Talk:Office Open XML/Archive 12

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Backwards compatible with earlier XML-based Office formats

The article currently states that "The ECMA-376 version of OOXML is not backwards compatible with earlier XML-based Office formats.". I think that this statement is completely meaningless. OOXML and the earlier Office 2003 XML formats are different file formats. What does "backwards compatible" mean in this context? Is JPEG 2000 not backwards compatible with JPEG? I can convert documents between both formats without major loss of content. In my opinion this unsourced and confusing sentence should be removed. Ghettoblaster (talk) 20:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

If an ECMA-376 parser had been able to parse Microsoft Office XML format documents, they would have been backwards compatible. That's the common meaning of backwards compatitibility in document formats. The reason I put the text in was just to stop people putting in text saying that the lack of backwards compatibility was a bad thing; it's a design choice, and I think it was a good choice. That said, I don't care much about the sentence one way or the other. --Alvestrand (talk) 20:18, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that this sentence has any encyclopedic value. An ODF parser also isn't able to parse OpenOffice.org XML. This is the nature of different file formats. Otherwise they would not be different file formats. I'll remove this sentence then. Ghettoblaster (talk) 20:45, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

What about different version of a file format that may or may not be backwards compatible? Thelennonorth (talk) 20:08, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

We must continue to use reliable sources

I've said it countless times before, but we must use reliable sources when we describe something as fact. It's still not happening. Just as the corporate sites of Microsoft, the ISO and ECMA are unreliable to describe the controversy surrounding themselves, so are blog sites unreliable. An example is this edit which uses the blog site of Rob Weir as a reference. You can't use Rob Weir to verify a fact. No offence to Rob Weir, but we need a source independent of the controversy. However, you could use Rob Weir's pages to attribute it, for example, say "Rob Weir claims that...". -Lester 20:41, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, perhaps you'd like to remove the concluding sentence of the first paragraph then (I have already and it was reverted) -- it contains two blog supported references (and is an example of editors trying to "make a point" (or counter-point) in pursuit of their edit war). Alexbrn (talk) 15:10, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

OK. I removed it (here). I also removed the bit about "freely available". There is absolutely no reason for unreliable unindependent references in the introduction. You're trying to sum-up the whole situation. Everything will be available out of references from major media organisation. No Microsoft corporate references. No ISO corporate website. No personal blog sites. Those who want to reinsert this should look for better references than what was previously provided. Independent sources also reduces the chances of adding trivia. --Lester 00:01, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Opening para looks healthier than it has for long time! Now, what's next? Alexbrn (talk) 09:43, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree. It's really looking good. Well done, guys. --Nigelj (talk) 18:48, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

One of the blog posts is Alex Brown's blog. SHows the enormous conflict of interest that exists.Scientus (talk) 01:57, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Criticisms of the standard

Since we seem to have another series of back-and-forths in the criticism section, let me try to bring this onto the talk page...

I kind-of-agree that the criticisms raised against ECMA-376 version 1, *if they are fixed in the final version*, are not so relevant on this page, even though MS Office 2007 still generates the criticized features. But when (as in the case of the date formats) the standards committee chose to respond, not by removing the broken "1900" interpretation-of-integer-as-date, but by specifying an *additional* feature (specifying dates as dates), leaving the old misfeature in place, I think the criticism is still relevant. It might take quite a bit of digging (including scanning the text of the standard for the current wording, which is a significant undertaking) to reference this properly, but I think we can't just blindly say that "if a criticism hasn't been restated after final approval of the standard, it's automatically assumed to be invalid". Its restatement might also be among the ~800 defect reports and modification requests that WG4 is currently processing, too. --Alvestrand (talk) 06:04, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

My major problem is that we have a "criticism" section in the first place. Well-written articles do not have criticism sections: they integrate criticism appropriately into articles. In order to work on this, my first step was trimming as much cruft from said section as possible. I would far rather that if material is to be re-added then it is re-added contextually in-article, rather than just reverted back into the criticism section. For that matter, if Scientus thinks that he's free to edit war so long as it's not with HAl then he's got another thing coming. Everyone in the discussion would be best limiting their use of the undo button until we have firm consensus. If more editors have to be blocked to stabilise the article then so be it. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:13, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

