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

[Ben Scott]

On 3/11/07, Nigel Stewart <nigels at nigels.com> wrote:
>         The year is 2007, as nice as it would be to update
>         the C standard to fix all these bugs, we're talking
>         about OOXML.

  This argument that "OOXML is brand new and thus should have no
legacy baggage" is bogus.

  OOXML includes, as its design criteria, compatibility with the de
facto standard for spreadsheets which Lotus 1-2-3 established and
Microsoft Excel "extended".  We're not talking about adding up a
column of figures here.  We're talking about complicated spreadsheets,
full of formulas that contain hundreds of characters, and containing
"macros" which are full programs in themselves.

  Just like C99 includes compatibility with all that C code dating
back to circa 1975 (or whenever), OOXML includes compatibility with
spreadsheets dating back to circa 1983.

  Now, it's sounds real nice to say things like "Let's jettison all
this legacy baggage and start from a fresh, clean design", but reality
doesn't work that way.  There are huge costs associated with starting
from scratch.  In this case, we're talking about potentially large
numbers of "legacy code" in the form of spreadsheets that would need
to be audited.

  If getting rid of of legacy baggage was sufficient motivation for
everything, we'd all be using Plan 9 instead of Linux, the OSI stack
instead of IPv4, $LANGUAGE instead of C, Esperanto instead of English,
and so on and so forth.  (Again, these are examples, they illustrate a
point, they don't define it, don't nit-pick the examples, address the
underling point.)

-- Ben