ISO conducted a Ballot Resolution Meeting on Friday in an effort to address some of the technical issues that plague Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format. Participants say that some very positive and meaningful changes were made to the OOXML specification, but many of the participants are frustrated with the large number of problems that didn't receive adequate attention as a result of time constraints.

ISO declined to grant OOXML immediate fast-track approval during a previous vote last year. Companies and government agencies represented in ISO's OOXML evaluation process have since generated thousands of comments, criticisms, and requests for clarification. ISO passed these back to ECMA, which has worked with Microsoft to consolidate and review the concerns expressed by ISO participants, and finally issue responses.

The function of the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) is to enable ISO participants to evaluate and vote on ECMA's responses, many of which are technical recommendations aimed at resolving or addressing perceived deficiencies in the standard. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of problems in the specification identified by ISO members has made the review process a significant challenge. There were over 1,000 ECMA responses, spanning approximately 2,300 pages.

Participants say that only a small portion of the ECMA responses were actually discussed during the BRM. When time ran out, the rest of the responses were simply approved without any review at all. This was done out of necessity because the alternative would be to abandon the important technical recommendations made in the unreviewed ECMA responses. The end result is that ISO members participating in the OOXML voting process were given very little opportunity to refine and expand on ECMA's fixes for OOXML's problems. Although some individuals who have been involved in the process—even some in the ODF camp—have expressed strong support for ECMA's efforts on OOXML, others—like Google and IBM—say that too many deficiencies still remain.

Some of the more vocal critics contend that the lack of time for adequate review of the ECMA responses is evidence that OOXML isn't an appropriate candidate for fast-track approval. One such critic was one of Canada's representatives at the BRM, Tim Bray—director of web technologies for Sun Microsystems (which backs the competing OpenDocument format) and one of the co-editors of W3C's XML specification. "The process was complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit. I'm not an ISO expert, but whatever their 'Fast Track' process was designed for, it sure wasn't this. You just can't revise six thousand pages of deeply complex specification-ware in the time that was provided for the process," wrote Bray in a blog entry. "As the time grew short there was some real heartbreak as we ran out of time to take up proposals; some of them, in my opinion, things that would really have helped the quality of the draft."

Microsoft's Brian Jones has a significantly more optimistic take on the outcome of the BRM, which he believes was largely successful. "The meeting closed with clapping and cheering, folks were really happy about the improved proposals for the specification and it was a very positive experience for me personally," Jones wrote in a blog entry. "I'm deeply impressed by the thoughtful consideration and strong commitment shown by the NB delegates to improve this specification and I want to thank them all. It is clear that the process worked."

Delegates now have 30 days to issue their final vote on OOXML fast-track approval. In light of the numerous concerns and technical issues that have yet to be fully resolved, it isn't clear that Microsoft's format will receive enough votes to get the three-fifths support required for fast-track approval. The company has clearly worked hard with ECMA to address as many concerns as possible, but the complexity of the specification may mean that fast-track approval just isn't feasible at this point.

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