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Microsoft Office is using an artificially complex XML schema as a lock-in tool

blog.documentfoundation.org

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Re: Microsoft Office is using an artificially complex XML schema as a lock-in tool

#11

Post by masa331 »

wvenable wrote: post #5

> Unfortunately, while an XML schema can be simple, it can also be unnecessarily complex, bloated, convoluted and difficult to implement without specific knowledge of its features. One could now use that exact sentence to describe the most popular open document format of all: HTML and CSS.

Can you be more specific here? HTML and CSS can't be described like that in my opinion.

It is complex but not complicated. You can start with just a few small parts and get to a usable and clean document within hours from the first contact with the languages. The tags and rules are usually quite self-describing while consice and there are tons and tons of good docs and tools. The development of the standards is also open and you can peek there if you want to understand decisions and rationals.

Re: Microsoft Office is using an artificially complex XML schema as a lock-in tool

#12

Post by bob1029 »

This is a comical perspective to me. I've been ass-deep in core banking APIs where we generate service references from WSDL/XSDs. Some of the resulting codegen measures in the tens of megabytes for some files. I wouldn't even attempt to quantify the number of pages of documentation. And this is just for mid size US banking domain. Microsoft Office has to work literally everywhere for everything. The fact that it's only 8000 pages of documentation is likely a miracle.

If you're working with an XML schema that is served up in XSD format, using code gen is the best (only) path. I understand it's old and confusing to the new generation, but if you just do it the boomer way you can have the whole job done in like 15 minutes. Hand-coding to an XML interface would be like cutting a board with an unplugged circular saw.

Re: Microsoft Office is using an artificially complex XML schema as a lock-in tool

#13

Post by pessimizer »

Strange that this is getting traction again, and good on the people getting it out there. Saw something about "OOXML" make Google News the other day.

Having a debate about the quality of OOXML feels like a waste of time, though. This was all debated in public when Microsoft was making its proprietary products into national standards, and nobody on Microsoft's side debated the formats on the merits because there obviously weren't any, except a dubious backwards compatibility promise that was already being broken because MS Office couldn't even render OOXML properly. People trying to open old MS Office documents were advised to try Openoffice.

They instead did the wise thing and just named themselves after their enemy ("Open Office? Well we have Office Open!"), offered massive discounts and giveaways to budget-strapped European countries for support, and directly suborned individual politicians.

Which means to me that it's potentially a winnable battle at some point in the future, but I don't know why now would be a better outcome than then. Maybe if you could trick MS into fighting with Google about it. Or just maybe, this latest media push is some submarine attempt by Google to start a new fight about file formats?

Re: Microsoft Office is using an artificially complex XML schema as a lock-in tool

#15

Post by choeger »

another_twist wrote: post #14

How hard would it be to generate a parser for this spec with AI code gen ?

A parser is trivial. It's XML and you have a schema.

What you want is a compiler (e.g., into a different document format) or an interpreter (e.g., for running a search or a spell checker).

That's a task that's massively complicated because you cannot give an LLM the semantic definition of the XML and your target (both typically are under documented and under specified). Without that information, the LLM would almost certainly generate an incomplete or broken implementation.

Re: Microsoft Office is using an artificially complex XML schema as a lock-in tool

#16

Post by nullbyte808 »

wvenable wrote: post #5

> Unfortunately, while an XML schema can be simple, it can also be unnecessarily complex, bloated, convoluted and difficult to implement without specific knowledge of its features. One could now use that exact sentence to describe the most popular open document format of all: HTML and CSS.

Yeah but those are open standards, where as Microsoft is the only one with true knowledge of its XML.

Re: Microsoft Office is using an artificially complex XML schema as a lock-in tool

#18

Post by piker »

This is a dupe from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44606646 but I'll repeat what I said over there.

I feel qualified to opine on this as both a former power user of Word and someone building a word processor for lawyers from scratch[1]. I've spent hours pouring over both the .doc and OOXML specs and implementing them. There's a pretty obvious journey visible in those specs from 1984 when computers were under powered with RAM rounding to zero through the 00's when XML was the hot idea to today when MSFT wants everyone on the cloud for life. Unlike say an IDE or generic text editor where developers are excited to work on and dogfood the product via self-hosting, word processors are kind of boring and require separate testing/QA.

It's not "artificial", it's just complex.

MSFT has the deep pockets to fund that development and testing/QA. LibreOffice doesn't.

The business model is just screaming that GPL'd LibreOffice is toast.

[1] Plug: https://tritium.legal

Re: Microsoft Office is using an artificially complex XML schema as a lock-in tool

#20

Post by piker »

bob1029 wrote: post #12

This is a comical perspective to me. I've been ass-deep in core banking APIs where we generate service references from WSDL/XSDs. Some of the resulting codegen measures in the tens of megabytes for some files. I wouldn't even attempt to quantify the number of pages of documentation. And this is just for mid size US banking domain. Microsoft Office has to work literally everywhere for everything. The fact that it's on…

While I generally agree, I don't think the author is complaining about the XML spec's complexity per se but rather that rendering the underlying structures to a page is hard.
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