Long stupid debate on OOXML and the year 1900 (was: Ecma responses to ISO)

[Jeffry Smith]

On 3/11/07, Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:

>  It seems possible that a more accurate depiction of the facts would
> be that "OOXML includes a compatibility mode to support existing
> spreadsheets that assume a bug that dates back to before Microsoft
> even had a spreadsheet product".
>

Which brings up the real point of many of these objections to the
"ECMA 376" (otherwise known as Microsoft) "standard" - the date
problem, the "undefined do it like thus and so did it" and so forth
are all things that should be in a conversion program - not a modern
data storage format.  Instead, MS has chosen to include all the bugs
of every old program, in ways that can't be duplicated by anyone else,
in a format that can't be read by the old programs (that don't
understand XML) - all of which suggests it really is a dump of the MS
Office memory.  Which suggests that MS themselves don't know how they
did it in the past - they just incorporated the old software into the
new.

Oh and that "optional" bit - it's optional unless you want to say you
can support the whole standard.

ODF, on the otherhand is a clean standard - it references other
standards, uses standard date formats, etc.  And it went through a
multiyear development, with comments and development from many
eyes/hands.

jeff