Comments on: Will anyone really care about XML support in Office 12?

By: Carl

Carl — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Ed,

Color me skeptical, but I don’t read anything in this News.com article or in this Sinofsky quote:

“And any program that supports XML — it doesn’t have to be part of Office or even from Microsoft — can access and work with data in the new file format.”

about writing or saving to the new formats. There were some early reports that Office 2003 XML had a proprietary presentation layer, but I don’t know if this made it into the final relase.

I guess what I’m asking is, do you know if Microsoft is opening the format completely (data and presentation layers) so that third parties can read AND write to the new formats?

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

The white paper (Word format) for developers says:

The Open XML Format is based on XML and ZIP technologies, thereby making it universally accessible. The specification for the format and schemas will be published and made available under the same royalty-free license that exists today for the Microsoft Office 2003 Reference Schemas and which is openly offered and available for broad industry use.

[snip]

The openness of the Open XML Format unlocks data and introduces a broad, new level of integration beyond the desktop. For example, developers could refer to the published specification of the new file format to create data-rich documents without using the Office applications. Server-side applications could process documents in bulk to enable large-scale solutions that mesh enterprise data within the familiar, flexible Office applications. Standard XML protocols, such as XPath (a common XML query language) and XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations), could be used to retrieve data from documents or to update the contents inside of a document from external data.

That sounds like it offers full read and write support for third party developers.

By: Anil

Anil — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

That’s funny, we’ve actually had Movable Type generating Word XML documents for a while now, so it’d be nice if they made it work in reverse.

By: Zaine Ridling

Zaine Ridling — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

The angle I’m interested in is document [format] half-life, and this is welcome news to me. Over the years, I have had so many papers, stories, and books in Word’s binary format that each few versions, I’d open them and re-save them in the new format. While XML is not a savior, but it is text-based and ubiquitous in the age of RSS. The only thing I’m not wild about is 4-letter extensions. Why not replace the last letter in the current format with an x � .dox for .doc, .xlx for .xls, and so on.

By: Jim Minatel

Jim Minatel — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

BTW, I really do want to see MSFT hit a home run with XML and Office. I’ve commented that I finally see XML use picking up elsewhere, some positive XML book sales news, and almost every developer I know who’s good with XML has too much work to waste time writing books. But if we publish any books specific to XML in Office 12, it’s going to be tough to get anyone other than Amazon to put them on shelf.

By: Is there a PC Doctor in the house?

Is there a PC Doctor in the house? — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Is XML supprt in Office 12 a selling point

This is turning into an exciting debate. I’ve just read the latest entry by Ed Bott and noticed the comments on an earlier post he made about XML and Office 12 and I was quite interested by the comments by Robert Scoble and Jim Mina…

By: Rob Eberhardt

Rob Eberhardt — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Change Windows XP Home to XP Pro

By: TechBlog

TechBlog — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Second opinion: Ed Bott on Office 12 XML

As a followup to my post on Office 12’s XML formats, Windows expert Ed Bott offers a different point of view. He emphasizes that Microsoft has waxed lovingly about XML before: I remember reading breathless white papers like Manage Information…