Talk:Office Open XML/Archive 2

message: Is there a cat for Ecma standards? If not, there should be and this article should be in it. (c.f. :Category:ISO standards.) - David Gerard 12:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ecma standards category? 

message: Link to Comparison of OpenDocument and Microsoft Office Open XML formats, in see other and  keep it out of this article. Charles Esson 00:26, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion

message: Look like some user called Mentaka has reverted the Office Open XML and the OpenDocument article back several days showing them as as minor edit's. hAl 16:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just coming in to note that.  I have reverted, as the user does not appear to have a constructive history and I can't determine any sort of reasoning for it.  If there is, please discuss here first.  Thanks!  —bbatsell ¿? 20:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The amount of reverts (of reverts) is getting me confused :) I have left a warning on Mentaka's user page, and I hope OOXML can stay at this version for future edits. -- [Beta] 22:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mentaka edits 

message: I reverted then came to here to make a note; so Bbatsell could easily be reverting my revert (checked the history my revert didn't make it). 
#You do not revert pages with the comment minor edit.
#Ok as a standard OOXML sucks, this is not the place to argue the case against OOXML, in the see other section there is a link to a page that compares the competing standards argue your case there. Put wikipedia first.
#The version before Mentaka did the revert was a lot closer to having a NPOV.
Charles Esson 21:13, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments to Mentaka

message: I'm trying to get this section to a point where it at least answers the questions on my mind.
I think "A liaison from the ISO/IEC from JTC 1/SC 34 helped during the standardization process with the technical committee of Ecma to prepare Office Open XML submission to ISO/IEC [citation needed]." should go, it really adds nothing.
:As Ecma is a category A liaison this is unlikely as Ecma knows what it is doing.
The "fast track" process is given here. Does anybody know at what stage within the process it is at, has it been accepted by a working group, if so what is the current one month vote about. These are questions I am asking and I think wikipedia should answer. I think answer these qestions and the section will be up to date. Charles Esson 04:47, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Editors writing about "fast track" procedures at ISO might like to be aware that there is a general use of the term and two specific kinds: usually called "Fast Track" and "PAS".Rick Jelliffe 06:41, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Rick. According to this Ecma was already qualified as a PAS submitter, in fact it is a category A liaison, some stuff on PAS.
The PAS process is described here
(= one month administrative time + four months for an ISP ballot or six months for an IS ballot), so we are in administration time.
Charles Esson 07:38, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks for leading me up the garden path Rick. Charles Esson 19:49, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

text: This article seems quite confused. The thing is in the fast-track process already. ISO has received 19 or 20 comments; it seems that at least several of them are about ISO process (the 30 day period) rather than OOXML per se. ISO is sending them to ECMA for comments before looking at them or releasing them. Even Andy Updgrrove says What I've been told by someone that has seen some, but not all, of the responses  is that the most favorable comment may say that the process should just move straight into the next phase, so that everything can be addressed at once.  Some comments will be brief, flagging one or two things, while some will be more substantial.  We should find out the full story on, or shortly after, February 28, unless a delay is announced.Rick Jelliffe 06:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

text: The other thing to note is that the whole standards process is based around trying to get win-win, achieving win-lose can be a struggle. For example, if a national body raises a potential technical contradiction and Ecma then satisfactorily resolves it, for example by showing it is based on flawed tehnical information or by improving the draft standard or language, then the national body will not have that flaw as a reason to vote against OOXML at the end of the 5 (i.e. 6) month review. Rick Jelliffe 06:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the original article was indeed confused. However, it appears that the 20 responses are now available.  "14 of 20 responses were clearly negative, two indicated divisions of opinion, three were inconclusive or neutral, and one offered no objections."  So in the final wash-up, the original article may indeed have got the wrong story, but it looks as though despite that it may nevertheless have reached the correct conclusion. In respect of the Microsoft notion of having two standards, several bodies make specific points, the German & Japanese perhap sum it up best: "The German NB  prefers to have a harmonized Standard over having two Standards serving basically the same user requirements." Japan: "[OOXML] seems to be competing and incompatible with [ODF]." Japan appears to be proposing that the two standards be harmonized. It also has IPR concerns. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.20.20.129 (talk) 05:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it is the corect characterization of the comments at all. Eric Lai of ComputerWorld only counts 6, for example, not 14. (I have a longer comment in the section on Critism section too long below.) Like I said, people just have to get this model that ISO is about win-lose out of their minds when looking at the process: ISO isn't a forum for competition by proxy or regulation by proxy or anti-trust by proxy or marketing by proxy. Rick Jelliffe 00:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Standardization

