The OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) in Geneva ended in tears. World XML expert Tim Bray (pictured) immediately recorded his thoughts on the meeting, and his verdict was withering: despite some good that perhaps came of it ("With a very few exceptions, everyone really tried hard to work together and make the document better," he writes), he described the BRM process as "complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit."

"I’m not an ISO expert, but whatever their 'Fast Track' process was designed for, it sure wasn’t this," blogged Bray from a hotel room in Frankfurt, Germany, which he found himself trapped after missing his connection from Geneva back to Vancouver where he is based.

"You just can’t revise six thousand pages of deeply complex specification-ware in the time that was provided for the process," he added - a reference to the 6000 pages of documentation that define Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format - the document format that Microsoft has proposed should become an international standard.

Stressing that he was not representing anyone at the meeting, or conferring with anyone who wasn’t in the room ("I’m knowledgeable about the subject and my country asked me to go," he explained), Bray saved his harshest criticism for the ISO:

"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.

Ending his post with a prediction of what will happen now, Bray does not lose his wry sense of humor:

In practice this means that the heavy politics starts Monday morning. National bodies that are smart will make their decision between 8:30 and 9:00 AM on March 3rd and immediately go on long vacations in Tasmania or Nunavut."