Office Open XML is Insanely Complex
Is an open XML format still open if no one can afford to implement it? Adobe platform strategist Andrew Shebanow asks that question in relation to Office Open XML (OOXML).
Way back in October, Bob Sutor, IBM's open standards guru, wrote a piece on his blog where he described the Office Open XML standard as a one way standard, because the format is so complex and so geared towards compatibility with legacy Office compatibility that it could never be implemented as a fully functional file format by any competing personal productivity applications (PPAs) like WordPerfect and OpenOffice. I agree with a lot of his points but didn't feel compelled to write about it since the issue had been covered pretty comprehensively in the blogosphere.
Today, though, a couple of interesting things happened that made me want to write about this. The first is that ECMA approved the Office XML standard over IBM's objections. That got me thinking about Bob's piece again. The other is that Rick Schaut of Microsoft's Mac BU wrote an article explaining very eloquently why the Mac version of Office won't support the Open XML file format until sometime next year. What struck me when I read the latter piece is that Rick absolutely, positively proves Bob Sutor's point when he explains what it would take to create a file converter from scratch for Mac Word ...
Breaking out my envelope again, we’re now looking at 150 man years to do the job for a competitive PPA. How can competitors afford to make that level of investment?