message: What are the guidelines for when a new article can be added or a page split up? In particular, I'd like to suggest articles on Open Packaging Convention (which is the XML-in-ZIP format, not mentioned in the current article at all under that name) as well as articles each of the individual markup languages citing basic technical details. 203.111.164.74 08:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Go ahead and give it a try. Create sourced articles that link to related Wikipedia articles and indicate to readers who don't know the subject why the subject of the article is important. After content is created it can be moved or combined as needed. Referencing something you wrote yourself on a subject you are a recognized expert on is tricky to do without creating problems. The talk page is a good place for that kind of thing. WAS 4.250 20:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks for adding that. I read today however on the web someone saying "there is only five months before the final decision" which is reading more into the text than I meant. Sigh... I suggest adding another sentence "National bodies then have four to six months to review the Final Draft International Standard before their ultimate vote, which is usually a formality by that stage." Rick Jelliffe 15:35, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Arbitary section break for ease of editing (4)

message: In the current licensing section, I think the following text should be removed. "However the issue raised by Kenya identified as [KE13] in that ECMA response document [2] is that the various mentions of the Microsoft proprietary sub-formats which are "merely referenced" by OOXML are described by the Kenyan objection as "normative". In standards terminology, "normative" means "considered to be a prescriptive part of the standard". [3]"  A simple reading of Ecma 376 shows that there is in fact no normative reference, nor that WMF is prescriptive or essential. WMF is included as a "possible enumeration" and it is misleading if not bizarre to claim it as a "normative reference." In any case, there is a criticism section where this would belong, if it were not daft. Rick Jelliffe 21:20, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Licensing 2

message: I think language in adoption  can be toned down, and adoption updated.
# "Only Microsoft" is unneeded emotive language. A reader should be able to work it out for themselves.
# Removed "reacting to harsh criticismhttp://apcstart.com/node/4755" does it really add anything? 
# Changed corel ref to corel press release.
# Add note on Novell support.
# Removed OpenOffice.org supports WordProcessingML 2003, the predecessor of the Office Open XML word processing format. 
# Gnumeric, removed "first program in final version". ( what does it add). I can't verify what is written is correct, ref is out of date as site has changed and I can't find alternative ref. Format is not mentioned in manual. It is mentioned that support for open office version 12 is well on the way, how is this related to version 13 which I believe is the version that supports Office open XML. Hopefully having to work to a standard will slow down the rate at which microsoft change their file format.
# Put a request on Gnumeric mailing list for reference; words there are my guess after reading what I could find.
# Altered Panergy entry to use the same words used in "File format and structure" section. Made clear transfer is by RTF. Tidy up Panergy ref a little.
# Altered to list and put in alpa order as more to come.
# Added two more items.
I am excluding items that use docm as this seems to go past docx and include Microsoft propiority  extensions ( Correct me if I am wrong).
Charles Esson 11:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, both docx and docm files are both conforming Office Open XML files, as far as I can see. Microsoft marketing material never puts it like this, presumably to forestall attacks and to promote the creamy goodness of OpenXML. Open XML is an OPC container and some schemas, and there can be any kind of other file in there. "Proprietary extension" is not really the right term, unless you term JPEG as an extension too: containers are designed to contain things. The difference between docx and docm is that Microsoft applications will disable macros in .docx files, a matter of safety not standards conformance.  Rick Jelliffe 19:29, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: adoption

message: Okay... there seems to be enough support for renaming this article to "Office Open XML" that I think we should do it.  I'll do the rename two days from now if there are no objections posted here that give clear rationale for keeping the name as-is.  -/- Warren 22:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: .... aaaand I guess someone just went ahead and did it.   -/- Warren 21:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Renaming to "Office Open XML" 

message: I noticed reference 19 is giving an error. I don't know how to fix it, that's why I'm posting this 213.219.154.194 13:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I added the link, it still works for me; can someone else see it it works for them. Charles Esson 21:00, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Works for me, too. WLDtalk|edits 08:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I tried from work also and it works there. Charles Esson 08:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  reference broken 

message: Warren I thCriticismought the article was better with the criticism all in one section; it's not like the article is that long that it is about to split. Further it did make a good introduction to the criticism sections which suffers a little from multiple edits from different points of views.  I suppose the question is the criticism a main issue. I was quite happy with the boundary issues and was about to start reading the standard, the actual description ( the content) of the standard is pretty light weight. 6000 pages, thats 12 reams if you try and print it out, it has to contain something. Charles Esson 04:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As a general rule, it is considered better for NPOV if criticism is not separated into a separate article or subsection but is as integrated as possible. It is typical for articles in the process of development to have these less than optimum qualities, but it is not what we are aiming for. WAS 4.250 05:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Have a look at WP:LEAD to get a sentence of what an article's lead section should contain.   -/- Warren 06:39, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes I see your point, it has to be able to stand alone. How about it gets reduced to: "Office Open XML has been the subject of considerable controversy in the computing industry." and joined to the previous paragraph, and then expand in the Criticism; I just think as it stands it sounds like a petty jab. Charles Esson 07:43, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've written a lot of lead sections in my time, including having one that was featured verbatim in Article of the Day, and I very strongly disagree.  You can't just infer that some people are critical of a subject, without stating who exactly those people are.  This is a requirement per our WP:NPOV policy, and as such is not up for discussion.  The sentence as it stands identifies which groups are involved in the criticism, right up front, and that is the correct way to go about things.  -/- Warren 18:20, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think the critisism on OOXML is which was moved to the lead section was not very relevant especially the reference. Also It is not very consistent compared with a simular article. Another point is that at least of the critisism is added to influence political descisions. I think it is fair enough to keep the seperate critisism section allthough frankly some of the issues mentioned it it are of very questional level but that is up to the people who critisise I guess. Also the critisism seem to be very much the target of edits which for which the seperate section is also more appropriate. hAl 18:44, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  None of what you're saying here is in accordance with real, actual Wikipedia policies and guidelines on neutral, accurate representation of a subject.  I've told you this on your talk page, and I'll tell you again here:  Read WP:LEAD, WP:SUMMARY, and WP:NPOV, in their entirety, before removing this text from the lead again.   -/- Warren 23:16, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sourced criticism of Office Open XML from respected experts belongs in the intro (before the table of contents). WAS 4.250 02:02, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

text:  Hal has reverted, left a note on his user page with reference, up to him to revert back or tell me I'm wrong; i'm not doing it again. 
* "following an Excel workaround for spreadsheets imported from Lotus 1-2-3" sounds like an excuse; it isn't, Microsoft tried to make their product compatible with the dominant player at the time, change wording to reflect this.
*Full stop at end of "Lack of support"; may not be proper sentence but it is the end of the point.
*Change section headings to bold so that it is clear there are two groups.
*Change what was the section summary to include the name of the Microsoft competitors, if you need a reference it is mentioned in several articles, run the sentence together better, but now that it is back in the lead I am not willing to touch it. The sentence I came up with was "Office Open XML has been the subject of considerable controversy in the computing industry, with criticism of the document format coming from members of the free software movement, some independent software vendors and Microsoft's competitors Sun Microsystems and IBM, most of whom favor OpenDocument." I still think it would make a good introduction to the section.
*added requested ref for 6000 page comment.
*Could not find ref for cross platform support, I think "no other vendor can implement" is similar so changed to that and referenced.
Regards Charles Esson 07:35, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism

message: I would like to take all the following out; it just a collection of stuff and I don't think it will ever by well structured. I'm going to do the edit feel free to undo it but please turn it into something other than a pissing match. Charles Esson 11:54, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism 2

message: If we are going to have it then lets do it properly, as it was it was all over the place. Warren and Hal please sort out the lead and please keep me out of it. Regards 
The page numbers have to go; if it survives I will go through and work out which part they are in add that and remove the page number. Charles Esson 23:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism 3

