“In eWeek Labs’ tests of the second beta of Microsoft’s Office 2003, we indeed found it more polished than Office XP in all the expected places, but what will really set Office 2003 apart when it ships this summer is its suitewide integration of XML. This should enable users and enterprises to work with their information in new, more efficient and creative ways.” Read the review at eWeek.
Office Embraces XML
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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From what I’ve heard, Microsoft is putting proprietary extensions within their XML-based documents – hence making it very difficult or irritating for open source products, and standards-aware products to interoperate with the Office 2003 products.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe thats what I heard.
Open file formats are not a good idea for Microsoft. One of the major reasons that people are tied to Windows is because of content in proprietory formats. XML is a major threat to them because it’s so huge. Everyone is switching to XML as a data format. Microsoft has to embrace XML in order not to be swept up in the movement. It has to extend XML to keep it on Windows. To see the rest of the story, you just have to look at MS’s product history… XML is probablyl too big for even MS to kill. But they can severely limit it’s usefulness to the “90%” market segment, which is all they need.
And you are surprised?
That’s a classic Microsoft tactic… lets take a standard protocol/technology and add proprietary extensions/code to it to hurt/kill competition and interoperability.
If this isn’t true (which I think it is) then this will definitely be a step in the right direction for Microsoft. Finally thinking of their users rather than how to maintain their 80+ percent profit margin.
Everytime something new comes out that is supposted to make your life easier, or simpler in some way ends up making it more difficult or complicated.
Take the cell phone for instance – was to offer more convenience, but can make your life harder by allowing you to be communicated ANYWHERE.
PDAs: Take notes more efficiently and address book – yeah right, it takes more time to enter data in your pda than a $1 notebook, and in the case of palm you don’t even write in english letters.
Windows 95: Easier than windows 3.1! Right.
It is not in microsoft’s interests to even attempt to make things easier for you, only appear to so that they can get things even ‘better’ for the next version.
That said, I wouldn’t give up my mac.
What is so wonderful about this One Note – sounds like any modern word processor or page layout program.
I have used XML for webpages – doesn’t work on Macs – and it is much easier than wysiwyg html editing and the whole point of xml is the ability to separate content from formatting so you do the stylesheet and xml file in a text editor. Doing it in a graphical environment would be a real pain and if it reflects Word’s ability with html and how hard it is to work with it or the quality of the output very few people using office will be using the custom xml features. If they want it to be editable by other people they should use Open Office or some other truly open format.
Yes, but how long can Microsoft depend on that methadology?
It’s not like it’s the 80’s or 90’s, when Microsoft was at it’s peak. A lot of water has passed under the bridge, and conditions (economic and otherwise) aren’t the same.
Embrace, extend and extinguish.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
Why am I not surprised?
Is a proprietary XML extension really a good reason to fork tons of cash for MS Office 2003 when a much cheaper alternative, Star Office, already uses “standard” XML as its data format ? Those IT journalists will never cease to surprise me with their blindness …
“From what I’ve heard, Microsoft is putting proprietary extensions within their XML-based documents – hence making it very difficult or irritating for open source products, and standards-aware products to interoperate with the Office 2003 products…”
“Open file formats are not a good idea for Microsoft…Microsoft has to embrace XML in order not to be swept up in the movement. It has to extend XML to keep it on Windows.”
And you are surprised?
Oh, stop your FUD bullshitting. Please, all of you. MSFT has never put any proprietary “extensions” to XML in any of it’s products. Ever. They are all strictly W3C compliant.
Bringing the XML Vision to the Desktop: How Office will Connect Data and Business Processes Across the Organization
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2002/nov02/11-12xmloffi…
“With “Office 11,” we are addressing a fundamental concern that we have heard over and over again from our customers: Too often, business-critical information ends up locked inside data storage systems or individual documents, forcing companies to adopt inefficient and duplicative business processes. The data might be located in a database that employees either aren’t aware of or don’t know how to access, in a text document that a co-worker has stored on her PC, or even somewhere on the Internet. To address this issue, Microsoft is evolving the existing document paradigm for Office by broadly supporting XML, an open and widely accepted W3C standard, in its products.
