Enterprise applications Toolkit

Story: OOXML backwards compatibility led Microsoft to ODF

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Too nieve

You have an issue with the comment poorly written standard. I have to say that if you had tried to read this thing you soon see the problems. The whole thing has obviously been put together hastily and needs a lot of work to make it half readable. Even many of the supporters of OOXML have admitted that it is poorly written. Most of its complexity revolves around having to reinvent a lot of work already covered by other standards, this being the main reason why ODF is pretty light weight in comparison because it leverages other standards.
Fully implementing OOXML will be a nightmare due to all the stuff like formatAsWord6 attributes, binary format stuff etc. It's true that OOXML is currently partially supported within current office versions but my main point is that there are still so many issues with the spec, that require changes, that neither Microsoft or any one else will want to do anything with it for some time until the spec becomes more stable. This I suspect is why Microsoft have delayed implementation until version 14. This is the problem with railroading the spec through the selection process with all the dodgy tactics employed in that. Microsoft seemed to loose the plot with this whole fast tracking thing and have ended up in a mess. I suppose this was to be expected, after all the only reason for OOXML was a marketing tactic and a fear of loosing market to standards based software.

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