NUUG har i dag sendt ut en pressemelding vedrørende behandlingen av OOXML som ISO-standard. Denne pressemeldingen er spesielt interessant for deg som ønsker mer informasjon om de norske kommentarene som gjorde at Norge stemte «NEI» i august 2007. Jeg gjengir her pressemeldingen i sin helhet og vil samtidig gjøre oppmerksom på at jeg ikke har vært involvert i arbeidet med å skrive den.
Debatten rundt ISO-standardisering av OOXML pågår fortsatt, og endel undrer kanskje på hvorfor det er viktig. NUUG er involvert i standardisering for å fremme samvirke og like konkurransevilkår for alle aktører, og når det gjelder dokumentstandarder, sikre at dagens og gårsdagens dokumenter også kan leses korrekt i framtiden, det være seg om 10 eller 200 år.
OOXML er en dårlig spesifikasjon som ikke fremmer samvirke og antagelig heller ikke kan implementers av andre enn de som har tilgangen til interne algoritmer i MS Office. Den bør derfor ikke tas i bruk som lagringsformat for framtidens dokumenter. ISO-godkjenning endrer dessverre ikke på dette, og problemene kan tidligst være fikset om 4 år dersom ISO skal gjøre dette. Da forutsettes at ISO og ECMA øyeblikkelig blir enige om at ISO skal vedlikeholde spesifikasjonen, og at ISO like øyeblikkelig starter prosessen for å korrigere den. En god del av feilene kan dessuten bare fikses hvis en får tilgang til informasjon som i dag bare er tilgjengelig for de som har tilgang til intern oppførsel i MS Office. Vi har så langt ingen indikasjoner på at MS kommer til å gjøre disse offentlig tilgjengelige.
I den norske debatten rundt OOXML har det blitt hevdet at de 12 kommentarene som var knyttet til Norges nei-stemme, i det store og hele var tatt hensyn til da stemmen ble endret til ja. Dette stemmer ikke, og er en viktig grunn til at så få i den norske komiteen støttet Microsofts ønske om å endre den norske stemmen. I tillegg til at 80% av dagens komitemedlemmer var imot å godkjenne OOXML som ISO-standard, er det verdt å nevne at 100% av de originale medlemmene i komiteen, dvs som var medlemmer før OOXML kom opp,ville stemme nei.
Realiteten er dermed ikke slik Standard Norge og Microsofts innleide lobbyist Shahzad Rana har hevdet, da kun et fåtall av kommentarene var tatt hensyn til, og de aller fleste ble ignorert og påstått tatt hensyn til ved at det ble gjort irrelevante endringer.
Ni kommentarer ble ikke tatt hensyn til (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12), to ble delvis tatt hensyn til (7, 10), og en ble tatt fullstendig
hensyn til (5).
Leder i NUUG
Petter Reinholdtsen
Leder i NUUGs standardgruppe
Idar Tollefsen
Deltager i NUUGs standardgruppe
Martin Bekkelund
Hva er egentlig en åpen standard? http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt
In the first vote on the proposed OOXML standard in 2007, Norway voted No and submitted twelve technical comments that would have to be addressed before the Norwegian vote would change to Yes. This document lists the Norwegian comments and the resulting outcomes. In summary, nine of the twelve comment were not addressed (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12), two were partially addressed (7, 10), and one was fully addressed (5).
The Norwegian comments are available as PDF from Standard Norge.
Justification:
The Scope clause is self-referential, does not convey any useful information, and does not conform to JTC1 and ISO Directives for the scope of a standard or NP (ref. JTC1 Directives, 6.2.1.6; ISO Directives, Part 2, 6.2.1 Scope). In the absence of an appropriate Scope clause it is not possible to resolve a number of issues arising from the current text.
Proposed change by the MB:
The Scope clause should be rewritten to give a succinct overview of the contents of the standard without self-reference, for example: «This International Standard specifies a set of XML vocabularies for representing legacy documents produced by MS Office applications. It covers word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics documents produced by the following versions of MS Office applications: [list supported versions] It does not cover documents produced by other office applications.» The exact form of the Scope clause will depend on what decisions are taken regarding the final structure of the standard (e.g. as a multi-part standard).
Change accepted in OOXML:
Scope clause was changed and restructured. All parts of 29500 shall have the following clause:
«# Scope clause
This International Standard defines a set of XML vocabularies for representing word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The goal of this standard is, on the one hand, to represent faithfully the existing corpus of word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations that have been produced by Microsoft Office applications (from Microsoft Office 97 to Microsoft Office 2008 inclusive). It also specifies requirements for Office Open XML consumers and producers, and on the other hand, to facilitate extensibility and interoperability by enabling implementations by multiple vendors and on multiple platforms. This part specifies concepts for documents and applications of strict and transitional conformance.»