+1 on refactoring the criticism section (though I suspect this article is still too beset by people who fancy their job as Wikipedia editor is to champion some cause!) Alexbrn (talk) 11:47, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

In this particular case, I'm not sure whether renaming the "criticism" section to "Features of the standard with doubtful utility" or something like that would really make it much better. These are (I think) "features" specifically put into the standard in order to faithfully represent older Microsoft documents that are based on significantly flawed designs (such as Excel's treatment of dates). I have not followed the BRM and WG4 work closely enough to tell whether all these have been segregated off into the "transitional" section or whether they are still part of the base specification. If they are in the base specification, they deserve mention, and the way they got mentioned is that they were criticized. --Alvestrand (talk) 16:58, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Renaming is not what I'm talking about. Ideally, the criticisms should be moved inline with the descriptions of the relevant parts of the standard where possible; the parts removed after the first draft should be discussed on the section on the first draft. There's still a huge amount of work to be done here, which isn't being helped by edit warring on either side. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:13, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Alvestrand here and disagree with Chris Cunningham. With such a complicated standard and issue, criticism of a standard can even come from supporters as well as detractors, its about making the standard usable and good, not on blindly pushing through something that has undergone no review simply cause it has a specific name. That is how standards work. A specific list is really the only way to present this information.Scientus (talk) 19:09, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, no. Wikipedia deals with plenty of controversial subjects without lumping criticism into one open-ended list, which encourages random editors to tack on whatever gripes they find on the Internet. It will be reworked once someone finds the time to do it, or we'll never get over the current edit warring. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:09, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I have now taken the "support" and "criticsm" stuff and spread it throughout the article (or in a couple of cases, moved it to the OOXML Standardization article). This has entailed something of a restructing and addition of many more sections for addressing the technical content of OOXML (which is what this article should be about). The overall result is a much improved text, I humbly submit. Alexbrn (talk) 16:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Superb work. Cheers! Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure it is an improvement or not. However what definitly is not an improvement is your use of weasel words. Especially your use of: Some have criticised. That is not acceptable wording. hAl (talk) 20:07, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I am in a bit of two minds here. On the one hand, "some" is really bad. On the other hand, some criticisms (such as the criticism of the spreadsheet date bug) came from many sources, including multiple commentaries resolved at the BRM; naming the one body that is cited in the citation gives the false impression that this was only one party's opinion; naming multiple sources gives long strings of relatively trivial citations, something that's also not in good Wikipedia practice. "(Cited source), among others, said" might be a reasonable intermediate position. (personally, I think the "editors' response" document from the BRM is a fairly good citation source for a number of criticisms, citing ISO national bodies that made them, but it might be too much of a primary source for some.) --Alvestrand (talk) 21:36, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

The pre-BRM issue submissions are not a source of critisism anyways. That would be like calling bugszilla a critisism on Firefox. Submitting bugs is not the same as critisising a format. For instance the critisims on the dates stems all from a single blog post by Rob Weir which I think should be the listed source or a least a newssource that shows that origin. (Amazing critisism as it is IBM Lotus where he works that largely introduced those features. Decimal dates in spreadsheet are hignly common. I for instance noticed in practical use that OpenOffice in ODF also used decimal dates (SO I asume IBM Symphony does as well). However in ODF they are just decimal numbers with date formatting applied to them which is essentially just as weird. hAl (talk) 22:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

OpenXML Communities

Since it seems that we have to take this discussion again now that hAl is back:

I have browsed the websites of the two OpenXML communities that have been added. I cannot find any sign that these are organizations with independent existence; the terms of use for OpenXMLDeveloper.org say that "Throughout this web site, Microsoft provides you with access to a variety of resources..." - there are references to an organization, but that organization seems to have no charter, no president, no budget, no membership fees, and no way to join it.

If we must have those websites listed here, I think we should at least represent them accurately.

