James

UK

Java programmer

Additional, you state that "OOXML is the default format for files saved in Office 2007, so we might as well accept it will become a fact of business life,"

Office 2007 shipped before ecma submitted OOXML to ISO for standards approval. There have been hundreds (thousands?) of changes to the spec since it was implemented in Office 2007. In fact, Microsoft's Jason Matusow states as such in his blog.

Once again I firmly believe that A lot of clearly smart people have invested a lot of time money and effort in this standard, but that doesn't make it best, good, or even right.