With the massive support for XML in Office 11, we’re adding two highly significant pieces of functionality to the existing rich benefits that Office already affords. First, customers now have the option of saving any Microsoft Word document, or Excel spreadsheet, Visio diagram, or Access database in XML, which allows those documents to be shared across the organization and via XML Web services. But as significant as this new functionality is, an even greater and more innovative benefit is the fact that companies now can actually create their own XML schemas specific to their business, and define the structure and type of data that each data element in a document can contain. This capability opens up a whole new realm of possibilities, not only for end users, but also for the business itself because now organizations can capture and reuse critical information that in the past has been lost or gone unused.”
Where have you heard this? Nobody I know has seen the file format, and i bet once it’s out, it will provide everybody on windows with the same user experience as before. Abiword uses xml as it’s fileformat, and it’s human readable. Thats the whole point of xml. Unless they do something like
<xml>
<microsoft take over the world> 0xdeadbeef168621984321386461532198761321654
</microsoft take over the world>
</xml>
then open source developers should be able to get cracking at it. I dont use any microsoft products because I’m a student and cant afford thousands of dollars worth of bad development environments (Visual C++ for Win NT Services was the most painful programming I’ve ever had to do) and horrible MSDN. Do a search for C++ Windows NT Services, and the first 50 results are upgrade to Visual Studio .Net c# tutorials. I think Win2k and on are the first consumer OSs they should have released to the public, but you dont complain that amiga/be/apple write their own code. Nobody cares that they have to learn to program again in cocoa/carbon. Please learn something before you post and dont just start flame garbage on a site i like to read for legitimate information
will or will not staroffice or any other word processor or spreadsheet program on the planet be able to read and write Office 2003 files, without having to reverse engineer deliberately closed file formats? Answer this question, please.
By the way, I have no problem with having to use word or excel to use the DRM stuff. That’s adding value (dubious value I say, but hey, it’s not for me to decide for everyone else).
Will the Office 2003 word and excel and powerpoint formats be documented, a la the new XML-based Keynote format created by Apple?
Just to be clear, the question I have is, can you create an office 2003 document in word, and then in the future send it to someone who can then open and edit that document in any other program, without glitches and conversions.
I really can’t believe MS is going to allow this, do you know otherwise?
<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<!– @Gil Bates –>
<message>
<name>
<first>Get</first>
<middle>Out</middle>
<last>ofHere</last>
</name>
<header>Re: Go do your homework</header>
<msg_body>
<content type=”binary”>
$@##@!%#@$%@#%#@$%$@#%%@#@#%$#%#
</content>
<content type=”text”>
this is XML too
</content>
</msg_body>
<copyright> 2003 </copyright>
</message>
now let me create a f*cked up DTD to really screw OpenOffice over.
Try parsering this one.
I have worked for large enterprise corporations and small business NOT A ONE utilizes what is in Office NOW.
Exactly. Just because they are using XML… doesn’t me they can’t throw binary data inside some cryptic tags.
This is what I expect to see… if they do anything truly open they will begin losing their consumer-lockin advantage as users will finally have an alternative with OSS software being able to produce the same xml output. Microsoft has to protect that profit margin… Bill needs a few more billion to stuff in his saving account.
I think that the main point is not in XML format itself. I think that what really matters is – that business sphere CAN’T easily work with Open Office, but is dependant upon MS Office and various hooks to back-end ERP systems (e.g. SAP).
What MS tries to kill imo is the browser. Now Mozilla is stronger and browser becoming universal platform for ERP front-ends (clients) could mean MS looses control in that area.
So they will come and show us MS Office that can talk directly to SAP, can support workflow systems, sharing etc. They may even more compete with systems like Lotus Notes.
Current web, and all those “standards”, don’t solve one issue though – that of a complexity – and looking at W3Cs website and all that XML stuff and various aproaches to one single problem, I am not sure the web is not doomed anyway 🙂 …
cheers,
-pekr-
[i]will or will not staroffice or any other word processor or spreadsheet program on the planet be able to read and write Office 2003 files, without having to reverse engineer deliberately closed file formats?[i]
How many special HTML tags did MS come up with that work fine in IE but not in others?