(Apart from that, I don't see anything objectionable in hAl's edits so far. Welcome back!) --Alvestrand (talk) 21:29, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

What people that come here need is information on the Office Open XML format. Those organizations have a lot of information on the Office Open XML format and are activly spreading that information trough their sites. Of course Microsoft is by far the main contributor as it is the main promoter of the Office open XML format. Those sites will provide people a lot more information on the format than we can cramp in this article and for instance the developers site has usefull article on OOXML developement which is not available here. Those sites can also bring people in contact whit each other as people going there share common questions or issues. Also providing information on these kind of organizations in an article is not so strange as for instance for for ODF you have the ODF alliance and the opendocument fellowship which do similar things allthough I think those articles for instance do not mention that the ODF alliance is run by the 3 founding members IBM, Sun and RedHat and contains content mostly written by IBM... . The sites mentioned in the Office Open XML article do not try to hide a relationship with Microsoft. hAl (talk) 22:12, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

My point is that there's no evidence that these websites *are* organizations. As represented, with member counts and so on, unless we specifically make the point that they're (as far as we know) just websites with a forum attached, listing them represents them as organizations, which we don't have the sources to support. (The ODF Alliance website shows many of the same shortcomings, but in that case, the Wikipedia article is based on other sources, btw) --Alvestrand (talk) 04:09, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Open Specification Promise limitations

I agree with User:hAl that the details of the Open Specification Promise do not belong in the lead. However, I think User:Scientus has a point in that since the Open Specification Promise excludes some people form "everyone" (those who bring patent suits against Microsoft, those who implement patented features that are not required for conformance), we should remove the words "anyone can implement without restriction" from the lead, and instead discuss the subject under the "Licensing" section.

It is true from a lawyer's perspective for most cases, and the politics and legalities of the situation make it likely to be true for everyone at least for this century (note: this is my WP:OR), but it's not uncontroversial, it is not obvious from the sources given, and therefore doesn't belong in the lead. --Alvestrand (talk) 07:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The reservations for licensing against people who bring patent suites against the licenser is standard for all major standardization organizations. Some examples or other standards organizations IPR policies:

• OASIS (includes OpenDocument standard)

From the OASIS RAND and OASIS Royalty free licensing policy requirements [1]: "The Obligated Party may also include a term providing that such license may be suspended with respect to the Licensee if that Licensee first sues the Obligated Party for infringement by the Obligated Party of any of the Licensee's Essential Claims covering the same OASIS Final Deliverable. "

• W3C (includes XML and HTML standards)

W3C Royalty Free license policy requirements [2]: "6. may be suspended with respect to any licensee when licensor is sued by licensee for infringement of claims essential to implement any W3C Recommendation".

Note: the W3C requires specifically a non-assignable, non-sublicensable license" which means that FSF statments on gpl sublicensing incompatibilitties would also apply to all W3C licenses

I think it would be rather superfluous to mention in this article commonly used patent licensing provisions that are not mentioned in ANY other article on standard formats. It shows a incredible bias against the Office Open XML standard to consider common policies special only for this format. Any the term anyone is appropriate because the free OSP license applies to anyone. By starting a patent suite someone would effectivly decline the license but that is a matter of choice. It is rather normal that if someone gives up his patent right (like MS does for OOXML) that he expects that to be reciprocal and if then another party does not give up their IP rights and actually sues the patry giving the license that the license no longer applies. Free software licenses also require reciprocal actions from the person accepting the licensing (like name attribution and publicing code). hAl (talk) 09:52, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

And as an extra question to you user:Alvestrand. You state specifically "but it's not uncontroversial". I think the above show that this is common practise in standardization and that these phrases are common in standards licensing. I would be interested how you come up with the ideaa this common practise is "not uncontroversial" which you claim as these practises are in line with standard requirements by major standardization organizations. Are you suggesting the royalty free licensing by for instance W3C is controversial because it contains that standard phrase against patent suits? hAl (talk) 10:03, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The specific wording I think is controversial is "anyone can implement".

