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Is the New Microsoft Office Really Open?
joesklein asks: "From CNET, there is an article about the new Microsoft Office 11. In summary 'Microsoft says it's opening its Office desktop software by adding support for XML--a move that should help companies free up access to shared information. But there's a catch: It has yet to disclose the underlying XML dialect.' Could this be grounds for another anti-trust suit against Microsoft?"
it supports .DOC, the de facto standard for documents. What's this XML you're talking about?
Well if the way Microsoft Word saves out as HTML is anything to go by, then concise it most definitely will not be.
Yes, mister Hairtrigger, we should sue Microsoft simply because they won't release trade secrets. We will surely win.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Oh no! Heaven forbid someone extend the eXtensible Markup Language!
:-)
frob.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
The difference between Microsoft and their competitors is that MS is willing to take a long-term view:
:-(
1) Establish a monopoly on office productivity software
2) Profit!
3) See income drop once everyone has Office. Market saturation!
4) Less Profit
5) Release new Office with new file formats; use monopoly to get it pre-loaded on all new PCs.
6) Eventually everyone else upgrades Office in order to read new file formats they're getting from their co-workers.
7) Profit!
8) Release new OS with filesystem that looks like a database.
9) Release YAO (Yet Another Office) [see 5 & 6] that only works with new database/filesystem in new OS.
10) Now, not only do the masses have to upgrade Office to read co-workers files, they have to upgrade Windows as well.
11) Profit!!!!!
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
the Love Caculator demonstrates that
Draw your own conclusions. cute little widget.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Get off the high horse guys, whether its binary or XML is irrelevant, making something XML doesn't make it open.
You keep using that phrase, I do not think it means what you think it means.
..so I can write a cross-platform tool to open their files.
ifstream("MyOfficeFile.doc", ios::in);
Crossplatform enough for you?
As funny as it is useful. I can read the most thoroughly encrypted files that way, too. It's good to have a Windows programmer around...
Oh, you mean edit the files? I remember writing VBA code that did that just fine.. Good documentation how to do that - much easier then working with a crazy-ass XML schema?
It seems that between your first sentence and your second, you forgot the "cross-platform" part. Of course, if you're a VB programmer I can't blame you--you were probably born that way.
(I'm just kidding, no personal insult intended)
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra