Microsoft Just Says No to .Doc Replacement Panel

Schlemphfer writes "OASIS is a nonprofit consortium backed by top technology companies, and the purpose of this organization is to set open standards for desktop and business software. They've just announced a working group that will create an XML-based document format standard for openoffice.org. And even though Microsoft is a member of Oasis, they aren't going to be taking part in this group. It's a logical move on Bill's part, considering that standardized XML docs are sure to weaken the hold that Microsoft's proprietary .doc format has on business software."

Comments

RTF and ascii

[soupforare]

What's wrong with RTF or straight-up ascii?

Re:What a bunch of clueless posts

[elflord]

Yes, good comments. I agree that their move to XML will not help that much. It will lower the bar to access, meaning that the average perl hacker will be able to extract something from the document, as opposed to a C programmer whose studied their APIs, but I don't think this will have huge consequences in terms of compatibility. I addressed some of these issues here , including the issue with rendering documents (basically, a standard format doesn't help if every word processor has different algorithms for document rendering, and some of those may be patented). Your point about proprietary languagers and ODBC is also an excellent one though, it's yet another good reason why XML will not really improve compatibility that much.

Facilitate change

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone could write free file filters for MS Office so people would be able to exchange the documents, or you could just tell people to download and install OpenOffice for free. Either way, it is bad for Microsoft and good for humanity.