The reason I'm very fluent in all this is that I've been through all the discussions with a previoius employer (Cisco) and another standards organization (IETF). It's completely common practice to attach such restrictions to licenses; some, such as Cisco's standard IETF grant language, have filed even broader ones, where a patent suit over *any* patent in *any* context was justification for revoking the license - your citation positions OASIS ("same OASIS Final Deliverable") and W3C ("any W3C recommendation") on different points along that spectrum. The intent is absolutely to constrain the behaviour of other people - getting them into a position where filing a lawsuit against the patent holder is untenable. What I'm pointing out is that the blanket term "everyone" is just as WP:OR as the blanket term "free" (with no qualifier). The practice is actually not very controversial. At any time, someone can choose to file a lawsuit, thereby placing themselves outside the group of people that can use the license - so even if the set of people who can't use the license is empty today (which we have no way of checking), it might not be so tomorrow. --Alvestrand (talk) 10:33, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The wording is exactly that as it is. Any [b]can[/b] use or implement the format. Anyone has access to the free spec, anyone has been provided the free technology license. The do not download the spec or do not have to accept the free license terms. But they can (and as is evident do already). If anyone wants to do things other then implement or use the format (like sueing the licensee) then that is their own choice. The license grants them rights for use and implementation. And if anyone wants to do that it is made availalbe to them. hAl (talk) 11:58, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

user:HAl, you fail to look at WP:OR, also user:HAl added the misinformation about a Microsoft legal matter, so "I agree with User:hAl that the details of the Open Specification Promise do not belong in the lead." is inaccurate. user:HAl's additions were highly inaccurate and conflicted with the sources that were suppose to support them. Scientus (talk) 10:54, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

You have repeatedly ignored discusioon about the information in the lead of the article. For example You are ignoring this section Talk:Office_Open_XML#Suggested_incompatiblity_MS_Office_2007and_ISO.2FIEC_29500 where me and user:Alvestrand have discussed some of the stuff you put in the lead and have come to a consensus on what should be in the article (and definitly not in the lead of the article). Then you have reverted the information back into the lead section of the article about half a dozen times again an again even though you were pointed to the consensus on the topic on the talk page. You have now again put in weasel wording on micrsoft patents than may or may not exist and could apply if you implementthings that are not Office Open XML. Your behaviour is pure vandalism which seems to stem from strong resentment against Microsoft as your comments and edit summieres confirm. this is however not a place for you to get even with Microsoft but an article about a document format. hAl (talk) 11:58, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I've been thinking these last few days about important details of the MS OSP, and how it compares with Sun's and IBM's equivalents on ODF, as well as how all these sit on the 'spectrum' that Alvestrand mentions above with W3C etc. It may well be that all this is really too much to discuss fully here; OOXML is only one of many technologies listed in the MS OSP, all subject to the same terms. No doubt some editors will be delighted at the possibility of another WP:POVFORK to get contentious matters out of this high-profile article. This is not my intention at all, the controversy needs summarising from all reliable points of view here as well.

I've tried to start a discussion at Talk:Microsoft Open Specification Promise#Comparison of OSP with IBM and Sun RAND licences. Maybe my post was too verbose, maybe there's no-one in over there... Maybe we should take some of this over there with a view to bringing conclusions and summaries back here after a while? --Nigelj (talk) 20:42, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Just voicing my agreement that the line "anyone can implement without restriction" should not be anywhere in the article (unless it is prefixed with "Microsoft claims that..."). OSP is just one of many reasons. A second reason is that many organizations have made official complaints that Microsoft has an advantage over others because of its dominant roll with OOXML. A third reason is that Microsoft has not been prompt with publishing the standard after revisions are made. This impedes others who want to implement the standard promptly. So there are many reasons why that line should be deleted.--Lester 08:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Lester While I agree the phrase is problematic, it really doesn't help things here that you are making statements that are just nonsensical. Where are the "official complaints" that organisations have made? (rather than PR from competitors?). And what's this about Microsoft delaying publishing the standard. Microsoft do not publish the standard. Alexbrn (talk) 11:45, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

(Alexbrn, despite your hybrid link in the above post, [[User:Nigelj|Lester]], I would like to make it clear that I and Lester are in fact two different people. --Nigelj (talk) 15:30, 16 October 2009 (UTC))

(Ooops, C/P error; now fixed) Alexbrn (talk) 15:53, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

The claim that the OSP does not cover implementations that deviate from the standard is a bit misleading. It could be read as implying that if you deviate from the standard in any way (including by adding things not covered by the standard), you lose all protection under the OSP. That's simply not correct. Here's how it works. The OSP defines "Microsoft Necessary Claims" as claims in MS patents that are necessary to implement the required parts of the standard. Your use of these "necessary claims" is covered by OSP as long as the parts of your implementation that would infringe those claims conform to the standard.

