Re: [office-comment] ODF still fails to specify scripting properly (ODF1.2 CD01)

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

rjelliffe@allette.com.au wrote on 03/01/2009 09:12:10 PM:

> 
> Re: [office-comment] ODF still fails to specify scripting properly 
> (ODF 1.2 CD01)
> 
> 
> > And for the 0.01% of ODF users who know what an XML processing 
instruction
> > is, we could restrict these as well.
> 
> (Yes, but Microsoft knows about them. And they are specifically in XML 
to
> allow unconstrained application-specific data to be inserted despite any
> schemas.)
> 
> The point is that the requirement being expressed is something like 
"There
> should be a profile of ODF 1.2 which prevents Microsoft from performing
> the kind of 'embrace, extend and extinguish' associated with it in the
> previous decade." Whether this embrace and extend would a matter of
> malfeasance, habit or accident is not relevant.
> 

I have not mentioned Microsoft by name or by implication.  I don't what 
makes you think this has anything to do with Microsoft. 

In any case we're expressing the same requirement that XHTML and many 
other successful markup standards have.  An open content model is the 
exception, not the norm.  But of course, XML consultants and vendors of 
XML tools for doing complex validation would not be well suited if we all 
took the easy path to interoperability.  You'll sell far more if we take a 
complex and rocky road that makes users require your constant assistance. 
Similarly, manufactures of expensive exercise equipment never talk about 
the virtues of the most effective exercise of all -- pushing yourself away 
from the dinner table.  We need to ask ourselves, are we solving problems? 
 Or merely making a higher value problem to sell solutions for later?  A 
closed content model, with defined semantics, is almost ridiculously 
easily to make interoperable.  No wonder its gets such resistance, almost 
as threatening as if it were a high gas milage car.

> However, the concrete mechanism proposed, merely banning foreign 
elements,
> patently fails to meet the requirement.
> 

As stated before before, it is a necessary but not sufficient step for 
ensuring interoperability. One step at a time.

> So let us take the requirement seriously.

Oh yes, please, Master, teach us how to be serious.

> 
> To do it is not impossible with XML and ODF, however, both were designed
> to be fundamentally open not closed. It involves taking the X out of XML
> and the O out of ODF!
> 

I'm pretty sure that the EC's IDABC would be surprised to hear that the 
'O' in the term they invented, Open Document Format, was intended to 
suggest that ODF should allow proprietary vendor extensions in conformant 
documents.  I think that would be news to them.


> So, without going into MCE (which I as I said, I think is necessary 
too),
> what things are needed in order to make it impractical for Microsoft to
> embrace, extend and extinguish ODF?
> 

I'm deleting the rest of your post, Rick, because it is inappropriate.  A 
standards committee is not the proper place to discuss how to further or 
curtail any vendor's business practices.  It is entirely inappropriate. We 
must make all decisions based on their technical merits.  I will not be 
party to your conspiracy.  You're own your own.

Regards,

-Rob