From owner-incits-v1@incits-v1.org Mon Jun 18 19:00:12 2007 Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:58:56 -0700 (PDT) From: jon.bosak@Sun.COM Subject: INCITS-V1: Interoperability-Durusau-4 Sender: owner-incits-v1@incits-v1.org To: incits-v1@incits-v1.org Reply-to: incits-v1@incits-v1.org X-PMX-Version: 5.2.0.264296 X-Authentication-warning: jurassic-x4600.sfbay.sun.com: bosak set sender to jon.bosak@sun.com using -f Unlike Durusau-3, which is simply editorial, Patrick's comment Durusau-4 raises an issue that goes to the purpose of DIS 29500 itself. Both the introduction to DIS 29500 and the publicity surrounding it represent its primary purpose to be the preservation of "existing investments in Microsoft Office documents" through the exposure of those documents in an open, standard XML format. Yet DIS 29500 provides no publicly available normative mapping between the proprietary format and the standard format, and without such a mapping, the conversion of the existing nonstandard base to a standard form is impossible to accomplish in a consistent and therefore interoperable way. As Patrick says, "There is no doubt that inconsistent XML formats will lead to difficulties in searching, editing, automated processing and even inclusion of such documents in office systems based upon particular conversions of legacy documents." Similarly, the corresponding absence of a normative mapping from DIS 29500 format back to the Microsoft Office 97-2003 formats "effectively excludes users of the very large installed based of Microsoft Office 97-2003 applications who do not need any of the advanced features proposed in DIS 29500 from participation in an information system that requires the format specified by DIS 29500." Patrick proposes that "a normative reversible mapping between Microsoft Office 97-2003 formats be added to DIS 29500 between those formats and the format defined by DIS 29500." Since Microsoft must have developed such mappings in the course of creating the current generation of Office products, this remedy simply calls for these mappings to be included in the specification. Absent such mappings, DIS 29500 should omit its claim to provide a path forward into XML for legacy Office documents. Jon