It’s fully W3C compliant XML. Period. If either of you even bothered to read my link you would know that MSFT is making the XML intentionally as portable as possible because that is what it’s customers have demanded. And yes, obviously the DTDs/Schemas are accessible because end-users will be able to customize the XML however they like.
“PressPass: Will all files that get created with Office 11 applications be XML files?
Paoli: We want to give our customers the choice to decide what file format they want to use, down to the XML schema they employ. Some customers may not want to use XML — they may prefer working in the existing Office file formats. The binary formats — such as .doc or .xls. — that have served our customers well will continue to be the default file formats. Others may want to use a specific XML schema, like XBRL. We leave the choice up to them.”
What the hell more do you want?
http://www.xbrl.org/
A very misguided soul said:
“What the hell more do you want? ”
Change this
“The binary formats — such as .doc or .xls. — that have served our customers well will CONTINUE to be the DEFAULT file formats.”
To this
“An OPEN XML format will be used as DEFAULT and we will also open up the .doc and .xls file formats because we care about our customers.”
Of course I’d also like it if MS was broken into little pieces and dismantled like they should have been. But even that is more likely then MS using standard open file formats as DEFAULT.
Remember MS with its hated DRM also wants to make sure prying eyes can’t see company documents. You think that’s possible using an open format?
“It’s fully W3C compliant XML. Period. If either of you even bothered to read my link you would know that MSFT is making the XML intentionally as portable as possible because that is what it’s customers have demanded. And yes, obviously the DTDs/Schemas are accessible because end-users will be able to customize the XML however they like. ”
Really? Are these the same customers that were previously demanding, closed file formats, or was that a different group?
As the saying goes:”Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you”.
Is OpenOffice able to use XBRL as an optional standard file format, or can it even use XBRL files for that matter? Does OpenOffice allow you to use any custom XML DTD/Schema as your standard document format?
Just how “open” is OpenOffice anyway?
Gil Bates, you just keep citing to statements of policy or intent that really aren’t conclusive. I want to know – has somebody used the beta and been able to save an XML document in an open format that looked like it could be imported into Open Office or Star Office either now or in the future? Look, I’m not saying I know you are wrong. I’m just wondering – somebody must have used this beta by now.
From what I’ve heard, Microsoft is putting proprietary extensions within their XML-based documents
I don’t think you can really call anything XML proprietary. XML is more a format than a language (yes I know the ML = mark-up language). The truth about xml is that it just a format to store information in which is easy to parse. It takes little work to make a parser understand different xml tags.
The major advantage to the OpenSource community of MS switching to an xml based format are:
1) We already have hundreds of XML parsers ready to be adapted to handle these formats.
2) In the meantime we can just toss out tags and have documents be readable in a text format.
3) Because XML is human-readable, development of OSS software that reads MS xml formats will happen very, very quickly.
Overall I think MS switching to XML is a great thing for the open source community. Typically I am skeptical about XML’s usefulness (most of the time an .ini file or real database is better); however, xml is perfect for document formatting and easy for us to implement.
Great, but can I open the MS Word “XML” document in Open Office without glitches and conversions? That’s what matters. Will file format lock in continue or not? One more time, will file format lock in continue or not?
eXtensible Markup Language (XML).
What the hell is the problem with anyone (company or individual) embracing and extending XML? Its very name suggests that that is what it is for!! And so what if they embed binary data inside the file. How else would they store embedded images?
Will file format lock in continue or not? One more time, will file format lock in continue or not?
I guess what your question boils down to then is this: “Is the xml document real xml (text inside of tags), or is it binary data disguised in a .xml extension?”
I can’t answer this question. I really wish I could, because I would like to know myself. However, my original statement stands. As long is this is XML, as in text inside of tags, then this will be easy to deal with in the open source world. Otherwise… well, it’s more of the same.
