Submission + - Miguel de Icaza on office document formats.
jotaeleemeese writes: "The EU Prosecutors are Wrong" is the strong statement with which de Icaza's blog starts a dissection of the advantages he perceives in favour of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) against Open Document Format (ODF), centering mostly in how throughly each format is documented. He is uniquely well placed regarding this issue given its prominence as an Open Source developer and advocate as well as an employee of Microsoft's bussiness partner, Novell.
The analysis is quite thorough and, as a former spreadsheet developer, de Icaza's has a few punchy comments regarding the matter: "Depending on how you count, ODF has 4 to 10 pages devoted to it [the standard to document the formulas and functions in a spreadsheet]. There is no way you could build a spreadsheet software based on this specification."
He makes the point that a standard well documented is more desirable than one that isn't, although skirts completely issues like patents and who will control such standard (which may be addressed elsewhere).
Is de Icaza's heart on the right place by suggesting it would be more beneficial for the Open Source community to use OOXML given its thorough documentation?
The analysis is quite thorough and, as a former spreadsheet developer, de Icaza's has a few punchy comments regarding the matter: "Depending on how you count, ODF has 4 to 10 pages devoted to it [the standard to document the formulas and functions in a spreadsheet]. There is no way you could build a spreadsheet software based on this specification."
He makes the point that a standard well documented is more desirable than one that isn't, although skirts completely issues like patents and who will control such standard (which may be addressed elsewhere).
Is de Icaza's heart on the right place by suggesting it would be more beneficial for the Open Source community to use OOXML given its thorough documentation?
