Miguel Loves OOXML!

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Tom Schinckel">

> Reading some of the less-modded ./ comments know, it seems that Miguel was
> saying more that OOXML was easier to implement because you could borrow a
> bunch of stuff from the existing doc filters.

That's correct. Also, the ODF spreadsheet format hasn't had as much focused
criticism as the ODF wordprocessing format. It makes sense.

> Which isn't good per se

Why not? That's one aspect of the discussion.

> Just out of interest, is Miguel implementing/maintaining a office app
> ATM? He did have a rather large role in gnumeric if my memory serves me
> correctly.

He's not doing any office hacking atm, but he works closely with the Novell
folk who do. He wrote Gnumeric. (Jody is the current maintainer.)

> One of the concerning things I read was Miguel claiming that we didn't
> need to use the properitary useMSWord95Table tags etc. because there where
> other tags: it was concerning that he seemed to miss the point that MS
> _would_ use them and then we'd have a "embrace, extend.  extinguish"
> situation by essentially there being two (most likely incompatiable)
> versions of the OOXML standard, one with and one sans MS closed-format
> tags.

Well, that's not the point of those parts of the format. They're pretty
clearly for backwards compatibility purposes, whether they're woefully
underdocumented or not. If you only care about document processing, not
necessarily 100% perfect visual representation, then they're less of an
issue.

> I have a lot of respect for Miguel: (he founded my desktop!) but how long
> will it be before the he becomes a spokesperson, willingly or not, for the
> MS FUD machine? 

Lots of people think he has. But that's a different issue to technical
commentary about OOXML.

- Jeff

-- 
Open Source in Mobile 2007: Madrid, Spain     http://www.osimconference.com/
 
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