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Is OOXML Artifically Complex?

OOXML is less an act of sabotage than the continuation of a flawed, inelegant lineage.

But that’s likely less about a plot to block third-party compatibility and more about a self-interested negligence: Microsoft prioritized the convenience of its own implementation and neglected the qualities of clarity, simplicity, and universality that a general-purpose standard should have. Given that context, the sensible inference about Microsoft’s goal is to create a format that it controlled but also carried the “international standard” seal of approval, which would be both a shield against potential regulation and a weapon against the challenge from ODF. Joel Spolsky, in a famous blog post, analyzed the complexity of the old binary Office formats, showing that they were even more akin to a direct memory dump, and was also of the opinion that this design was driven more by performance and practical constraints than by malice or incompetence.

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