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Is the New Microsoft Office Really Open?

Posted by Cliff on from the a-window-undecided dept.

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?"

19 of 485 comments (clear)

  1. That's still to be seen... by Eric+Damron · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "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."

    Are we talking about true standard XML is Microsoft going to "embrace and extend" it?

    --
    The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
    1. Re:That's still to be seen... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      MIME-encoded binary data, on the other hand, is perfectly happy in a ForeignData XML tag...and MS already ships a product that does exactly that.

  2. XML... sharp?!? by wikthemighty · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Once again MS will embrace a standard, only to warp it enough that you get stuck using their version anyway...

    --
    "There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
  3. "XML dialect"?!? by TrevorB · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "XML dialect"?

    It's called a schema.

    Talk about embrace and extend. Sounds like this will be more "XML-like" than real XML... :)

  4. My Guess..... by jamesdood · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Would be that it will be "open" to other Microsoft technologies. This has been their method of operation in the past. As long as you only have a Microsoft environment everything works well with each other..

    --
    *narf!*
  5. You've seen Microsoft generated HTML by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Now, just think of the many ways they can screw around with XML. I bet IE and other MS readers will only do real basic XML validation, too. Then we'll have people telling other XML readers that their tools should be as understanding to bad XML as MS products.

  6. well, of course by Planesdragon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Could this be grounds for another anti-trust suit against Microsoft?

    Of course it could. But so could any bit of news about MS on /. in the past twenty years, from EULA alterations to Palladium.

    But "could" and "is" are differnent things. I suspect MS will decide that closing XML will render it useless, and make it at least as open and useable as their MS-HTML files.

    So, at the worst, we'll have a new "save as" option that's bit sloppy--but since MS won't have to extend XML to get their office functionality, they probably won't do it just to spite a few OSS coders who'll figure it out in a year anyway.

  7. Re:Reverse Engineer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    At least with XML it will not be very long until many software companies and project reverse engineer the XML. I suppose they could put some weird binary or encrypted data in the files, but that would defeat the purpose of XML.

    I fully expect that this is what Microsoft intends to do. Just because a document is in XML, doesn't mean it has to be readable or writable XML. XML, ultimately, is just a term, and a loose format. It is not a guaruntee that you'll actually be able to interpret and re-write it using notepad or vim.

    I have a suspicion that the reason Microsoft set up its next version of Office to be XML compliant is that a few of their customers became interested in Staroffice's idea to do the same thing.

    Looks like a case of 'Deliver buzzword to shut them up' to me.

    As for whether it's grounds for an anti-trust suit?

    Sure, why not.

    Will it matter?

    Not in 2009, when we might expect the trial to end.

  8. Re:LOL by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Or anything close to "standard." The best we can hope for is code that is recognized as valid, and I wouldn't hold my breath for that either. I've seen HTML like the following come out of Word:

    <B><A HREF="http://whatever.org"> Link </B></A>.

    I'm not kidding, either. Seems like an easy thing to avoid in an HTML generator. Validator routinely reports hundreds of coding errors in simple short documents generated by Word. Ugh. What really sucks is when you're working on a web page for someone and cleaning out all the crap that Word generates, then at the last minute they send you the same document with some minor errors corrected.... and all the same major errors generated by Word. Fun.

  9. This is very simple by mao+che+minh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If they really wanted to join the open market and truly compete, then they would just open the .doc format. This is nothing more then a pitiful pandering to open source advocates or those businesses that are interested in OSS. Any person with a shred of common sense and a basic knowledge of technology developments over the past 5 years can plainly see how pointless this is.

  10. Re:Reverse Engineer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No, of course MS wouldn't put the data in weird binary or encrypted format in their XML output formats ... like they did with Visio 2002's XML output (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF- 8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=OiH2rn9nCHA.1808%40TK2MSFTNGP10 &rnum=3&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dxml%2Bvisio%2Bmime%26hl %3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26scoring% 3Dd) where they put all the really important stuff needed for interoperability in ForeignData elements.

    HINT: if you see MS use the phrase "full fidelity" when they talk about their new Office's XML output then you can be sure they're not giving you the data interoperability/portability you thought XML output was going to give you.

  11. Open but Secure by mugnyte · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Something in my gut tells me that beyond all the extraneous tags, attributes and data types, the XML is going to have a hash code built into it.

    Edit this file outside of MS Office (invalidating the hash code) and suffer the consequences: MS treats it as "untrusted" input and rips out only the text content, no formatting.

    The hash will be a giant number created through a secure portion of the Intel-ish hardware calls. Keys hidden where? That'll be interesting to see who posts 'em first. Perhaps on a .NET server at MS hosting? Nah, this cripples offline Office. Keyless hash?
    Curious Curious.

    mug

  12. XML IS Office 11? Pah by TrippyZ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does everyone remember how Office 10 was promoted as the BIG XML release? And now Hailstorm has disappeared too.