In addition each part will have a sub clause specifying the exact scope for that part. In addition each scope clause shall have a reference to the informative specification of the following:
Conclusion:
The word «legacy» was not added to the document, neither has the statement about «other office applications». It is also interesting to note that «existing corpus of word- processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations» does not include Microsoft office applications before Office 97. Part of the reasoning for this comment was to learn if the specification only should be used for legacy documents, and thus not compete with ODF on representing future documents, or if it also was to represent future documents. If it is to represent future documents, it should be rejected as it competes with ODF. The BRM did not want to limit the scope of the standard to representing legacy documents, and wanted it to be used for new documents as well. The Norwegian comment has therefore not been addressed.
Justification:
As currently drafted, DIS 29500 covers many areas that are not directly related to one another. This makes it difficult to review by National Body experts, difficult to implement, and difficult to assess compatibility.
Proposed change by the MB:
Rework into an ISO-style multi-part standard along the following lines:
Each part should have its own Scope and Conformance clause. This would allow different parts of the standard to be used independently of each other. The Primer is informative and should be published as a Technical Report.
Change accepted in OOXML:
The specification will be reorganised, but not along the lines of functionally similar sections.
Conclusion:
The specification was not changed in a way that allows different parts to be used independently, and thus Norway’s proposal was not implemented. The Norwegian comment has therefore not been addressed.
Justification:
The text of DIS 29500 is too voluminous to be reliably reviewed by National Body experts, or for implementations to be assessed for compatibility. It appears to be unnecessarily long, combining normative text with copious examples and containing a lot of redundancy.
Proposed change by the MB:
The text should be shortened considerably, through the removal of non-normative text (into annexes), the avoidance of redundancy and other means.
Change accepted in OOXML:
As far as we know, no relevant change was done. Instead, adding 1400 pages of «collected XML syntax» was accepted as a change.
Conclusion:
Since the new version of the standard is not available it is impossible to know whether the specification will be longer or shorter. Most likely our request on a more concise standard will not be met. Since much information on deprecated features is to be moved to «Transitional parts of the document», the standard will become harder to read since you need to check several places in the documentation to understand how to use the standard. The Norwegian comment has therefore not been addressed.
Justification:
The XML information model described is unnecessarily complex. Given the example in the Overview at page 13 (§5.6)
Could – and should – be represented as:
Proposed change by the MB:
Simplify the information model and document structure, in order to ease implementation, interoperability and the processing of the OOXML documents. Where possible use notations in conformance with ODF.
Change accepted in OOXML:
This change was rejected.
Conclusion:
OOXML did not change according to the proposal from Norway. This comment has therefore not been addressed.
Justification:
More than 10% of the examples are not valid XML. This will cause confusion and could lead to differences in implementation that will inhibit interoperability.
Proposed change by the MB:
All examples should be valid XML, except where there is an express intent to exemplify invalid data.
Change accepted in OOXML:
This change was accepted.
Conclusion:
OOXML was promised to change according to the proposal from Norway. The Norwegian comment has therefore been addressed.
Justification:
DrawingML has general applicability as an XML vocabulary for vector graphics. It should therefore be a standard in its own right that can be referenced in isolation by other ISO standards, such as ISO 26300.
Proposed change by the MB:
Remove DrawingML from 29500 and propose it as a separate standard, or commit to doing so at a later stage.
Change accepted in OOXML:
It is proposed that the following editorial change be made to the DrawingML specification:
Conclusion:
The sections on DrawingML were collected into a separate chapter, and some statements were made that this could be separated out at a later stage, but no commitment could be made about the work of a future group. DrawingML was not proposed as a separate standard, and there was no commitment for doing so at a later stage. The Norwegian comment has therefore not been addressed.
Justification:
The Open Packaging Conventions could support a much broader range of applications than OOXML. It should therefore be a standard in its own right that can be referenced in isolation by other ISO standards, such as ISO 26300.
Proposed change by the MB:
Remove OPC from 29500 and propose it as a separate standard, or commit to doing so at a later stage.
Change accepted in OOXML:
OPC is now a separate part of the standard, but not a separate standard. The claim was made that processing of a PAS, once entered, cannot result in creation of multiple standards.
