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RE: OOXML: So what *should* happen now?

• From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
• To: "'Jonathan Robie'" <jonathan.robie@r...>,"'XML Developers List'" <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 15:37:09 +0100

> OOXML didn't make it in the first round balloting for fast 
> track acceptance. What should happen now?

Excellent question.

The ideal perhaps is that the ODF and OOXML players should get around the
table and design a single specification with a central core that everyone
agrees on, and with sufficient extensibility to permit the necessary evils
like "doWordWrapLikeWord95" in separate namespaces to allow
round-trippability. With two specifications on the table it ought to be
possible to see what's common and what isn't, and the best standards often
come from abstracting what's common between existing implementations. 

The danger of course is that such a process will take too long to make any
results useful.

But in my view standards are only useful if they are technically and
economically capable of leading to multiple independent and interoperable
implementations. I don't think there's anything wrong with OOXML becoming a
standard if it can be demonstrated that it meets those criteria: from the
evidence that's been given on this list, it looks as if that process too
will take some time.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

• References:
  • OOXML: So what *should* happen now?
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@r...>