Why Microsoft's argument to support two Office XML standards for freedom of "choice" rings hollow to me...
Category Microsoft
From ZDNet: Microsoft fails Aussie maths compatibility test
Microsoft's decision to dump compatibility with Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) in favour of its own Office MathML (OMML) in Office 2007 is unlikely to win any support in Australia, where software tools like TeX, MathType and Mathematica predominate.
From ZDNet: Microsoft fails Aussie maths compatibility test
Microsoft's decision to dump compatibility with Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) in favour of its own Office MathML (OMML) in Office 2007 is unlikely to win any support in Australia, where software tools like TeX, MathType and Mathematica predominate.
According to a blog entry posted by Microsoft Office software development engineer, Murray Sargent, the rationale behind the decision, is the desire to have an XML that corresponds closely to the internal Microsoft format.
"The main problem is that Word needs to allow users to embed arbitrary span-level material (basically anything you can put into a Word paragraph) in math zones and MathML is geared toward allowing only math in math zones," Sargent wrote in the post.
So it sounds really nice to talk about compatibility and interoperatibility, until people are already using your base "standard". Then you can drop "compatible standards" that aren't as "compatible" as what you offer...
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