-----Original Message----- From: Andrew Douglas Pitonyak [mailto:and...@pitonyak.org] Sent: Friday, October 24, 2014 22:23 To: dev@openoffice.apache.org Subject: Re: OpenOffice lost again 6000 users (was: Improved OOXML support?)
On 10/24/2014 08:50 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: > <orcnote> below. > -----Original Message----- > From: Andrew Douglas Pitonyak [mailto:and...@pitonyak.org] > Sent: Friday, October 24, 2014 17:27 > To: dev@openoffice.apache.org > Subject: Spam (9.566):Re: OpenOffice lost again 6000 users (was: Improved > OOXML support?) > > > On 10/24/2014 11:42 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: >> <orcnote> below. >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Andrew Douglas Pitonyak [mailto:and...@pitonyak.org] >> Sent: Friday, October 24, 2014 06:18 >> To: dev@openoffice.apache.org >> Subject: Re: OpenOffice lost again 6000 users (was: Improved OOXML support?) >> >> > [ ... ] >> I am not overly informed on this, but, I think that the primary >> complaint was that the OOXML ISO standard supports storing proprietary >> binary blobs that are not part of the standard as aprt of the document. >> > [ ... ] > More specifically, I was under the impression that you could include a > binary blob of say a doc file. > > <orcnote> > More specifically, can you point me to an authoritative source > For this claim? > I don't want to take a search of the OOXML specification > without some specific details. > </orcnote> > Well, there was a time that I spent many hours worrying about exactly what was in the standard. I had downloaded a bunch of files and spent time reading them and following the discussion. If you want authoritative documents, you can find them places such as here: http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=51463 http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html (search for 29500) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/gg607163%28v=office.14%29.aspx#IIOXML_H2 But I don't think that is what you are asking... I think that you are asking either: Am I able to point you to a more authoritative source that says that people were concerned that the standard allowed embedding arbitrary MSO binary stuff into OOXML files? or Are there concerns well founded? Let me start by stating that my intent was to clarify their concerns. At this point I hardly care if their concerns are accurate and I have no desire to justify them or defend them. Why? Because I am just too busy to care about it. If I bang my head against the wall and take a stiff drink, I have vague recollections of an xlink attribute that may end up referencing a binary version of the document, which, as an end result, means that supporting OOXML implies that you also support all previous MSO document formats. I am unable without more study than I am willing to undertake to remember if that is all linked using OLE or something else. I only say this because I suspect that it is likely related to OLE, but I don't really remember anyone saying as much. I don't like that OOXML relies so heavily on embedding OLE objects (I think that you can do this sort of thing using ODF as well). <orcnote> I have all of the standards. My question is more about what specifically in the OOXML specification was the source of alarm. For example, if it is about the OPC section, that doesn't matter - OPC is a generic container, just like the ODF package is a generic container. If it is about a specific provision of WordProcessing ML, or Spreadsheet ML, I am curious whether it is beyond the obvious ones, like use of OLE objects in both specifications. I am not concerned about those who took alarm but about the reality of the provision was that was used as evidence that OOXML was unworthy (without noticing that ODF has all of the same trap doors when viewed from the same cynical perspective). It is not OOXML that relies on OLE so heavily as it is users of Microsoft Office and their employment of OLE as a means of incorporating useful formatted/active content into their documents in a manner that allows editing and repurposing. That this may not be useful in a given inter- change situation is the usual problem. It is no different for OOXML than for DOC and XLS, of course. ODF documents derived from .DOC and .DOCX files will carry the same embedded content, and on Windows at least, users can use Apache OpenOffice to create exactly the same problem. </orcnote> Back when I was blowing hours trying to read through the standard (and yeah, I wasted probably even more time reading the ODF standard), I was struck by how poorly the behavior was defined for the spreadsheet portion. I remember, at the time, thinking that it was even worse than the original ODF stuff, which has been fully hammered out at this point. Perhaps this has been solved for OOXML as well by now, but I am surly not going to read that stuff again unless a really compelling reason arises (like a for pay gig, which I am not looking for, I lack the time). Note that I am exposed so often to OOXML, I should probably care more about this than I currently do. Now I can go back to trying to figure out how I can find Northern Spy apples in the middle of Ohio. -- Andrew Pitonyak My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt Info: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org