Conclusion:
The Norwegian proposal was to submit OPC as a separate standard proposal, not to use this PAS process to create multiple standards. Reusing OPC when it is a chapter in 29500 with possible references to the rest of 29500 will be harder than if it was a separate standard. The Norwegian comment has therefore been partially addressed.
Justification:
Unspecified (or underspecified) binary notations, especially those with operating system dependencies, inhibit interoperability and do not belong in an ISO standard. Even well-specified binary notations, such as bitmasks used to encode multiple boolean values, are inappropriate in an XML-based interchange format. Non-standard text-based encodings of control characters, such as ‘bstr’ (basic string) are also inappropriate.
Proposed change by the MB:
All references to platform specific and/or binary notations, such as DEVMODE for printer settings and bitmasks for boolean values, should be removed and, where possible, replaced by open, XML-based standards, more explicit XML vocabulary, or base64 encoding.
Change accepted in OOXML:
Conclusion:
The Norwegian comment has not been addressed.
Justification:
Underspecified features and settings, such as «autoSpaceLikeWord95«, «footnoteLayoutLikeWW8«, «lineWrapLikeWord6«, «mwSmallCaps«, «optimizeForBrowser«, «shapeLayoutLikeWW8«, «supressTopSpacingWP«, «truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6«, «useWord2002TableStyleRules«, «useWord97LineBreakRules«, «useWord97LineBreakRules«, «wpJustification«, «wpSpaceWidth«, «sldSyncPr«, «securityDescriptor«, and «revisionsPassword» preclude uniform implementation and thus inhibit interoperability.
Proposed change by the MB:
All features should be specified in enough detail to enable uniform interpretation by multiple implementations. Those that cannot be specified in sufficient detail should be removed.
Change accepted in OOXML:
Some (or all, have not checked all) of the underspecified features got more documentation, but the specifications checked so far was vague and not detailed enough for a developer to use it to get the same result without reverse engineering MS Word.
Conclusion:
As the whole point of this comment was to ensure uniform interpretation by multiple implementations to make sure the OOXML documents are processed and displayed the same way in all implementations of OOXML, it is clear that OOXML was not changed according to this comment. We did not ask for more text, we asked for specification in enough detail to enable uniform interpretation by multiple implementations, and removal of all features lacking this. The Norwegian comment has therefore not been addressed.
Justification:
Options to features such as border styles, enumeration styles, list styles, the function NETWORKDAYS(), Clipboard Format Type, etc. should not exhibit cultural bias or be unduly restrictive, since this will inhibit adoption internationally.
Proposed change by the MB:
All such features should be made extensible wherever possible and defined options should be specified in full in order to enable uniform implementation.
Change accepted in OOXML:
Conclusion:
The committee attempted to address the issue, but the result was a more complex standard. The Norwegian comment has therefore been partially addressed.
Justification:
It has been claimed that the current standard conflicts with other ISO standards, such as ISO 8601 (Representation of dates and times), ISO 639 (Codes for the representation of names of languages) and ISO/IEC 10118-3 (Hash functions). If this is the case, the specification should be brought into line with these and other existing standards. The problem is especially apparent in the case of the ‘date1904’ attribute. The ambiguity regarding the status of the year 1900 should be resolved by using ISO standard dates everywhere.
Proposed change by the MB:
Ensure that 29500 does not conflict with the above-mentioned standards and use only ISO standard date formats, not ambiguous numeric dates.
Change accepted in OOXML:
The existing parts of the specification using a different date specification, language names and hash functions were kept. The use of ISO 8601 dates were added, thus forcing those implementing this specification to implement at least three different date formats, and some of them are not following the Gregorian calendar system. Similar was done for ISO 639, where both the original language definition was kept while it is also possible to use language codes from ISO 639, forcing implementations to handle two separate sets of language codes.
Conclusion:
OOXML did not change according to the proposal from Norway. The Norwegian comment has therefore not been addressed.
Justification:
There is no coherent dimension notation throughout the specification, for instance the relative dimension «87,5%» is sometimes represented by «pct87», sometimes by «87500» or even by «4375». This will cause confusion and could lead to non-interoperable implementations.
Proposed change by the MB:
Put in place a coherent value system.
Change accepted in OOXML:
On percentages, the fields were changed to accept two different formats, the old format and a format that was a text string followed by a «%» (percent sign) character.
Conclusion:
The specification still does not have a coherent value system. Length units, colour settings, etc are still represented using several different notations. This makes it hard to implement the specification and will lead to confusion and interoperability problems. Adding more type of values (as an extra notation for percent values) only increases the problem. OOXML did not change sufficiently according to the proposal from Norway. The Norwegian comment has therefore not been addressed.
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