Once upon a time, 5 months ago, I wrote a blog post with the title Is Office Open XML A One-Way Standard? Ask Microsoft. In it, I took Microsoft to task because OOXML was so difficult to implement, based on information in a blog posting by Rick Schaut where he explained why it was taking so long for the Mac support for OOXML to arrive. That post generated an incredible amount of traffic and links to my blog, much more than I ever had before or since. Rick Schaut even tried to rebut my claims in his original blog posting, and David Berlind of ZDNet covered the whole kerfluffle, so of course I had to respond too. It was quite an experience for someone who had just started his blog.
But it seems like this is the time to revisit the situation, because yesterday Microsoft announced the availability of a beta version of a tool called the Microsoft Open Office XML File Format Converter for Mac. Catchy name, huh? What this standalone 25MB download does is convert Word 2007 .docx and .docm files into RTF, which can then be imported by Word 2004 for the Mac. No support for Excel or Powerpoint, which Microsoft had previously promised for Spring 2007. Funny that it doesn’t export directly to .doc, though, since I thought the whole point of OOXML was its 100% fidelity with existing Microsoft Office document formats. Now Microsoft says conversion to RTF is “good enough” for those pesky Mac users:
Why Rich Text Format? RTF (once called the “interchange format”) is simply a highly convenient intermediate format for the beta converter to use; I’ll let one of our Word experts (like Rick) expand on the technical reasons why this is the case if there’s interest.
Seems to me that if RTF is good enough as an interchange format, ODF should also qualify since it is at least as functional as RTF! Can’t wait to hear what new rationalization Rick and company come up with for this one…
But that’s not all the bad news. Hidden in the announcement of the tool is the news that the release of Office 2008 for the Mac later this year will not include native OOXML capability – that will arrive sometime later (they say the tools for Mac Office 2004 will arrive 6-8 weeks later, but don’t specify a date for the Mac Office 2008 version). I’m not the only one who has figured out the blatant spin here, see CNET, Wired, and TUAW.
And that, of course, brings us back to Rick Schaut’s original rationales for the OOXML support in Mac Office. Wonder if he still thinks they made the right call? Sure feels to me like my “serious” estimate of 40 man years to fully implement OOXML support wasn’t far off the mark…
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