message: I would ask that the reference to independent software vendors, and possibly others, be left in as those objecting to OOXML.  There are many of us (I provided a reference as I thought that might help, but it was objected to) who are absolutely not part of the free software movement and not competitors of Microsoft's (my company is a long time Microsoft partner as well as a long time IBM business partner).  This sentence as reverted to implies that only those who believe in free software or are direct competitors object to OOXML.  That is completely uintrue.  Would it help to provide other references? BenLanghinrichs 01:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the state of play is: Myself, Hal and Warrens have different views but we are trying real hard to get a good article and that is good. We have random visits from 86.84.111.211 who wants to push a particular line, he deleted your insert. My suggestion is as follows, put it in and make it as robust as possible with references. I think a fair summary is, I want the article to flow and be honest, Hal wants the crits to be realistic, and warrens wants the lead to be a valid. Charles Esson 02:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sounds good to me.  I'll round up some references and make the change when they are ready.  Thanks! Also, thanks for the efforts to make everything work smoothly.  It is hard to make a somewhat contraversial topic fair, easy to read and comprehensive, all at the same time. BenLanghinrichs 02:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Looked at it some more, it has only been removed in the lead; warrens and Hal are having a serious debate over what that should look like. It's still in the crit section, if you could add additional refs in the crit section I think it would be good. What we all have to remember is wikipedia is not the place to win or lose. It's a place to record what is going on.Charles Esson 02:51, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Looked at the ref and I can see what 86.84.111.211 was getting at; something in a mainstream publication would be good.Charles Esson 11:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism 4

message: To help NPOV, I suggest adding a paragraph like the following to the criticism section: "Much of the criticism of Ecma 376 has been collected or collated at the website Grokdoc. The wiki discussion page includes debate and dispute on those criticisms." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rick Jelliffe (talk • contribs) 19:59, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism 5

message: The text "despite the fact that many element attributes are defined as bitmasks" makes it appear that this is a well-known fact, whereas it is just an assertion. And it is wrong: as far as I can see there are only a couple of cases where bit masks are used (and the reason why bit masks are deemed bad, because they are not extensible, is wrong anyway because you can just add extra attributes in XML; and the other reason given that processing software cannot handle bitmasks is bizarre in the extreme.)
I recommend replace "fact" with "claim". Rick Jelliffe 00:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: One might make similar statements about your own comments. The article makes a very clear argument for an important point of view, and presents its position very clearly. You are free to critique it, and others to critique your own points and references, but the bottom line is that important statements and positions from both sides have a place in Wikipedia, both in the article and as external links. Dovi 05:36, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Crticism 6 

message: I think the main section will fly better with diagrams explaining things.
# Does anyone know if we can take images out of the standard.
# Until I know for sure I will use GPL icons but does anyone know if we can use microsoft icons to create images.
Charles Esson 10:57, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Ecma site says Ecma Standards and Technical Reports are made available to all interested persons or organizations, free of charge and copyright, in printed form and, as files in Acrobat ® PDF format.  That seems to suggest that you can cut and quote. Rick Jelliffe 06:03, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: copyright

message: Has any one read the Baker & Mckenzie report, I agree with Hal it needs to be there to balance previous sentence I think we really need something to justify it, sort of just hangs.Charles Esson 11:41, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Finishing licensing

message: The Open XML standard has been the subject of wide and varied controversy in the computing industry, particularly from members of the free software movement, independent software vendors,[24] industry analysts[25] and Microsoft's competitors Sun Microsystems and IBM, most of whom favor the OpenDocument format, 
which is notably present in the freely available OpenOffice.org application suite.
*Interesting, but this is about OOXML and we can link to a open document article.
The essential premise behind this criticism, apart from several technical issues, is that Microsoft has standardised its proprietary format in order to prevent the widespread adoption of the Open Document format, which could threaten the dominance of Microsoft's own Office suite. 
* I think it goes deeper than that, like the several technical issues this is just the story. I would put it like this ( but it doesn't belong in the article).
*At some point in the next 100 years mankind will move from paper to electronic books. It won't happen until a common reliable standard is available for the storage of the material. The OOXML standard is so bad it is going to slow that process down considerable. Microsoft could speed the process up by adopting something the industry agreed on but they haven't.
Furthermore, commentators have argued that while competitors will likely implement compatibility of the new standard in their own applications, Microsoft has not released any plans to similarly support the OpenDocument format.[26]
As the world's largest software company, 
* why the free plug for microsoft, do we put after IBM (the worlds largest computer company) or after SUN ( the worlds largest Unix supplier), all points to be made in other articles.
 