And so what if they embed binary data inside the file. How else would they store embedded images?
Either you are being sarcastic, you don’t know what you are talking about, or you are baiting. I am unsure as to which, so I will answer as if you missed the point of the conversation.
Nobody here is suggesting that they should not embed images in the document in some standard format. That makes total sense. If the text itself is turned into binary, that is when you know MS is intentionally locking out other Office Suites from reading the files.
There are virtually no advantages to be gained from placing the text in a binary format. The only one would be compression, and with the size of hard drives today, text compression is relatively unimportant. Even if they compress, there is no reason not release their algorithm as pretty much the same text compression algorithms are used everywhere (Huffman, Minimum Variance Huffman, arithmetic, run-length coding, etc). I am sure MS is not innovating text compression. There is no point. The combination of those algorithms pretty much puts you at entropy (the theoretical maximum compression of data) when you use them on text.
I appreciate what you are saying, but if all we can do is extract the “text” from a word document, I would call that “file format lockin, continued”
I just don’t believe MS is going to give up the lock in. I HOPE I am wrong. I WANT to be wrong.
I appreciate what you are saying, but if all we can do is extract the “text” from a word document, I would call that “file format lockin, continued”
It will obviously be up to open source implementors to come up with implementations that display this document on screen correctly. However, if the tags and text are in plain English, there is no reason for that not to happen.
I really don’t understand what we are arguing about here. I mean, you do understand what an xml file looks like here, right? They all have the same “format” regardless of what tags are used. If tag is unfamiliar and an OpenOffice developer doesn’t know what to do with it he will need to open the doc in MS Office 2003, see how the tag is handled there, and implement it similarly in OpenOffice. In this reverse engineering method, eventually all tags will be accounted for in Open Software. When the format is readily understood I would imagine all of the office suites will add support (including other proprietary office suites).
It explains in enough detail how ‘foreign’ XML DTDs/Schemas are ‘mapped’ to the functionality in Office 11 apps using special tools and how, Office 11 apps can arbitrarily “splice” their data together into a single XML document (say, a Visio+Word+Powerpiont data file, for example). Its very cool stuff, to anyone who knows something about XML in the first place, that is.
[quote]
Change this
“The binary formats — such as .doc or .xls. — that have served our customers well will CONTINUE to be the DEFAULT file formats.”
To this
“An OPEN XML format will be used as DEFAULT and we will also open up the .doc and .xls file formats because we care about our customers.”
[/quote]
OK, by default we’ll save the file in this new format that OfficeXP can’t read by default, I’m sure our customers won’t complain ‘cos we’ll be keeping the 1% of OpenOffice.org users happy.
Alright guys, this isn’t a troll, but I’m TRIED of people saying/writing “Office” to imply Microsoft Office. OpenOffice, is Office, StarOffice, is office, I think people should use MSOffice, if that is what they mean.
As a company there are many things that I don’t like about Microsoft, and there are many things about their products that I don’t like. However why do some people whine and moan as though Microsoft had some kind of obligation to help their own competition?
Microsoft is judged to be a monopoly, and there are laws which are then supposed to prevent them from using abusing that power in generating excessive hindrances to their competition ,such as exclusive OEM deals (it seems that the DOJ and the courts have trouble actually applying those laws, but that’s for another discussion), but I don’t recall anything that says they are supposed to actually HELP their competition.
XML cannot really be usurped by Microsoft, it’s human readable text, if they don’t document certain tags that they use then most of them will be reverse engineered pretty quickly (“ok, lets change this tag that says ‘wiggle = 0’ to ‘wiggle = ’10’ and see what happens”), they could make things a little more difficult than that, but guess what? They’re not obliged to make it easy.
There are two main reasons I can see for Microsoft adding XML functionality to MSOffice, neither is altruistic, neither is evil (unless you feel that profits are evil).
1) Even without it being particularly useful New feature = new product = new sales. Many people will buy the “latest and greatest” simply because it is the latest, XML is a big buzzword.
2) To allow third party tools which can manipulate files which are produced by, and read back into, Microsoft products. This effectively extends the functionality of the software, thus making it more useful to certain customers, therefore they buy it.