It's instructive to compare the OSP, the patent license for the 2003 Office formats, the Sun patent license for ODF, and the patent license IBM uses for much of its open source stuff. I've put together such a comparison that shows all four of these side by side, with corresponding sections highlighted in matching colors. This makes it a lot easier to compare them to see the similarities and differences, and identify what is just routine boilerplate, and what is the meat of each. Tim.the.bastard (talk) 16:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Call for restoring the Support and Criticism sections

Tell me mister Brown, why hasn't the OOXML article a criticism section? There is a lot of criticism spread throughout the OOXML article. In the odf article it is a different section immediately visible in the table of contents. The OOXML article more looks like a advertising folder / technical reference than a neutral encyclopedic representation. Compare the OOXML table of contents with the odf one. You'll see a very different picture.

EDIT: The criticism sections in both articles need to go away according to WP:CRITS.

This information represents the state of things at 13:35, 23 October 2009 (UTC).

Table of content in the ooxml article:

Contents [hide]

   * 1 Background
   * 2 History
   * 3 Licensing
   * 4 Container
         o 4.1 Relationships
         o 4.2 Document properties
   * 5 Document markup languages
         o 5.1 Design approach
         o 5.2 WordprocessingML (WML)
         o 5.3 SpreadsheetML (SML)
         o 5.4 PresentationML (PML)
         o 5.5 Office MathML (OMML)
         o 5.6 DrawingML
   * 6 Foreign resources
         o 6.1 Non-XML content
         o 6.2 Foreign markup
   * 7 Compatibility settings
   * 8 Extensibility
   * 9 Structure
         o 9.1 ISO/IEC 29500:2008
         o 9.2 ECMA-376 1st edition (2006)
         o 9.3 Compatibility between versions
   * 10 Adoption
   * 11 Application support
   * 12 See also
   * 13 References
   * 14 External links

Table of content in the odf article:

Contents [hide]

   * 1 Specifications
   * 2 Standardization
   * 3 Application support
         o 3.1 Software
         o 3.2 Accessibility
   * 4 Licensing
         o 4.1 Availability of the standard
         o 4.2 Additional royalty free licensing on patented technology
   * 5 Response
         o 5.1 Support for OpenDocument
         o 5.2 Criticism
   * 6 Worldwide adoption
         o 6.1 International level
         o 6.2 National level
         o 6.3 Subnational levels
   * 7 See also
   * 8 References
   * 9 External links

Specifications in odf article is very concise:

Specifications Main article: OpenDocument technical specification

The most common filename extensions used for OpenDocument documents are [4]:

* .odt for word processing (text) documents * .ods for spreadsheets * .odp for presentations * .odg for graphics * .odf for formulae, mathematical equations

A basic OpenDocument file consists of an XML document that has <document> as its root element. OpenDocument files can also take the format of a ZIP compressed archive containing a number of files and directories; these can contain binary content and benefit from ZIP's lossless compression to reduce file size. OpenDocument benefits from separation of concerns by separating the content, styles, metadata and application settings into four separate XML files.

There is a comprehensive set of sample documents in OpenDocument Format available.[5] The whole test suite is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.

As you can read. In the odf article there is a link to a page with much more technical information.

The OOXML article should be changed: Put 4 to and including 9 in a separate article. Make a concise specification section as shown in the quoted odf example. Also add a Response section. Put the adoption in it and add a Criticism as done in odf. Have been bold and changed something in OOXML article WP:BEBOLD, found it clashing with the structure of the article and changed it back again.

If all those changes would be added, the OOXML article wouldn't be that BIASED anymore!! --Thelennonorth (talk) 13:35, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Err, it would actually help if you read this page so you had some undertanding of why (in line with Wikipedia good practice) the criticism section was refactored, partly in an attempt to stamp out the factionalism that your comments smells of. I have put a "criticism" tag in the ODF article for exactly this reason. I don't think the set of ODF articles is structured very well as the OpenDocument hub article ends up containing things that would be better spread through the subsidiary articles. However, the structure of the ODF articles is hardly my fault! BTW, what content here "looks like a advertising folder" to your eyes? point us at it so we can ferret out anything so untoward Alexbrn (talk) 13:48, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

For starters the piece that seemed to contain only criticism, put it in a criticism section.