  13. Microsoft opening? Naw... Waiting for Palladium. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I seriously doubt that Microsoft is opening anything that they previously held private. This just isn't Microsoft's way. They've previously held .DOC, .XLS, etc private and obscured them to the point that 3rd party programs have a difficult time accurately opening them. This has worked fairly well for them, but it is also a thorn in Microsoft's side, as each new version of Office needs to hold compatible to all that legacy stuff, plus the new formats.

    What if they could scrap all that and have an easily read document format? They could tighten integration with IIS -> Office and web pages generated from saved documents, spreadsheets, etc. An XML file format can do it. This would be something MS would like to do.

    The problem is XML could be readable by anyone. Or at least it CURRENTLY could. But, what if, MS had a technology to transparently encrypt/decrypt files on the save/read? And, what if the keys to those files were then stored in a protected memory vault that only trusted apps could get to? A trusted nub could ensure that the apps weren't tampered with... You can see where this is going.

    As I understand it, with Palladium, MS could declare that the next Word format is PlainText, but documents still wouldn't be able to be opened by 3rd party software, as they aren't trusted by MS to hold the keys to decrypt the data files.

    It's a win/win for Microsoft. They get to dump legacy code and create something simpler, while gaining greater control over how people use their own files. It's a win/lose for the consumer, though. They'll get new functionality if they stay all Microsoft, but will be locked into an all/nothing choice of whether they choose the MS route, or not.

    THAT, to me, sounds like a typical MS business plan.

  14. Doh! Ah here is the code above was the output by twistedemotions · · Score: 2, Interesting

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
    <?mso-application progid="Word.Document"?>
    <w:wordDocument xmlns:w="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/ 2002/8/wordml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:w10="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:SL="http://schemas.microsoft.com/schemaLibra ry/2002/8/core" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instan ce" xmlns:aml="http://schemas.microsoft.com/aml/2001/c ore" xmlns:wx="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word /2002/8/auxHint" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xml:space="preserve"><w:docInfo><w:tit le w:val="The dog ran up the hill"/><w:author w:val="Peter James Templeton"/><w:template w:val="Normal.dot"/><w:lastAuthor w:val="Peter James Templeton"/><w:revision w:val="1"/><w:appName w:val="Microsoft Word 11.0"/><w:totalEdit w:val="1"/><w:created w:val="2002-12-19T21:50:00Z"/><w:lastSaved w:val="2002-12-19T21:51:00Z"/><w:pages w:val="1" wx:estimate="true"/><w:words w:val="13" wx:estimate="true"/><w:characters w:val="80" wx:estimate="true"/><w:lines w:val="1" 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w:gutter="0"/><w:noEndnote w:val="off"/><w:docGrid w:line-pitch="360"/></w:sectPr></wx:sect></w:body> </w:wordDocument>

  15. Re:They Have Too by moderators_are_w*nke · · Score: 1, Interesting

    You'll have to ask Microsoft why they hav a suddern desire to switch everything to XML, I have no idea. The current proprietry format is actually pretty clever, it has to be when you consider what can go in there (just about anything).

    I'm guessing that Microsoft are viewing this as start of a transition to XML. As I understand the current format, if you copy and paste a CorelDraw drawing into Word at the moment, its Corel, not Microsoft who decide what goes into that section of the Word document. In this case, there is no way for Microsoft to XMLise this part of the document. I've no idea how they're gonna do it unless the dump binary (Base64 encoded?) into the XML. They also need to store the object ID so the Word knows which legacy app this chunk of binary came from.

    --
    "XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
  16. Don't get confused. by twitter · · Score: 4, Interesting
    You are goddamned fucking lucky that the government tells you what the default values for things should be. That's what the government is there for, mostly; to tell you that the default value for a building is to have a fire exit and that it may not be locked.

    Most rational specifications are for performance. The method should not matter as much as the end result. Fire codes are an extreem example, but even there the specification is flexible. The local government does not tell people how to build buildings, only that there needs to be so many exits per so many people and floor space. They don't nail you down to real specifics. Most rational specs are such as mil-specs for acryilic - it must be able to sit in the South Florida sun for one year without delaminating. How you make the thing does not matter, so long as it does what it should.

    By these rational and objective standards M$ junk generally fails. If you say that a Word doc should be legible and keep it's formatting for a number of years, Word fails. The same thing can be said of all other M$ junk - it's designed to break and therfore government should reject it's use anywhere records are kept. That's all public work. That's hardly engineering the document, it's simply stating the thing should work as advertised.

    All normal standards, from ASCII to WWWC are formed by professional agreement. Governments intervention is not needed. Disruptive vendors are generally seen through.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  17. Re:EXCEL SAMPLE by zeugma-amp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This displays really well as source in Phoenix .5. There is a blurb at the top that says "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below." ... Then it displays it as prettily formatted (though fairly useless) code.

    I'd like to see a clean HTML version of the same. It might make it somewhat easier to understand more or less what it is doing

    --
    This is an ex-parrot!
  18. Re:Are you paying attention? It's Microsoft. by Axe · · Score: 3, Interesting
    ..so I can write a cross-platform tool to open their files.

    ifstream("MyOfficeFile.doc", ios::in);

    Crossplatform enough for you?

    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?

    So what exactly are you asking for?

    --
    <^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>