Information Week: Ecma approves Microsoft’s Open XML

December 8 2006

Yesterday, the industry association Ecma approved Microsoft's Open XML as a standard, and agreed to submit the standard to the ISO for adoption.  

Standardizing Open XML will aid interoperability between Office, the most widely used productivity suite among consumers and businesses, and other competing software, such as WordPerfect from Corel and OpenOffice, an open source suite available through OpenOffice.org, Ecma said in a statement. Document standards like Open XML and OpenDocument, which has already earned ISO approval, are also important in the creation of digital archives.

Besides addressing interoperability between products, Open XML's 6,000 pages of documentation make it possible for organizations to use custom schemas with the standard to integrate productivity software with information systems that manage business processes, Ecma said.
As some are aware, IBM has decided to include a set of productivity editors in Lotus Notes 8.  The default file formats for the word processor / spreadsheet / presentation tool are Open Document Format (ODF), though they can also read/write Microsoft Office DOC/XLS/PPT formats, OpenOffice 1.0 formats, can import Lotus SmartSuite formats, and can export to PDF.  IBM's decision to support ODF as the default was made a long time ago, and you can learn a lot by reading IBM VP Bob Sutor's blog entries about ODF.

Bob's blog is also a good resource to check if you want to know why IBM voted "no" at Ecma as far as OpenXML.  I haven't been involved in any of the discussions about this, my knowledge comes only from what I've read in the blogs and trade rags.  Bob sums it up simply:
It is an example of a real open standard versus a vendor-dictated spec that documents proprietary products via XML. ODF is about the future, Open XML is about the past. We voted for the future.
The discussion on that link is most interesting.  There I learned that Microsoft had every opportunity to participate in the development of ODF, but chose not to.  Their "support" for ODF, an already ISO-approved standard, in Office 2007 is limited to a 3rd-party-led sourceforge project for import/export filters.  Microsoft was the lead on developing OpenXML as an alternative approach, which they unsurprisingly claim is a better one, in part it seems because it has 6,000 pages of documentation that will allow anyone to work with it.

This may just be the sales guy in me, but my first reaction was -- who wants to read 6,000 pages of documentation just to figure out some file formats?  The entire HTML 4.01 specification is only 389 pages.  I can't wait to hear the conversation with a developer -- "um, yeah, I was wondering why you didn't implement the foo class DTD that was covered on page 4827?"

Apparently, there is a lot to implementing Open XML.  Adobe's Andrew Shebanow picked up a blog entry from Microsoft's Rick Schaut, explaining why the Mac version of Office doesn't yet support Open XML -- remember, the specification was developed by Microsoft.:
we've taken a little less than a year to get the converters reading the new file format. We still aren't writing the new file format, we have the RTF side of things to worry about, which is actually more complex than the XML side, and I've completely left out all of the design and coding for the intermediate representation of the file. The intermediate representation, itself, is at least 6 to 8 months worth of work.
Shebanow then extrapolates this to what it means for broader implementation -- not just MacWord but the whole Mac Office, and then what it would take for a product that doesn't start from the same place as Win32 Office.  He concludes:
Breaking out my envelope again, we're now looking at 150 man years to do the job for a competitive PPA [personal productivity application]. How can competitors afford to make that level of investment? Novell says they will support import and export for Open XML with financial and technical help from Microsoft. Corel says they'll do it too. Guess we'll need to wait and see how successful they'll be at maintaining fidelity and compatibility, though given what Rick has to say, I'm not super confident.
The comments on Bob Sutor's blog seem to somehow be trying to portray IBM as anti-competition for not being willing to back two different document standards proposals in the market.  But even my non-developer mind can see clearly that one approved some time ago by the International Standards Organization and implemented already in a variety of products could benefit everyone, versus a second one introduced by a single vendor under a smokescreen of "choice" .

Link: Information Week: Ecma approves Microsoft's Open XML >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8  Add/View Comments [11]

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  1. 1  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 12/8/2006 8:38:36 AM

    Is the SmartSuite one way, as in it imports but not writes? One way is not good for coexistence. Will SmartSuite be updated to read/write ODF? Or should we be moving from SmartSuite to Notes 8, openoffice or MS Office?

  1. 2  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 12/8/2006 9:10:56 AM

    Computerworld did a recent article that was derived from over 300 e-mails they obtained through the Massachusetts Public Records Law. It covers the battle between Microsoft and the Massachusetts state CIO and details the power plays Microsoft went through to push their agenda. It was very insightful and revelatory for me { Link }

    Bottom line: Microsoft is not above career assassination and breaking kneecaps to get what they want.

