Alternatives

Microsoft has posted their covenant on the OfficeXML formats, and while Andy Updegrove grumbles at it, I think he’s splitting hairs in a lawyerly fashion; I’m not lawyerly, and it sure reads to me like Microsoft is saying “go ahead and write software, we won’t get in the way”. So let’s cut ’em some slack and assume the legals are good enough. That leaves the world with a choice of two alternate XML-based office legally-unencumbered document file formats. Let’s call them ODF and MSXML for short. In ODF we have a format that’s already a stable OASIS standard and has multiple shipping implementations. In MSXML we have a format that will become a stable ECMA standard with one shipping implementation sometime a year or two from now, depending on software-development and standards-process timetables (I see that Novell plans to join the ECMA committee). ODF is in the process of applying to ISO, and MSXML will apparently be sent down that road too, which should put ISO in an interesting situation. On the technology side, MSXML’s design center, Microsoft has said repeatedly, is capturing the exact semantics of the billions of existing Microsoft Office documents. ODF’s design center was general-purpose reusability, and leveraging existing standards like SVG and MathML and so on. Well, those are the alternatives. What do you think?