2008 J ) to remove the reality-distortion field the
> author was clearly affected by when he wrote the article.
>
>
>
> So I am not surprised that people everywhere (including the EPUB community)
> believes this article, it was also thrown in my face at
> http://www.version2.dk/blog/odf-12-i-iso-pas-submission-67510#comment-280080
> … but that doesn't make it any more right.
>
>
>
> With regards to your proposal about SC34/WG4 doing something, I don't really
> see the need to do any more than we already do. And I certainly do not think
> we should try to do any updates with regards to ODF. That must be the task
> of the ODF TC.
>
>
>
>
>
> Med venlig hilsen / Best regards
>
>
>
> Jesper Lund Stocholm
>
> Senior Architect
>
>
>
> t: +4544662466
>
> m: +4530945570
>
> jesper.stocholm at ciber.com
>
>
>
> From: eb2mmrt at gmail.com [mailto:eb2mmrt at gmail.com] On Behalf Of MURATA
> Makoto
> Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2014 5:46 AM
> To: SC34
> Subject: Re: Complex singularity versus openness?
>
>
>
> Folks,
>
>
>
> One of my colleagues in the EPUB community believed this article
>
> and twittered about it.  Another colleague (again in the EPUB
>
> community) retweeted.  They are not all committed to ODF.
>
> They are credulous.
>
>
>
> I do not think that WG4 should respond to this article, but
>
> it might make sense for SC34 to provide some status
>
> update to the public.  That status update should cover
>
> both ODF and OOXML.  How do people feel?
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Makoto
>
>
>
> 2014-07-03 7:02 GMT+09:00 Jim Thatcher <Jim.Thatcher at microsoft.com>:
>
> Ah, yes, back to the “open” only means what we in the pro-OpenOffice crowd
> say it means. My, how I miss 2008!
>
>
>
> This article is so full of inaccuracies, half-truths, outdated information
> and outright propaganda that it’s just sad. But as a Microsoft employee
> there is no benefit from me posting a response for two very different
> reasons. First, since Microsoft Office now has a very high quality
> implementation of ODF, it makes no real difference to our business if the
> pro-ODF cheerleaders whip up a few public sector groups to only use ODF, and
> second, the audience of this article completely filters out anything that
> Microsoft has to say because, in their view, Microsoft is just evil. So I’ll
> just respond here, because I know that those on this mailing list are
> actually open to things like facts. And this group recognizes the hypocrisy
> in complaining that Open XML was originally based on Microsoft’s
> implementation without ever mentioning the origins of the ODF specification.
>
>
>
> The lack of integrity in this article begins with the title, and becomes
> very evident in the subtitle. The subtitle claims “Open source impeded by
> incompatibilities and inconsistencies in the Office Open XML document
> format”. Although the author identifies a couple of bugs in Microsoft
> Office, no attempt is made to actually identify specific incompatibilities
> or inconsistencies in the Open XML standard. Instead he just asserts that
> the mere existence of “three different versions” results in insurmountable
> complexity. And of course the author completely ignores the three different
> versions of ODF and the “incompatibilities and inconsistencies” between
> those versions. But those who are willing to be honest and actually read the
> Open XML standards (including the Ecma 376 First Edition) recognize that
> coding for the differences between those three is not rocket science, and
> most university CS majors are capable of handling such “complexity”. As I
> recall, basic if/then coding principles are taught in pretty much every
> introduction to programming course. If you can’t figure out how to use
> existing XML parsing libraries to look at the namespace declarations in a
> .docx file to determine which edition of the Open XML specification that
> document is based on then you have no business changing code in any office
> productivity application. (Did you notice how I used the if/then approach
> there?)
