Phil, don't even get me started - Microsoft has been deceitful in just about every way possible over the years. Microsoft have never played nicely with open standards because to do so would've threatened their lock-in business model.
It's only now that government contracts are starting to move to open standards having (finally!) recognised how badly they're being screwed over by companies like Microsoft who use lock-in strategies, that Microsoft have finally had to come to the open standards party... and they're only doing it now because of how completely they failed to make their Office Open XML (OOXML) fly... DOCX and XLSX, etc. are early prototypes of this deeply flawed "standard" (the " are because it's not really a standard at all, not least of which because there doesn't exist a single working implementation). As a result Microsoft have had to admit that OOXML is dead in the water and have, through gritted teeth, accept that they'll have to support ODF. ODF is the name of the family of XML-based open standards for office packages also called Open Document Format, formalised by the OASIS committee and adopted as an international open standard by the (now largely discredited, and rightly so) ISO. Don made the mistake of putting a "." in front of ODF, but otherwise he's quite correct. Cheers, Dave Philip Arndt wrote: > Surely, you mean .odt, as .odf is for formulae, mathematical equations.. > see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Specifications > > Perhaps Microsoft could have used open document formats.. but then > again, they were first discussed in only 2002.. and was released as a > standard in May, 2006 and first published in November, 2006. > > Tad unfair to backdate complaints against Microsoft based on standards > not available then ;-) > > Not that I endorse doc/docx but should they really have waited until > 2006 to write an office suite? > > > On 29/09/2008, at 2:28 PM, Don Gould wrote: >> Now you're talking about a naming thing. I do agree, should have done >> .d97, .d2k, .d23, .d27 >> >> Or even better... >> >> .ODF > > > > > -- Dave Lane = Egressive Ltd = [EMAIL PROTECTED] = m: +64 21 229 8147 p: +64 3 9633733 = Linux: it just tastes better = nosoftwarepatents http://egressive.com ==== we only use open standards: http://w3.org Effusion Group Founding Member =========== http://effusiongroup.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ NZ PHP Users Group: http://groups.google.com/group/nzphpug To post, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
