Man kan begynde med at se på det, der ikke er indeholdt i standarden - og det, som den ikke formår. Standarden mangler en anvisning af, hvordan man mapper de proprietære binære formater til OOXML, og dermed eksisterer der en barriere for, at andre end Microsoft kan vise dokumenter fra Office 97 versionen til Office 2003, sådan som disse dokumenter blev skabt. Samtidig er det - for at sige det mildt - tvivlsomt om standarden lever op til sit eget scope. De to forhold hænger sammen.
At standarden mangler en anvisning af, hvordan man mapper de proprietære binære formater til OOXML er en mangel, som er blevet påpeget i ISO-processen. Men ECMA har i samråd med Microsoft afvist at inddrage dette i specifikationen. I stedet henvises til arbejdet med oversættere i SourceForge-projektet. (DIS 29500 Editors Response 886 som man kan læse nedenfor). Manglende interoperabilitet på en række områder var den afgørende årsag til, at Dansk Standard i første omgang afviste at anerkende DIS 29500 (OOXML). Helt konkret har Dansk Standard - på baggrund af en konsensusbeslutning i det rådgivende udvalg - skrevet til ISO og ECMA og fastslået, at vi fra dansk side ikke kan acceptere, at oplysninger, der er nødvendige for at kunne implementere specifikationen, eksisterer uden for specifikationen.
Hermed er kommer vi til spørgsmålet om, hvorvidt DIS 29500 overhovedet lever op til sit eget scope.
BRM-resolution 20 - som må forventes at være skrevet ind i den offentliggjorte standard - handler om scope og henviser til teksten i "MulitPartAndScope.doc" (ps. ikke min fejlstavning af ordet multi).
Denne tekst lyder:
"DIS 29500-5: Transitional Features
For Scope, use the following three paragraphs:
This International Standard defines a set of XML vocabularies for representing word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The goal of this standard is, on the one hand, to represent faithfully the existing corpus of word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations that have been produced by Microsoft Office applications. It also specifies requirements for Office Open XML consumers and producers , and on the other hand, to facilitate extensibility and interoperability by enabling implementations by multiple vendors and on multiple platforms
This part defines features for backward-compatibility and useful for high-quality migration of existing binary documents to DIS 29500. These features shall only be used by documents of conformance class WML Transitional, SML Transitional or PML Transitional".
Definitionen på faithful er ifølge "The Concise Oxford Dictionary: "1 showing faith. 2 (often followed by to) loyal, trustworthy, constant. 3 accurate; true to fact (a faithful account) samt to punkter om religiøs og politisk troskab.
Scope handler altså om korrekt at kunne genskabe eksisterende office-dokumenter samt på troværdig vis at kunne migrere eksisterende binære formater.
Response 886 viser med al ønskelig tydelighed, at disse features ikke er til stede i ISO 29500. Og mens at det må siges at være et rimeligt forlangende, at en specifikation stiller de nødvendige oplysninger til rådighed for at opfylde scope, så siger kommentaren til DK 0041 specifikt, at Danmark ikke kan acceptere, at information nødvendig for at kunne implementere DIS 29500 findes udenfor specifikationen.
For reference er her den fulde ordlyd af Response 886:
Comment ID: US-0041, Clause: DIS 29500 in its entirety Paragraph: -
Comment (justification for change) by the MB:
Interoperability: DIS 29500 as written fails to establish interoperability between conforming applications that convert
Microsoft Office 97 - 2003 documents to the format defined by this proposal. There is no defined mapping between Microsoft Office 97 - 2003 formats and the format defined by DIS 29500. In the absence of such a mapping, conversions to the
defined format will be inconsistent therefore lead to a lack of interoperability between the resulting conversions. Moreover, the lack of a defined mapping defeats interoperability between applications that use the defined format and the existing
installations of applications that use Microsoft Office 97 - 2003 formats, resulting in a lack of interoperability with existing applications.
Proposed change by the MB:
DIS 29500 be amended to include a reference to a mapping from the Microsoft Office 97 - 2003 formats, to OOXML.
Proposed Disposition
We believe that Interoperability between applications conforming to DIS 29500 is established at the Office Open XML-to- Office Open XML file construct level only.
Prescriptive guidance on, or tools to enable, transformation from Microsoft Office "binary" file formats (i.e., .doc., .xls, and .ppt) (the "Binary Formats") to Office Open XML formatted files is not the intention or in scope of DIS 29500. As a result this request is outside the bounds of this process. It is important to note that substantial use is being made of both the Binary Formats and Office Open XML in the marketplace today. Many products (such as OpenOffice.org) support the Binary Formats. Microsoft has indicated that many companies and public institutions have received the documentation for the Binary Formats, and are working with it at this time, and can create mappings between the Binary Formats and Office Open XML. Translators from the Binary Formats to XML formats such as ODF have already been developed and are in wide use. For example, the Sun ODF Plug-in for Microsoft Office
(
http://sun.systemnews.com/ (...)) states that "The plug-in allows users the ability to seamlessly convert Microsoft Office documents to and from ODF. The ODF plug-in supports Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint".
Likewise, there is widespread use of Office Open XML in the marketplace today across platforms and applications. A few examples include the implementations released by Apple (Mac OS X Leopard, iWork 08, iPhone), Adobe (InDesign), Microsoft (Office 2007, Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2000, Office 2008 Mac OS X), Novell (Suse Open Office), Google (Search / Preview), Mindjet (MindManager), Intergen, OpenXML/ODF Translator (Open Source project on Sourceforge), Dataviz (DocumentsToGo on Palm OS, MacLinkPlus on Mac OS X Leopard), NeoOffice, Altova (XMLSpy), MarkLogic (XML Content Server), Datawatch (Monarch Pro),
QuickOffice (QuickOffice Premier 5.0 on Symbian), Altsoft (XML2PDF Server 2007) and those under development by Corel (WordPerfect), AbiWord, Gnome (GNumeric), Xandros, Linspire, Turbolinux and others. These implementations are now available on many platforms, including Linux, the Macintosh,
Windows, and handheld devices (PalmOS, Symbian, iPhone, and Windows Mobile).
The widespread use of both Binary Formats and Office Open XML formats indicates that, at this time, 3rd party can use both formats and build mappings between them.
Nonetheless, Ecma International discussed this subject with Microsoft Corporation, the author of the Binary Formats. To make it even easier for third party conversion of Binary Format-to-DIS 29500, Microsoft agreed to:
· Initiate a Binary Format-to-ISO/IEC JTC 1 DIS 29500 Translator Project on the open source software development web site SourceForge (
http://sourceforge.net/ ) in collaboration with independent software vendors. The Translator Project will create software tools, plus guidance, showing how a document written using the Binary Formats can be translated to DIS 29500. The Translator will be available under the open source Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license, and anyone can use the mapping, submit bugs and feedback, or contribute to the Project. The Translator Project will start on February 15, 2008.
· Make it even easier to get access to the Binary Formats documentation by posting it and making it available for a direct download on the Microsoft web site no later than February 15, 2008. The Binary Formats have been under a covenant not to sue and Microsoft will also make them available under its Open Specification Promise (see
www.microsoft.com/interop/osp) by the time they are posted.
We will modify DIS 29500 to include an informative reference to the SourceForge project.
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Publiceret d. 20. november 2008 kl. 15.56
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