Hvilken behandling fikk Norges kommentarer til OOXML?

Her er en gjennomgang av de norske kommentarene som ble sendt inn til ISO da Norge stemte nei i 2007, og en beskrivelse om hva som er gjort eller annonsert av endringer for å ta hensyn til dem.

Kommentarene er [http://www.standard.no/pronorm-3/data/f/0/17/24/1_2401_0/2008-08-31_NO_ISO_IEC_DIS_29500_comments.pdf tilgjengelig som PDF] fra Standard Norge. Se forøvrig en [http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article62811.ece oppsummering fra Computerworld Norge] som forklarer litt om hvordan kommentarene ble omtalt da de ble sendt inn.

NO-01 The Scope clause in Part 1 is inappropriate for an ISO standard

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:

• BRThe Scope clause should be rewritten to give a succinct overview of the contents of the standard without self-reference, for example:

  BR"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:

  BR[list supported versions]

  BRIt does not cover documents produced by other office applications."

  BRThe 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).

NO-02 Rework into a multi-part standard.

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:
  1. Introduction
  2. Common/Core components and metadata
  3. WordprocessingML
  4. SpreadsheetML
  5. PresentationML
  6. Extensibility
  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 reorganized, but not along the lines of functionally similar sections. XXX Look up the new part names.

Conclucion:

• The specification was not changed in a way that allow different parts to be used independently of each other, and thus Norways proposal was not implemented.

NO-03 Rework into a much more concise standard.

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:

• XXX Was there any relevant change at all related to this point? Any redundant information removed?

Conclucion:

• This proposal was rejected.

NO-04 The information model is unnecessarily complex.

Justification:

• The XML information model described is unnecessarily complex. Given the example in the Overview at page 13 (§5.6)

<w:p>
   <w:r>
     <w:t>Hello, world.</w:t>
   </w:r>
</w:p>

• Could - and should - be represented as:

<p>Hello, world.</p>

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.

Conclucion:

• OOXML did not change according to the proposal from Norway.

NO-05 All examples should conform to the XML specification

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.

Conclucion:

• OOXML was promised to change according to the proposal from Norway.

NO-06 DrawingML should be a separate standard

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:

• XXX Document this

Conclucion:

• DrawingML was not propsed as a separate standard, and there was no commitment for doing so at a later stage.

NO-07 OPC should be a separate standard

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.

NO-08 The specification should not include binary notations

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.

NO-09 The specification should not contain underspecified features

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.

Conclucion:

• 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.

NO-10 Option sets should be extensible and should avoid cultural bias

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.

NO-11 OOXML should reference, use, and conform to existing standards where applicable

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.

Conclucion:

• OOXML did not change according to the proposal from Norway.

NO-12 Lack of consistency in notation of values and dimensions

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.