>
>
>
> What the author of this article really means when he says “to date there are
> no free and open source solutions that fully support OOXML” is that the
> developers of OpenOffice and LibreOffice either have chosen not to invest or
> simply don’t have the necessary development expertise to do a professional
> quality implementation of Open XML. There certainly wouldn’t be any reason
> to confuse readers with actual facts about open source implementations of
> Open XML, including the significant improvements in Open XML support in the
> most recent update to OpenOffice. The author completely ignores another post
> on the same site that directly refutes his claim. The article at
> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/three-five-biggest-ooxml-support-issues-fixed-open-source-office
> heralds the resolution of three of the five biggest Open XML gaps in
> OpenOffice and LibreOffice. But apparently the OO/LO developers have been
> completely incapable of resolving the other two issues in the 18 months
> since that article was posted. And apparently the meaning of open source
> solutions doesn’t mean what I thought it did, because one of the best
> third-party implementations of Open XML is the Apache POI project, which is
> used by at least two really solid office suites for Android devices. Last I
> checked, Apache projects are still open source.
>
>
>
> Perhaps the OO/LO communities should look to China for some new, capable
> development talent. Over the past few years CS students at Beihang
> University and BISTU in Beijing have developed a pretty robust translator
> that converts documents between Open XML and Uniform Office Format (China’s
> XML-based document format standard). The recently released update to the UOF
> Translator adds support for translating “Strict” Open XML documents. These
> university students were able to master the “complexity” that apparently has
> completely stumped the “experts” Mr. Feilner cites in his article to handle
> both Strict and Transitional documents in the same code. Oh, and this
> project is also open source, so maybe the experts can look to that code for
> some help.
>
>
>
> And the claims that ODF is implemented by more implementers and on more
> platforms than Open XML is clear evidence that the author and his “experts”
> have no interest in painting an accurate picture. Every major office suite
> on every major platform has Open XML support, but the same is not true for
> ODF. They are very generous as they count all of the vendors supporting ODF,
> but they do not afford the same generosity to implementations of Open XML.
> They want to have it both ways by counting Microsoft Office as an
> implementer of ODF (we agree that Microsoft Office versions since Office
> 2007 SP2 should be counted as ODF implementations even though we have
> publicly stated that we don’t implement ODF’s change tracking) but not
> counting OpenOffice or LibreOffice as implementations of Open XML because
> they aren’t “complete” implementations.
>
>
>
> But the reality is that this author, and the “experts” he has consulted,
> have no real interest in improving the Open XML standard, or even developing
> enough expertise to understand and implement it well. Their real interest is
> in attacking Microsoft. The small investments they make to implement Open
> XML are unnecessarily complicated as they reverse engineer files written by
> Microsoft Office. Why? Microsoft publishes full details of our
> implementation of ISO/IEC 29500 (and Ecma 376, First Edition), including
> detailed specification of each of the extensions we have implemented (using
> MCE). We have even published complete details of our implementation of ODF.
> If you want an exercise in futility, try to find published details of
> OpenOffice’s variations from the ODF standard, or specification of the
> development choices they made when the standard was not clear?
>
>
>
> I could go on and on, as I’m sure any of you could as well, pointing out
> other errors and efforts to mislead in this article. But for what purpose?
> This group already knows these details, and the audience of that
> disingenuous article will not be swayed by something as trivial as reality.
>
>
>
> So I’ll join Jesper and take a couple of Tylenol for my trouble.
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Jim Thatcher
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Jesper Lund Stocholm [mailto:Jesper.LundStocholm at ciber.dk]
> Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 11:49 PM
> To: MURATA Makoto; SC34
> Subject: RE: Complex singularity versus openness?
>
>
>
> Dear Murata-san,
>
>
>
> I saw the article a couple of days ago, but my head started hurting after
> the second paragraph, so I didn't make it through the whole article.
>
>
>
> J
>
>
>
>
>
> Med venlig hilsen / Best regards
>
>
>
> Jesper Lund Stocholm
>
> Senior Architect
>
>
>
> t: +4544662466
>
> m: +4530945570
>
> jesper.stocholm at ciber.com
>
>
>
> From: eb2mmrt at gmail.com [mailto:eb2mmrt at gmail.com] On Behalf Of MURATA
> Makoto
> Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2014 4:22 AM
> To: SC34
> Subject: Complex singularity versus openness?
>
>
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
>
>
> I find this article from EC.
>
>
>
> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/elibrary/case/complex-singularity-versus-openness
>
>
>
>
> Regards,
> Makoto
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Praying for the victims of the Japan Tohoku earthquake
>
> Makoto

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