Microsoft believes that its royalty-free format will end persistent incompatibility problems in working environments with diverse software applications due to its underlying foundation of strong industry standards such as XML and ZIP.[27]
*And this is just a bunch of marketing crap, it not even what is said in the reference. 
*Come on lets try for a decent article. Charles Esson 20:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Crit 5

message: I think a list of links to various converters should be left in the article. It will be a huge demand for these converters as people start receiving .docx as attachments to emails. People won't know how to open them or what to do... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.217.78.97 (talk) 12:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  converters should be left in... 

message: "The TC45 committee is co-chaired by two Microsoft employees" - There is no reason to think that having two Microsoft employees made a difference, so unless this is meant to suggest something, it's just trivia and Microsoft's reference should be with the other companies. 211.28.194.140 04:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Chairing a committee is different than merely serving on a committee.  Mr. J. Paoli and Mrs. I. Valet-Harper (both MS) are the only chairmen.  It isn't uncommon or trivia to point out who leads a committee.  --Karnesky 04:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trivia 

message: Older revisions of this article referred to the XML formats supported in Microsoft Office 2003, but there is no such mention now, except for the Microsoft Covenant Regarding Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas link in the References section (this link now redirects to an OOXML page at microsoft.com).  It seems to me that those older formats are worth documenting (here or elsewhere) — they're actually quite easy to generate, even without involving any MS software (e.g. for report-generation via XSLT).  The nomenclature is still a bit confused to me.. Microsoft Word#File formats indicates that the XML format used in Word 2003 was called WordprocessingML, which now redirects here — but the 2003 XML format is different from the OOXML format.  Was this article's old revision correct to say that "WordprocessingML" ambiguously refers to two incompatible XML dialects?  —Fleminra 21:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: References to the preceding MS Office 2003 XML formats used to be in the article. (I put some in myself) but were removed in later revisions. hAl 09:53, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't look through every revision of every relevant article, and read every discussion, but it looks like WordprocessingML used to be a useful article, and it was decided to merge that into Microsoft Office Open XML, and then when Microsoft Office Open XML became Ecma Office Open XML, folks decided that the 2003 stuff was not relevant?  Well, I've started User:Flemingr/Microsoft Office 2003 XML formats.  I think it has useful information that is not presently covered elsewhere.  Unless there are objections (that may have been stated somewhere but I haven't read), I'll move this into the main namespace.  —Fleminra 00:22, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Microsoft Office XML heritage 

message: Following are some suggested changes to the section on file formats.Rick Jelliffe 14:46, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Totally agree. Badly worded, and clearly doesn't belong in the "File Format and Structure" section. Since there is (imo) better-worded objections already in the Criticism section, I've removed the paragraph entirely. BradC 16:26, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: File Format

message: The introduction does not even mention OPC and it launches into a polemic that belongs in the criticism section. I suggest it should be in a section "Open Packaging Conventions"
"Office Open XML uses Open Packaging Conventions (OPC), which provide a profile of the common ZIP format. As well as XML data and document files the ZIP package can also include other text and binary files in formats such as PNG, BMP, AVI, PDF, [[RTF] or even ODF. 
OPC also defines some naming conventions and an indirection method to allow position-indepence of binary and XML files in the ZIP archive."
"OPC files can be opened using common ZIP utilities. Open source libraries in .NET and Java are available for using OPC. OPC is specified in Part 2 of Ecma 376 (131 pages) but is not dependent on other parts of Office Open XML. OPC specifies the details of the ZIP format because ZIP has not actually been specified by any international standard previously, but has widespread community and developer acceptance."
"Microsoft offers a Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack
 without which Office 2000 and Office 2003 cannot import or export OPC-based Office Open XML files."
"Note that some software applications may also offer as an export option to forego the use of OPC and instead to generate single, large XML files with binary files encoded as hexadecimal or "bin64" strings, but still using the Office Open XML vocabulary." Rick Jelliffe 14:46, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Totally agree. Badly worded, and clearly doesn't belong in the "File Format and Structure" section. Since there is (imo) better-worded objections already in the Criticism section, I've removed the paragraph entirely. BradC 16:26, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: In the first paragraph, replace "A basic Office Open XML file" with "Office Open XML files conform to OPC and different applications have characteristic directory structures and file names. An OPC-aware application will use the relationships files rather than directory names and file names to locate individual files. A basic Office Open XML file" .Rick Jelliffe 15:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Container Structure