  1. 3  Alan Bell http://www.astoryforbedtime.com | 12/8/2006 9:17:08 AM

    I am completely behind IBM's decision to vote no to the not-a-standard OpenXML specification. It would be nice to get some input and output filters in Notes to import .ods files into a view and input .odt files into rich text and output documents to .odt

  1. 4  Bruce Elgort http://www.TakingNotesPodcast.com | 12/8/2006 9:49:12 AM

    @Ed,

    Speaking of import/export filters are there any changes planned for Notes 8 to improve upon the current ones in the Notes 7.x client?

  1. 5  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/8/2006 12:14:25 PM

    @1 The Notes 8 productivity tools have one-way import filters from SmartSuite formats. Of course, both products can work with MS Office formats, so there exists a way to save from Notes 8 and be readable in SmartSuite. I do not know of plans to update SmartSuite to support ODF, it would be interesting to size the market opportunity there.

    @2 Also see David Berlind at { Link }

    @3 Not going to happen in 8, but good idea for the follow-on.

    @4 Don't know but I'll check into it.

  1. 6  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 12/8/2006 12:59:20 PM

    @5 It's rip and replace my old mate. Do existing SmartSuite customers, rip out their existing SmartSuite applications to run nicely with Notes 8? Having spent a great deal of time 10 years ago working with SmartSuite customers on file formats and file fidelity, round tripping via a interemediate format is never a good idea as too much formatting etc. is lost.

    Will the OpenOffice have Lotusscript capabilities similar to SmartSuite, so developers can continue to use the same familiar language? Being able to use the Notes LSX from within an office application is a very powerful thing. Microsoft obviously will argue that they have the single VBA language across Outlook and their Office applications. Whereas IBM have one language in Notes (multiples actually) and then another language within their bundled Office applications.

    You may think these questions are just trying to stir things up. But for me, I still use SmartSuite, I have apps written that use SmartSuite and judging by the SmartSuite forums there are still a few other customers/people out there. I also sold a lot of the stuff to customers when I worked at Lotus, because, IBM was committed to it (then eSuite saved the world) so I havesome guilt in selling this product to companies to see IBM basically let it die a slow painful death.

    Now having said that, including an Office Suite with the Notes license is totally the right move. It gives customers an opportunity to negotiate the Office license costs with Microsoft. We've all heard the line, "Why should I buy Notes when I get Outlook for free with my office license?", now Microsoft can get the line "Why should I buy office when I get one free with my Notes license?". The great thing is, even if the customer still goes with Office, they will more than likely have negotiated a better discount, which only goes to harm Microsofts bottom line which impacts their ability to invest in other technology developments.

  1. 7  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 12/8/2006 1:25:13 PM

    Carl, you know that I was Mr SmartSuite development for a while ... so while I feel some loyality to the product, every customer I had that did Suite development have moved off.

    But, as for the Productivity Editors in Notes 8, come to the session Alan Bell and I are doing on OpenOffice.org and Notes integration ... I will be showing some applications that replace OpenOffice.org with the editors to build documents .. { Link }

  1. 8  Peter de Haas http://www.peterdehaas.net | 12/8/2006 2:33:33 PM

    Check out this IDC report. It shines a light on the open standards 'discussion' { Link }

    Not sure how relevant the sample group (nordic countries) can be seen with regards to global scope,bit defenitly interesting reading and less biased ;-)

  1. 9  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/8/2006 4:44:28 PM

    An interesting follow-up on the Open XML story and Novell's support for it at Groklaw: { Link }

  1. 10  Hynek Kobelka http://www.pylonware.com | 12/11/2006 4:23:14 AM

    @6 "Why should I buy office when I get one free with my Notes license?" Well said, I am looking forward to using this :-)))

    By the way I have already asked if the "IBM Productivity Tools" which are embedded into the Notes 8 client are an optional installion, or if they are mandatory. Does anybody have some more information to this ?

    Oh and during the last 8 years many users were requesting to get into the export function in Notes the option to choose the "xls" format. (Strange that so many people don't get around with .WK4 or .CSV :-)))

    What do you think, wouldn't it be time to add the format which 90% of all users want, or are you waiting for the 10 year jubileum ? :-)))

    (Sorry for the sarcasm, but the current export function really deserves it )

  1. 11  Deleted  | 12/18/2006 5:26:41 PM

    Deleted off-topic comment -- thanks for sending me mail.