What they are not interested in is making it easy for customers to live without their products, and why should they be? What responsibility do they have to help OpenOffice or StarOffice or whoever?
The point of Office 11’s XML features is, unless they’re being explained very poorly by Microsoft (always a possibility), to allow companies willing to put in the effort to define custom document types with DTD enforcement. This is essentially a way to let Office 11 get into vertical markets that were closed to them before, but open to competitors like Quadralay, Adobe and Corel (with Framemaker+SGML and SGML WordPerfect, respectively, although I don’t know if Corel still makes the latter).
People here seem to be assuming Microsoft is saying that the binary format is going to be replaced or supplemented by an XML file. Bzzzt, wrong answer. There will be a “native XML” format for which it’d presumably be fairly easy to write a translator for, but this format is not going to be the default and while it’s implied, there’s no guarantee it’s even going to be documented. (The article Gil Bates links to refers to this functionality as allowing “documents to be shared across the organization and via XML Web services,” neither of which necessarily require an XML document to leave the “Microsoft universe.”) In any case, at best a “native XML” format is an easy-to-parse replacement for RTF and SYLK.
The XML features in Office 11 are cooler than people are giving them credit for. They’ll allow Office to encroach into territories it wasn’t able to get into before–and that’s the entire point: it’s becoming harder and harder to provide compelling reasons to upgrade, so the new suite is going after end-user SGML tools. They want to expand their market by moving Office into other people’s playgrounds. In no measure is this drive aimed at making Microsoft file formats inherently accessible to competing office suites.
While the ability to save files in XML is great, most users will continue to save files in the MS default formats. This means that businesses and individuals will *need* MS Office in order to read the MS documents sent by others.
Hopefully it will be simple to use XSLT to transform Word XML documents into valid HTML. Even better if XML documents could be loaded into Office and not f!@#ed up. Or if office staff could learn to use software other than Word.
contains kitchen sink!!!!
wash the dog with it!
will be the only thing left after a nuclear war!!!
is politically correct!!!
can walk and chew gum at the same time!!!!
IT’S…..MICROSOFT OFFICE……AGAIN!
(yawn)
and the secretaries will still cold stop the admins in the hallway to help them insert a bullet.
the phd in physics will still rant because his document “changed” when he emailed it to other phds and they thought he was stupid.
and only .005% of the windows using world actually knows how to use 50% of Microsoft Word….and I’m not sure if I should admire them or pity them.
sigh.
appleforever, as I have explained to you for a thousand times, it doesn’t matter how open Office formats it – StarOffice CAN’T implement it without implementing ALL the features Office has. Take macros for example – does StarOffice support any form of BASIC macros? Well, cause if they don’t, how are they going to implement support for Office macros?
Meanwhile, from what I have read, StarOffice (actually OpenOffice.org, we don’t know about the development of StarOffice) can implement Office formats whenever it likes to provide near 100% compatibility – only if they support *every* formating feature in Office. Why? The formats specifythe usage of these features, the filters may understand, but makes no use of it because of native enviroment doesn’t support it.
Besides, even if StarOffice/OOo, WordPerfect Office, etc. get 100% compatiblity with Office, I doubt that would be the driving force if the adoption, if there is an adoption. For example, my father would love to use StarOffice or OpenOffice.org for work, but his major gripe is not the lack of compatibility. It is the lack of features.
Besides, it is hard to see Microsoft actually doing the three Es with XML because they don’t own the XML market – their main objective with XML is to communicate with stuff like SAP, IBM (which in itself is pretty much a big feature Microsoft is gonna use in their advertising).
No, None, it depends the way it is broken up. If there is multiple companies having Office code, then yes, there would be competition and open formats. But if there is one company managing Office, broken up from the rest of Microsoft, not only they would still be the same as in now, they would be richer than any other company broken out from Microsoft, including the one in charge of Windows.
Robo, I reckon Microsoft already learnt from their Office 95-Office 97 migration fiasco and most likely would provide filters nessecary.
