Re: [xml-dev] OOXML: So what *should* happen now?

[Tim Bray <Tim.Bray@Sun.COM>]

On Sep 6, 2007, at 6:38 AM, Jonathan Robie wrote:

> OOXML didn't make it in the first round balloting for fast track  
> acceptance. What should happen now?

Here are some outcomes that I think would be good:

1. The parts of ODF & OOXML that are identical, e.g. "A left- 
justified ragged-right paragraph, foreground #0a0000 background  
#ffffff, Georgia 11pt, 1.2leading, no widow/orphan control" are  
merged.  The world does *not* need two ways to express this.  It  
doesn't really matter that much which XML vocabulary is used for this  
purpose.  Then there's a separate specification for all the extra  
stuff that Office does but ODF doesn't cover.

2. OOXML, maybe with some cleanup, is published in a public, stable  
location in a stable format, with a public, formal commitment from  
Microsoft that they will support this as specified in future releases  
of the Office product suite and won't litigate against anyone who  
writes  software either to read or to generate this format for any  
purpose whatsoever.

The task of addressing all ten thousand or so ISO-member comments,  
even after removing dupes, and dealing with the callouts to  
unspecified product behavior, and so on, with no assurance that doing  
so would result in ISO blessing, seems just insanely expensive and  
difficult to me.  If those guys take it on, they have my respect and  
sympathy.  -T