The issue of Office Open XML formats interoperability with other applications moved a network administrator to post a substantial critique of Microsoft’s efforts. In turn, a Microsoft Office program manager replied with a point-by-point response to the complaints.
Brian Jones notes at the top of his blog that he has worked on XML functionality and file formats in Office for about 5 years. He has focused on covering the development of XML and the Open XML File Formats with his posts.
In a recent blog entry, Jones pulled out a post by a person going by the name of John and identifying himself as a network administrator.
John said that while he has used Office for a long time and thinks it is a great piece of software, he has issues with it:
The game on interoperability which you play on behalf of Microsoft is very strange. Here is why.
John then goes on to cite a variety of reasons he sees Microsoft employing to really be against interoperability, and secretly working against it while openly espousing its virtues. He raised this point:
The main reason why you started with interoperability was extreme pressure from governments, companies and users, who were for years locked in your own DOC, XLS, and PPT formats, and nobody in the galaxy except your Office (moreover:last version of it) could properly open the files created.
In the old days before the Internet plopped down on a bridge table in front of Bill Gates, John would have posted his voluminous missive somewhere on Usenet in the comp.ms-windows* groups, where Microsoft would have dutifully ignored it. That doesn’t happen today, as Jones responded to John’s first and following points:
That kind of interoperability with Office is a huge value add not just to our customers but to us. We didn’t move to open formats simply because there were a few of us who were morally opposed to closed formats. We are developers and we get the most excited when thinking about all the things people can build if we open our formats. We moved to open formats because it was the best business decision, and the more people building solutions and operating of Office documents, the better.
Jones did get a little spirited in his response to John’s claim that Office 2007 delays give Microsoft more time to keep people working in closed formats:
What do you want me to do here John? We’re working as fast as we can to get Office 2007 and the Open XML formats out the door. We’re providing free updates to older versions of Office that allow them to read and write the formats. We’re standardizing the formats and providing thousands of pages of documentation that describe every last detail about how they work. Do I wish we already had this all out there? Of course! It takes time though. Office 2000 users have the HTML and RTF formats available. Office XP users have the HTML, RTF, and SpreadsheetML formats. Office 2003 users have the HTML, RTF, SpreadsheetML, and WordprocessingML formats. And once Office 2007 ships, they will all have the Office Open XML formats as well. We’re working on it John, but it takes time.
A response from John followed several lively comments by others. He reaffirmed his belief that the big problems he and his users experience with interoperability now will not be solved:
I am simply afraid, that the problems that I experience daily in my network, that the users are unable to work with their .DOC documents except when they created in the same version of Word. Between OpenOffice and Word this is even worse. And this happens with the simple documents just containing graphics, some wordart and formatting. They just do not look the same and my users are angry about it. That is the interoperability how Microsoft currently does it.
I’ve posted a few times about how I primarily use OpenOffice, and I’ve seen this interoperability issue happen recently with a simple .doc file formatted with three columns midway through the document. OpenOffice could not handle the document neatly, but Microsoft Office had no problem with it.
John is not the only one who wants to see Microsoft achieve the interoperability Jones professes will happen.
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David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