Macros?
“Tools -) Macro…”
I’ve been using OpenOffice for almost a year now, for nearly everything.
Sadly, I’ve got to accept OpenOffice does not do conversion to MS Office formats efficiently, so most of the schoolwork I needed to share with other people was done in OpenOffice – then Copy-pasting in MSOffice.
It works VERY well for everything else. I haven’t had any serious issues and it is very stable, much more than MSOffice.
The only thing I miss from MSOFFICE is the animated assistant (as long as it isn’t Clipo). Instead of a nice cat or a dog, I’ve got this TERRIBLY ANNOYING light bulb that I simply had to turn off.
[i] can implement Office formats whenever it likes to provide near 100% compatibility – only if they support *every* formating feature in Office.[i]
That is a blatent lie. The MSOffice files formats ARE closed and have no where near been 100% reverse engineered.
A research project at uni was looking at wiriting a commerial app that worked in conjunction with word to make certain things easier, but the project stalled because MS wouldn’t realease the file formats, there was no documentation on them anywhere, and reverse engineering while done for some bits proved too differcult for others.
Clearly the compatability problems will continue while the binary formats are default, and even then for a few years after.
I’ve been using OpenOffice for almost a year now, for nearly everything.
I do remember distinchingly saying *BASIC* macros.
That is a blatent lie. The MSOffice files formats ARE closed and have no where near been 100% reverse engineered.
I never said otherwise. But what’s the point of completely reverse engineering Office formats if the app doesn’t support the features? Tell me, how do StarOffice reverse engineer WordArt if StarOffice have no where near the same feature?
A research project at uni was looking at wiriting a commerial app that worked in conjunction with word to make certain things easier, but the project stalled because MS wouldn’t realease the file formats, there was no documentation on them anywhere, and reverse engineering while done for some bits proved too differcult for others.
1) I wonder what university.
2) While .doc, .xls, etc. are close, office ever since (IIRC) Office 2000 allows developers to add in third party filters. They could have used that route, no?
3) And I wonder what’s the research is about? What kind of companion app? I have used hundreds of companion apps for Word, all of them macros – none of them IMHO needs the format documentation.
4) Reverse engineering the whole thing is stupid. A lot of documentation is available from OpenOffice.org. Oh, they didn’t think that? They still have to write from scratch, unless they were asking MS for the source code too.
(meanwhile, to note, Sun still only hires two full time developers for reverse engineering at OOo)
someone said:
That is a blatent lie. The MSOffice files formats ARE closed and have no where near been 100% reverse engineered.
you said:
I never said otherwise. But what’s the point of completely reverse engineering Office formats if the app doesn’t support the features? Tell me, how do StarOffice reverse engineer WordArt if StarOffice have no where near the same feature?
Rajan, what’s the point of implementing all the features in order to have file compatibility if you can’t have file compatibility in any event because it’s a locked down binary format?
Also, not all the features are even used. People would be happy if you could just open a word document, make edits — with the features your editor supports — and send it back to a word user without glitches and screwups, and then that word user could use whatever extra features to other types of editing.
WE DON’T HAVE THIS. WE COULD HAVE THIS. MS DOES NOT WANT THIS. MS IS NOT STUPID – THEY LIKE LOCKIN. THEY MAKE THEIR BILLIONS FROM LOCK IN. Get a clue rajan
For all your paranoid FUD humpers:
http://users.skynet.be/fa001478/word.xml
Word’s XML format.
Rajan, what’s the point of implementing all the features in order to have file compatibility if you can’t have file compatibility in any event because it’s a locked down binary format?
Never heard of reverse engineering? the thing Microsoft had to do for Real’s formats? the thing Microsoft had to do for Netscape propreitary extensions? Meanwhile, as I said earlier, Sun only hires *two* full-time engineers on reverse engineering, if StarOffice had every single feature Office had, it is hard to imagine Sun not having near 100% compatibility.
Let’s bring this down to a level you may understand. Just say I wrote a browser that only supports half of HTML 4.0. Would that make me compatible with HTML 4.0? And just say HTML 4.0 isn’t open in the first place, would I hope to get 100% (or near it) compatibility with it without implementing all the features HTML 4.0 has?
