This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2008/03/11/interoperability-promise-a-scam/.
Posted in Interoperability, Mail, Microsoft, Novell, Open XML, SUN at 12:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
IE8: broken; Exchange: broken; OOXML: broken
So many promises, yet so little progress. Microsoft continues to show that its half-hearted attempts may be little more than a PR bubble which pleases journalists but hardly enables counterparts to compete under fair terms (standards).
Yes, have a look before allowing the press to get your hopes up.
There are quite a few good things about the Microsoft release, such as showing that HTML5 is looked at, Acid2 is (almost) being passed, and CSS support is improving, but there are quite a few evil things as well…
We warned about this last week. IE8 promises a lot but offers very little. In fact, according to ACID3 tests, Internet Explorer (all versions) remains by far the least standards-complaint Web browser. Antitrust action in Europe over such neglect is to proceed as planned.
=> last week | is to proceed as planned
Exchange interoperability? Forget about it. Shades of the Microsoft “undocumentation” saga (and that is Microsoft’s own term — “undocumentation” — which is a word used internally).
=> ↺ Forget about it | ↺ Microsoft “undocumentation” saga
Speaking to ZDNet.co.uk at the CeBIT conference, Joseph said Microsoft’s start is not promising: “This could definitely make life easier for developers, but we have spotted over 200 undocumented exceptions, including one that allows you to create recurring calendar appointments in Exchange. It was in the documentation for Exchange 2000, but they forgot to document it for Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007.”
BetaNews took Microsoft’s plug-in for a spin and… splat.
=> ↺ splat
Microsoft also announced this afternoon the release of the first 1.1 edition of a stand-alone translator between ODF and OOXML documents. This project is currently being hosted on SourceForge. BetaNews located the project, and noted that only the command-line version of the translator has thus far been upgraded to version 1.1.
A check of the release notes show that many formatting features between Word 2007 and ODF documents are lost in the translation, even for the 1.1 version. Page background colors, background images for tables, variable font weight, blinking text (a holdover from the MS-DOS era), text rotation, capitalized or lower-case text as an applied format, embedded objects, and hidden sections are among the 41 known formatting elements that the newest build of the translator does not currently support.
Two other experiments with Microsoft’s plug-in had similar issues reported, if the plug-in even worked at all. We covered these in:
Microsoft API Pledge Worse Than Useless, Real Standards NeededBroken Promises: Microsoft Interoperability Already Broken (No GNU/Linux, No ODF)
At the end of the day, Microsoft prefers signing deals with companies like Novell and even Sun. They don’t truly cater for a decentralised control using standards. Microsoft wants total dependency upon itself. Here is the latest about Sun.
=> ↺ even Sun
Efforts announced last September to improve interoperability of Sun’s hardware and Microsoft’s software continue to take form with the official opening of the Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center.
Microsoft’s idea of interoperability continues to be that of taxoperability, based on tightened cooperation and royalties. But that’s not the way standards work. The next post delves deeper into this issue. █
Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Permalink Send this to a friend
=> Permalink | ↺ Send this to a friend
=> Techrights
➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.
text/gemini;lang=en-GBThis content has been proxied by September (ba2dc).