Putting 6039 pages in context

Electronic documents and the invention of the vertical scrollbar makes things so convenient. With  documents represented on-screen a page flip is replaced by a twirl of the mouse-wheel. Readers can now do away with the physical restrictions of binding techniques, paper grammage and unwieldy weight.

This is why it is sometimes useful to put things in perspective, and how things really are in the real world. I was initially skeptical and against the idea of printing out the 6039 page specification of the Microsoft Office Open XML (MSOOXML) or Ecma 376 specification. It sounded like a trivial prank, and went against my principles of unnecessarily wasting resources.

However if you look at the pictures below and let it sink in for a while, the physical presence of the specification serves as an important tool to remind us how large this specification is. On your hard disk it is just 47MB. This is a mere drop in the ocean, when compared to the 120GBs I have available as storage.  However when it is printed out in its full glory, it is easy to feel awed by the amount of work we as entrusted representatives to the Malaysian National Body for international standards technical committee, would have to do to ensure that the ISO's reputation is preserved in maintaining its high standards of specifications it ratifies.

This is a picture of Hasan holding two boxes filled with the MSOOXML spec back in January 2007. I thought it was quite a sight, where two whole reams of paper was used to print it out, costing an estimate of RM700 (USD200) just to do so. To save the environment, it was duplex printed (on both sides.)

During the MSOOXML briefing, Hasan took out the spec from the boxes and it made a significant pile on the meeting table. We eventually had to split it in two as it was blocking the views of fellow committee members.

Just recently, Pavel Janik from Czechoslovakia together with some friends also  printed out  the specification.  In this case, they printed it one page per sheet which resulted in this towering stack; 6 bindings of 1000 pages each. This was for a workshop on MSOOXML at ČNI (Czech standardisation institute), the equivalent of SIRIM in Malaysia.

In February 2007, ČNI submitted three very valid concerns against MSOOXML during the Fast Track balloting in that;

a) the 30 day review was too short for the preparation of the comments,

b) they were not convinced that there were no contradictory provisions with other ISO/IEC standards and

c) ČNI suggested that MSOOXML be submited using the standard procedure for the development of the ISO/IEC standard rather than being "Fast Tracked".

Since the Fast Tracking process went ahead anyway despite the 14 strong objections from the various National Bodies, it is fantastic that standards bodies like ČNI can hold robust debates on this issues to work out the problems found shared with the public.

It would be interesting to find out what transpired in the meeting, as the title of the slides, reads "Choice between Multiple Standards - The case of format neutrality"

Judging by the keywords, I can extrapolate the talking points as we have come across this framing of the issue and have addressed it many times before. This article entitled Microsoft's Definition of Contradictions and The Art of Rewriting History addresses the false precedence of "multiple standards". I have written an article on choice, and its recent re-definition in Choice to Choose. On format neutrality, there is of course "Market Neutrality" and ODF. It is therefore clear that the interest of Malaysians of consumers  can be summarised by the demand: "One Standard, Multiple Apps".

What is interesting is how this issue is being played up. Instead on concentrating on the technical issues regarding the specification to which there are many, Microsoft is politicising it by claiming unfairness in the process, naming IBM as the alleged oppressor to MSOOXML.

This is probably the reason why Microsoft continually seems to be sending non-technical people (to Malaysia and Czech ) to these workshops probably to try to convince us of the merits of the specification not on a technical level, but on a "political" level.

A fellow committee member remarked: "This is a red herring, a means of diverting attention from the actual technical issues with the proposed standard."

I would suggest Microsoft to address the concerns on a technical level, and demonstrate that they are willing to improve on the technical deficiencies of the specifications. If the format is technically sound, then support for it will come automatically from the community.

Imagine flipping through the reams of paper presented above. All 6039 pages worth of technical specifications.  Remember that this physically represents one years work in Ecma TC45. Many specifications a tenth of the size have often spent twice as long in development.

modified from Rob Wier's blog post on specification speed of MSOOXML.

It is probably the largest specification ever to be ratified at ISO. It must definitely be the largest specification ever to be "Fast Tracked" via the special relationship Ecma has with ISO.

Judge for yourself if Czechoslovakia's recommendation back in February 2007 still seems like a practical request:

"Open documents, generally open standards, are very important for global information exchange and therefore they need very broad discussion of all interested parties.

For this reason the Czech Republic suggests using the standard procedure for the development of ISO/IEC standard from the document ECMA-376."

yk.

Comments

[chfl4gs_]

Gee...6039 pages!! What a unnecessarily waste of resources! Conserve papers and save the trees!