message: The text currently confuses uses "backwards-compatibility" but there are several different concepts: I) a format capable of being read or written by Application X syntactically, II) a format capable of representing all the all the information that Application X uses for its documents, and III) a format capable of conveying more information to an (old) application than it can make use of, but still work with graceful degradation. So there will be a different answer for each software. For Office 2007, it is yes, yes, yes. For previous versions of Office over the last decade is it yes, yes, yes (with the compatability kit.) For previous versions of Office, it is no, yes (or, at least, 99,9%), and yes. When a new version of office has some features that an old version of Office does not have, just adding the compatability kit would not make that feature magically appear. The point is that that Open XML has been designed to be usable as the default save format for all the versions of Office for the last decade, though that does not make all versions of Office equal in their capabilities. 
In the interest of teasing out what backwards-compatibility actually means, perhaps we should just remove the second paragraph of the File Format and Structure section and replace it with something less alarmist and more exact: "This new, XML-based file format is the default save format for Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows. Versions of Office from Office 2000 onwards require a (free) Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack [4] to be installed before they can read or write the files.[3] There is no support for Open XML in versions of Office or its component programs before Office 2000; legacy file formats must be used on these older applications. Portions of documents that relate to features specific to more recent versions of Office may not survive round-tripping with older versions of Office. When opening certain legacy files, Office 2007 prompts the user whether to retain hints concerning the original formats or whether to convert the document to vanilla Open XML. As with ODF, when transferring documents between different applications there may be slight differences in line- and page-breaking because different applications use different algorithms, metrics and settings." 121.210.129.91 05:00, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Compatibility

message: :I think these should be merged into this article as DOCX is forwarded here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Masterpjz9 (talk • contribs) 14:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is nothing in them to merge into this article. Just set a redirect. hAl 15:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As there was nothing to merge, i redirected as said Cloud02 14:08, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge of [[PPTX]] and [[XLSX]]

message: "Microsoft has assured the European Union that the Office Open XML standard meets the European Union definitions of an Open Standard, meaning the specification is freely available and implementable by anyone." -- Any reference for that? Podmok 16:03, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, mayby you'd beter read the article first. hAl 13:59, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Now, there is a reference but the information cannot be found in that source. I recommend to delete the unsubstatiated phrase but I am willing to ask the European Commission Podmok 14:00, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference? 

message: There is a photo of a printed copy of the spec at http://blog.janik.cz/archives/2007/05/19/T20_32_07/ . Maybe this should be on the page. --87.127.117.246 17:48, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Or maybe not. ;-) Well, at least to me, that looks like a photo suitable for a tabloid because "it looks amazingly long!" However, there are many long specs, and they're usually quite long. Are we supposed to take photos of bookcases with detailed specifications in other articles in the future? I don't think that's a road Wikipedia needs to take myself. Besides, I could not find any licensing info from the original holder, and that's essential to know for Wikipedia uses. -- Northgrove 09:14, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  photo of the ooxml spec 

message: OK, Office 2007 just recommended me to save an Excel spreadsheet as OOXML due to "stronger encryption", instead of as an old, encrypted .xls spreadsheet. Any ideas of the details here? Neither the words "encryption" nor "security" is in this article so I'm not sure that info has been added here yet. -- Northgrove 09:12, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Encryption method(s) used? 

message: The section Document Markup Languages is wrong. There is no such thing as "Form Template" and "DataDiagrammingML" in Open XML. This can be ascertained by searching through Part 4 of the ISO draft. Also the text is a bit weak on the connection between product and language. And it doesn't correspond to the namespaces/schema structures, which would freak out anyone who then tries to look at the spec. Better text would be:
"Office Open XML is a container format with several specialized XML-based document markup languages, corresponding to individual applications within the Microsoft Office product line. Open XML defines multiple vocabularies (using 27 namespaces and 89 schema modules.) The primary languages are:
* WordprocessingML
* SpreadsheetML
* PresentationML
Utility languages include
* DrawingML
* VML (Obsolescent, used in WordprocessingML)
* Bibliography
* Math
Other vocabularies include
* CustomXml
* Charts
* Diagrams
and shims for incorparating DrawningML in each of the primary languages. "
For a reference, I have a diagram on my [blog] Rick Jelliffe 00:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Namespaces and languages