Office 2003 and XML

zachlipton writes "Internet World is reporting that initial reports from Office 2003 beta testers don't look good for those hoping to share documents with non-MS systems using the XML file format. Gary Edwards, the OpenOffice.org representative for the OASIS XML file-format group is quoted as saying "although it's still early in the review process, it does look as though XP XML has been so seriously crippled as to be useless to anyone but the big content management and collaboration system providers." Apparently, all formatting and presentation information is removed from the XML. Furthermore, Office's new collaboration featres will only work with users who are also running Office 2003 (requiring Windows 2000 or 2003) that are connecting over XP servers." So Microsoft will continue its efforts to lock-in users with proprietary formats, and hopefully the rest of the world will produce an XML standard document format without them.

Comments

Wow.

[deviator]

I am shocked. Shocked! I'm shocked that Microsoft would do something like this that wasn't in the best interest of their customers.

Real World Vs. Game

[blahlemon]

Truth be told the real disadvantage to this being the real world vs. a game is I can't set the level of difficulty to my liking...nor can I stop and speed up time.

Or spy on other people from a God perspective. Damn you! Now I'll have to spend the rest of my day realizing how pathically small my scope is...

Re:Duh.

[kin_korn_karn]

Separating data from format is one of the strengths of xml.

Also, of the comma-delimited file.

Re:Microsoft's new file format is:

[nenolod]

Oops, i forgot to set the reply to "Code". Please note, your SAX parser probably wont be able to parse this, heh. It is however, theoretically proper XML.

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" encoding="en">
<!DOCTYPE worddoc [
<!ELEMENT document (document_properties, document_section)>
<!ELEMENT document_properties (title, author, organization, department, job, generalsummary)>
<!ELEMENT title (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT author (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT organization (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT department (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT job (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT generalsummary (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT document_section (sectionsummary, proprietarybinary, unenhancedcrappytext)>
<!ELEMENT sectionsummary (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT proprietarybinary (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT unenhancedcrappytext (#PCDATA)>
]>
<document>
<document_properties>
<title>Crappydoc</title>
<author>William H. Gates III</title>
<organization>BORG</organization>
<department>Unimatrix 0</department>
<job>Secondary information processing adjunct</job>
<generalsummary>Doc about crappy M$ things.</generalsummary>
</document_properties>
<document_section>
<sectionsummary>Haha, you cant parse this and make it look perty, it's BINARY! You're still screwed!</sectionsummary>
<proprietarybinary>firoiorfioeiojvonvonviniooiwnco ncooisoi39f940f9439 0f904390f94390fj904j90j3f09j4fj3490jf30jf040fj03j0 9fj9340fj043j90fj4903fj9043jfj0vjoirejvoojvoerjgoe jgojerogjoejoenmvotnhnoignoengotnhinringuinfi</pro prietarybinary>
<unenhancedcrappytext>Hehe, doesnt this text just look ugly? I bet it does, if you arent using M$ WORD!</unenhancedcrappytext>
</document_section>
</document>