Also, not all the features are even used. People would be happy if you could just open a word document, make edits — with the features your editor supports — and send it back to a word user without glitches and screwups, and then that word user could use whatever extra features to other types of editing.
This may work for plain text documents… but for stuff that heavily uses features like StarOffice doesn’t support – I don’t see how this works (and neither do I not see this not happening in the first place). Just say half of my document is produced by macros – how would someone see those macro-generated stuff?
And what about stuff like layout etc. Because if this is just the minimum requirement, I don’t see what’s so technically hard for StarOffice to do that right now! And if they don’t (especially saving back to MS Office without any problems), if it is technically possible with any form of documentation – I don’t see any reason why Sun wouldn’t implement it.
Get a clue rajan
I’ve got a clue. You on the other hand, IMHO, probably don’t even know what’s a clue. Mind you, I took a lot of time researching before coming up with my opinion. Why I researched? In the future, if I can, I want to build a company relatively competing with Microsoft on this turf.
But I notice that MS was allowed not to document security based APIs as part of the post trial settlement. How fortunate (precipetious even!) that the Office suite now has DRM built in. What a lovely excuse to obsucate and refuse to document every aspect. The XML is very, very extended/obsucated, and my beta has certainly been putting out odd files. Since when was XML supposed to require hex editing? And no, there’s no images, just plain text.
Just once – just once – I wish they wouldn’t try quite so hard to break every open standard. (Kerberos anyone?)
James
that’s my point. Hey, I am not saying the new Office won’t have an open XML format (and by that I mean, one that won’t require reverse engineering). It’s just, forgive me, for wanting a little proof and confirmation of this. we are dealing with a company that has benefitted from the locked file format. So I just want the proof. Maybe it’s not available yet, I don’t know.
It’s hard to believe that MS will tear down the walls that have kept its #1 cash cow alive for so long. Yeah I know the basics of XML and how it is used, but there’s got to be a catch somewhere. We can all speculate, but only time will tell.
James Duncan: But I notice that MS was allowed not to document security based APIs as part of the post trial settlement.
If you read the trial settlement, even if it requires Microsoft to document security-based APIs too…. it wouldn’t really matter – Office isn’t Windows and Windows isn’t Office. It is two seperate monopolies.
Besides, even password protected Office files can’t be read, the last time I checked, in Works (except for Word docs).
appleforever: we shouldn’t have reverse engineering of formats, rajan
To have come to where they are now, Microsoft had to reverse engineer many closed stuff too. And post-monopoly, they still had to do that (check out Netscape proprietary extensions… and especially Real’s formats).
Did they fail because everything isn’t nice and open? Hell no. I still can’t see why you can’t succeed even if you have to reverse engineer Office formats. Sun manage to go so far with only 2 engineers, after all.
appleforever: Hey, I am not saying the new Office won’t have an open XML format
Neither am I saying that the new Office would have open XML formats. To me – it doesn’t make a big difference as if there’s a will, there’s a way. Sure it would be easier with a open format…
… but if you really really think that competitors would be successful if they don’t have to reverse engineer Office formats – you are dead wrong.
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/2109101
[Will Office 2003 Lead to Lock-in?
By Thor Olavsrud]
Something to think about.
Rajan: Windows Longhorn does integrate an Office file viewer in Windows Explorer. This is on my test machine, containing no Office binary. As this is so, the API would be a candidate for documentation if DRM was not wrapped in.
Why? Because you are planning some kind of company or product based on this?
From the above article cited by BR:
“Still, Microsoft acknowledged that it is possible that some formatting information could be lost when saving to an XML file format. “If you save something in raw XML format, you may lose some of the really rich formatting like graphics,” a Microsoft spokesman said.”
Losing graphics is pretty bad. OK, what else is “really rich formatting” Tables? Footnotes?
It sounds like a bunch of people are being hoodwinked into thinking the new Office XML formats will be open. Never made any financial sense to me.