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Microsoft Seeks Ecma OK on XPS


Critics allege Redmond casts a heavy shadow

By David Worthington
July 26, 2007 — 
It’s not easy being Microsoft’s standards-bearer, as Ecma International has found. When it began drafting an XML-based electronic paper specification, Ecma was the subject of cacophonous criticism, even before its work started.

Ecma formed Technical Committee 46 (TC46) at its June 28 General Assembly meeting and charged it with producing a formal standard for an XML-based electronic paper format and page description language, each based upon Microsoft’s XML Paper Specification (XPS).

Microsoft calls XPS a platform-independent document storage and typesetting specification, although the only implementations to date run on Windows. It has been viewed as a competitor to Adobe Systems’ Portable Document Format (PDF), which Adobe submitted to the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) in February, for eventual standardization by the ISO.

Windows Vista and the Office 2007 productivity suite have native support for XPS, and there are several independent implementations trailing back to Global Graphics and Xerox’s demonstration at Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005. XPS’ submission to Ecma was co-signed by 15 companies that will participate in the work of the technical committee, including Autodesk, Brother, Canon, HP, Lexmark, Ricoh, Toshiba and Xerox.

A Question of Influence
Naysayers and rivals have bemoaned the way Microsoft has maneuvered its internally developed specifications through standards bodies, alleging that it exerts too much control over the process. Critics claim that Microsoft is using Ecma as a gateway to put its standards before ISO/IEC, following

Microsoft’s submission of its Office Open XML document formats to Ecma last year, and its acceptance as the Ecma 376 standard last December. The specification was subsequently submitted to ISO/IEC for fast-track approval, where it remains under consideration.

A notice posted on the TC46 Web page on June 29 poured gasoline onto the fire. The notice read that the committee’s stated goal was to “produce a formal standard for an XML-based electronic paper format and XML-based page description language which is consistent with existing implementations of the format called the XML Paper Specification.” Another directive was to produce a formal standard for office productivity applications within the Ecma International standards process that would be fully compatible with the Office Open XML (OOXML) Formats.

Linux Foundation board member and attorney Andrew Updegrove reacted sharply. “If OOXML, and now Microsoft XML Paper Specification, each sail through Ecma, and are then adopted by ISO/IEC JTC1, then I think that we might as well declare ‘game over’ for open standards,” Updegrove wrote in his blog on ConsortiumInfo.org.

When questioned, Updegrove stated that Microsoft was not doing anything explicitly wrong, but Ecma and ISO would be, by creating standards that further embed a single product into the marketplace.

“It is hard to square a standard built to one firmly embedded product [Microsoft Office], with the concept of looking out for the best interests of all stakeholders,” Updegrove remarked.

Microsoft spokesperson Catherine Brooker attempted to extinguish the flames, telling SD Times that there were “inaccuracies” on Ecma’s Web site that made XPS sound like its submission to Ecma has something to do with OOXML.

The TC46 committee has since updated its Web page to remove the offending language.

Directions on Microsoft analyst Greg DeMichillie noted that there are two kinds of standardization: The “old-school” IEEE-style development process where interested parties get together, and debate and prototype before finalizing the specification; and another “young standard” style, where a company such as Microsoft develops something on its own, and then looks to a standards body to ratify it without making significant changes.

“Effectively, it allows vendors to develop software on their own and then get the imprimatur of being standardized,” said DeMichillie. He added that in order for XPS to be successful, XPS readers must be available for all of the popular platforms, because governments and businesses want assurances that documents created today can be read in the future.

Noting that there are no non-Windows XPS readers available today, DeMichillie said, “Regardless of what has been standardized and what hasn’t, for a government that wants to publish documents like tax forms for citizens to access, PDF is currently the only viable option.”

Stephen Walli, a former participant in the IEEE, Ecma and ISO POSIX standards communities, and currently vice president of open source development strategy at Optaros, said Microsoft is taking to Ecma a technology that they acknowledge is a PDF competitor. He added that XPS need not be standardized at this time and that standardizing early is “dangerous,” unless Microsoft expects to be the only implementation.

Microsoft’s Brooker pointed to Web standards as an example of how young standards can grow and become something useful with industry participation, and added that Ecma will decide when XPS is ready.

She explained that Ecma would be producing drafts and technical documentation that other developers can use to build XPS readers and translators.

But Walli went on to accuse Microsoft of dumping its new product specification into Ecma for competitive reasons. “They’re not evolving anything, they’re just competing with an accepted standard,” referring to Adobe’s PDF. Adobe did not respond to repeated requests to comment.

Jean Paoli, general manager of interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft, stated that XPS was designed to solve a different set of problems than PDF is trying to solve.

He said the primary benefits of XPS are that it is optimized for the set of requirements needed for electronic paper, it uses an XML-based markup language for interoperability, and it can be implemented in document peripherals that need random access of content and streamed consumption.


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