It's located in the Design Approach piece after the first paragraph. Put technical content in another article named: Office Open XML technical specification. It's strange that you say the the ODF article has to spread more things in subsidiary articles. The OOXML article contains much more, bad content and structuring. FYI, the odf article is better structured in the way you say that the article's should be. Give an example? Well just compare the two articles. The structure and content is all the example you can get. Thelennonorth (talk) 14:04, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

But it's not just criticism. Granted some of the claims there are dubious but still -- they'd be out of place in a "criticsm" section. To give one example of the kind of problem I was thinking of with the OpenDocument article, it lists national adoption (a standardisation activity) in the hub article rather than in the standardisation article where that more properly belongs. The fact is, OOXML is a format (look at the category tags for the article), and so it is as a format we should describe it. I know some people want to think of it as The Great Satan, and if we create a hub article with no clear focus those trolls will surely be magnetized to it Alexbrn (talk) 15:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I've just read WP:STRUCTURE and found that actually the two article's would be best of going the way described in it. The odf article can use some improvements. Got a point with the national adoption. It should be in adoption, not standardization. National adoption has nothing to do with standardization. Thelennonorth (talk) 15:23, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Right, creating a hub article would be a bad thing - a POV fork for the purpose of bringing "criticism" (and no doubt others will bring "support") to the fore, as your first comment here makes clear. Right now we have an article for the format, and an article for its standardization. There is no mysterious third topic that somehow needs to be covered. On ODF, when a standard is "adopted" by a nation, that nation makes a National Standard -- so it very much is a standardization activity. Of course, the cause-champions like to use the word adoption to imply up-take; we should avoid that kind of crass ellision in this article, I think! Alexbrn (talk) 17:06, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I think separating the concepts of "adoption as national standard" (clearly belongs in the standardization article), "adoption as a recommended format by organizations" and "adoption by users" would be a Good Thing. I'm not sure where the 2 latter topics belong - probably here. My read is that "adoption by users" is fairly high - but mostly because it's what Word sends by default, and people haven't made a conscious decision about it; "adoption as a national standard" is sometimes done as a routine matter by national bodies, and sometimes it's a government type 2 action; I don't have a good read of "adoption as a recommended format". BTW, the TOC of the ODF article looks as if it was modelled after the previous version of the OOXML article; that doesn't make it good. --Alvestrand (talk) 18:56, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd support restoration of the Criticism section. I'm not sure that is against Wikipedia policy. I thought the policy was against trivia (Wikipedia:Trivia sections), and lists of miscellaneous information. A list of criticism of a product is much more specific than a trivia section about a pop star.--Lester 06:48, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

And presumably you want the "Support" section back too (which I also removed)?; then the edit wars can resume and things will return to normal. See WP:CRITS. The two main problems we had with a criticism section are that 1. It causes people with strong opinions to dominate the article (just read this page to see that) and 2. As the guidelines say critics should be meaningful individuals. Many of the criticisms comes from blogs and are in their own right questionable as qualifying for inclusion. Neverthess, all that content has been preserved in more appropriate locations in the text. Calling for the reinstatement of the criticism section and not the support section is so POV it hardly requires comment!! Alexbrn (talk) 07:50, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Another problem with the former criticism section was how it related to the different versions of OOXML (it was called criticism of Ecma 376-1); this was awkward and symptomatic of the bad writing that WP:CRITS warns attends criticism sections. Alexbrn (talk) 08:08, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

A hub article does not have the purpose to bring things like criticism to the fore. It would have the purpose to not do that. Contrary to my earlier posts, have read some wikipedia guidelines about criticisms, I believe that both article's shouldn't have a criticism section. About the support, it's indeed a too wide term. Application support on the other hand, is more defined. Application support is that applications can read/write it. The word adoption is still somewhat too overloaded to use it in this context. More explanation necessary in the article? Some content under adoption should be placed in a (?sub?)section called Under Evaluation for adoption. What's up with the OOXML-Communities? The first is more a informational website than a community. Thelennonorth (talk) 16:51, 30 October 2009 (UTC)