Not sure what I was expecting when I started reading ISO/IEC 29500, the standard that (supposedly) describes the modern Microsoft Office file formats. But I definitely didn't expect the Normative References to include:
Maimon, Rabbi Moshe ben, Complete Restatement of the Oral Law (Mishneh Torah).
Yep, this ISO standard for a digital file format is referencing a Jewish religious text.
For those who don't speak Standardese: this is a normative reference, meaning that it's not just background literature - it's directly relevant for implementing some part of the standard. Or as ISO puts it: it's "indispensable for the application of this document".
Did I mention that this is a Jewish religious text from the late 12th century?
... okay, that's actually pretty recent compared to many other religious texts, and obviously there are modern re-publications of it. But the standard doesn't reference a specific modern edition. Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, aka Rambam, aka Maimonides is the original 12th-century author! The standard explains that for undated references, you're expected to use "the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments)". I'm sure that's not ambiguous at all in this case.
And that isn't even the only religious normative reference in this standard. We also have:
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Da'wah and Guidance.
At first glance, you may think that this is another religious text - a publication titled "Endowments, Da'wah and Guidance" from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. But no - this is the ministry's full name, "Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Da'wah and Guidance". The standard isn't referencing a particular publication, it's just pointing to an entire Saudi Arabian ministry as reference material. Good luck getting the "latest edition" of that.
The other normative references are only slightly less strange, such as:
Korean Law Enactment No. 4, 1961.
Now I'm not an expert on South Korean law, but that also seems oddly unspecific. Surely they enacted more than one law with the number 4? I guess you're expected to figure out the rest based on the year?
Calendar Reform Committee, Indian Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. 1957
At least this seems to be an unambiguous reference. By that I mean you can put it into DuckDuckGo and find a few library catalog entries for it. But still... a digital document standard that depends on something with "Nautical Almanac" in the title?
Okay, after that last one, you might be able to guess what all these weird references are about. It's calendar systems of course. If you look at...
*digital paper rustling*
... pages 3786--3787 of the standard, you'll find a list of 14 calendar systems supported in the Office file formats. Apparently, only some of them are formalized in national or international standards - namely the Gregorian, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese calendars. For the other calendar systems, they had to reference other sources.
This includes a few religious sources, because some of these calendar systems are relevant for certain religious holidays. That's why for the Hebrew calendar, the standard references the Mishneh Torah and the Gauß formula for Passover, and for the Islamic Hijri calendar, it points you to the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Islamic Affairs.
The Indian Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac from 1957 is what they use to define the Indian national (or Saka) calendar. For once, that's not a religious book, and neither is the calendar, as far as I can tell - it seems to be used mainly by the Indian government. Which makes it even more odd that they would choose an old almanac from the 1950s as the reference. Surely by now the Indian government has published some newer document describing this calendar system? Apparently this calendar was introduced in 1957, so I guess the authors of the standard went with the earliest source they could find or something..?
Oh, and there's one more oddball reference, for the Thai solar calendar. This reference isn't even listed in the Normative References section - it's only found inline in the body of the standard, as part of this wonderful definition:
[...] the Thai calendar, as defined by the Royal Decree of H.M. King Vajiravudh (Rama VI) in Royal Gazette B. E. 2456 (1913 A.D.) and by the decree of Prime Minister Phibunsongkhram (1941 A.D.) [...]
With "Phibunsongkhram" additionally being an inline link to the website "luang_phibunsongkhram.totallyexplained.com", which seems like a totally not questionable domain. Of course, the subdomain doesn't resolve anymore, the main domain now redirects to some guy's Facebook page, and the Wayback Machine didn't capture this specific page.
But it did capture the totallyexplained.com homepage, which apparently only existed from 2007 to early 2010. It calls itself "The ultimate information resource" and "The best place on the Web for info" and looks wonderfully early-2000s in a way I can't fully describe. Definitely not the quality of literature I'd expect to find linked in an ISO standard.
Oh, and... what's that footer?
© 2007 totallyexplained.com. Portions © Wikipedia Foundation. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
... this is just a Wikipedia mirror with added spam links, isn't it?
Something tells me that when this paragraph was written, someone copied the words "Prime Minister Phibunsongkhram" from this totally reputable website, pasted them into a Word document, and included the inline link by accident. And that somehow made its way into the final standard.
*sigh*
Look, I was making fun of the religious normative references, but those have at least some justification. But this? This is just disappointingly sloppy.
I know that mistakes can happen. We all forget to paste without formatting. But out of all the people in the world, I would expect at least the authors of the Microsoft Word file format standard to use their own software properly!
And why were they using a dodgy Wikipedia mirror for research in the first place? You could have at least used, yaknow, actual Wikipedia!
Remember, this isn't some random .doc hidden in an obscure corner of Microsoft's developer website, typed up by a lone tech writer, to be read by maybe 17 people. This is an international standard for some of the most important file formats in the world, backed by Microsoft, approved by multiple national standards bodies, published by ISO, revised three times over multiple years, and available for sale for 216 CHF1!
And yet, within reading only a few pages of the standard, I stumble across imprecise and incomplete references and accidental broken inline links? And somehow none of this was noticed by anybody involved in creating or approving this standard in the last 15 years?
Really, Microsoft? Really, ISO? Really?
Again, I know - mistakes happen. This standard is over 5000 pages long. I don't expect anybody to perfectly proofread every last word of it! I just thought that ISO would have some processes and/or tooling to catch basic mistakes like dead links or way too imprecise literature references.
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To be fair, this particular standard can also be downloaded for free from ISO's Publicly Available Standards page, so there's no reason to pay actual money for it.