Re: GNOME Foundation Statement on ECMA TC45-M Participation

[jamie <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

On Sun, 2007-11-25 at 12:18 -0500, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 12:56:09PM +0000, jamie wrote:
> > 
> > MOOX is most likely to become irrelevant IMO
> Not agreed.


its debatable and subjective - yes. I reject the notion its a foregone
conclusion that MS gets its way however

>  
> > Firstly the de facto standard is doc, xls ... And that will not change
> > for a long time
> somewhat agreed.  MS is not stupid.  They learned the leason of
> Office97 and will not be repeating it.  This is why they released
> MOOX support for older versions of office before 2007 came out.
> The shiny new features in 2007 (more cols/rows, conditional regions)
> are a means to draw people forward, but the old versions are not
> locked out of the new files.

well my office 2003 cannot read them

> 
> > Office 2007 has less than 10% of all office versions (50m out of 500m)
> Which is already comperable to the OO.o installbase.  They are
> playing with a much larger population.

yes and that larger population is using older office versions so MS
still has a lot of work to do to sell to them an expensive upgrade which
mostly only contains a prettier interface

I dont think anyone can say which way it will go


> 
> > If companies will continue to use doc and xls formats for
> > compatibilities sake then why is it so essential for us to implement
> > support for it?
> For the same reason that we release win32 builds.  The
> windows/office population is large enough that even a small
> percentage represents alot of bodies.
> 
> > Would it hurt so much to have a moratorium on MOOX dealings til after
> > February next year when ISO standard is determined?
> > 
> > Personally I would not want Gnome to touch it with a bargepole but I
> > dont have a problem with spec improvement *after* February next year.
> 
> That is precisely the situation we are in.  There is no opportunity
> to raise new issues after the BRM in Feb.  Hence, there is no
> involvement.


but feb 2008 is for ISO standardisation - I thought you were working
with ECMA on their spec?

In any event I dont understand why the gnome foundation was pulled into
this - cant you do your work with ECMA without foundation backing?

jamie