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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.
I have Office 2003 Beta 2 freshly downloaded from MSDN. This article is completely wrong. I did the following:
.DOC Word document with tables, multiple fonts, etc. .DOC format.
1. Opened a heavily formated
2. Saved the document as XML.
3. Opened up the XML document in Word and it looks EXACTLY like the original
I also opened the XML file in a text editor and sure enough it contains complete formatting information.
The point of the Office 2003 "Save as XML" with the "Data Only" checkbox is _NOT_ a poor mans Save As XHTML. It's decide to allow the data of the document and pet placed into an XML document based on a schema. You literally can make your own schema file/XSD, and use a tool inside Word to map the elements of a Word document to elements of the schema. If you simply map a paragraph to a string you will lose formating. Unless of course you define in your schema how you'd like to store formating information. But that is generally an overkill.
Think of a resume. you could define an XSD for a resume, and be able to save resumes against this XSD, as validated pure XML.
Now, if you want to produce a document, using an XML syntax but want to combine both data and presentation, then you want WordML.
WordML uses Word's own tags to markup the word document. I was going to show you an example of WordML but i don't feel like escaping allt he greater-than/less-than signs. Anyhow, WordML contains all the formating and everything necessary to display a Word document as it is supposed to look.
I think this Open Office guy is looking for a devil in Office 11 that isn't there. That or he didn't read the friggin manual.
-Malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
This may be bad (keeping in mind the jury is still out on exactly how Microsoft is making this work) because in the case of office documents, the style is actually *part* of the content, from the perspective of Joe Office User.
.xml file, then that .xml file is practically useless to anyone who wants to collaborate with the original author since all of the styling information is lost.
.sxw (the default writer format) you're actually taking the raw data of the document, the styling rules for the document and a few other important bits and pieces and zipping them up into a single file.
i metype
.doc, .xls etc formats have changed and will need to be reverse-engineered again.
If Microsoft just puts the raw text data into a
As an example of a good way to do this (IMHO), take a look at how OpenOffice.org builds their files. When you make a
After unzipping this file, the following directory structure was exposed:
content.xml
META-INF/manifest.xml
meta.xml
m
settings.xml
styles.xml
With this type of design, you can get the best of both worlds. Technically, there is a separation between your presentation and content which allows simple programatic access to the data when necessary. At the same time, this design allows for full collaboration between people who also consider the styling of the data to be part of the content because the style rules for the content are included with the document.
With xml-saved Office documents containing only data and no style, collaboration between non-office users (and apparently Win9x users as well) will be no better off than before. Perhaps worse, assuming the binary
If this article is true and Microsoft has decided to remove the styling of their xml-saved office documents, I see two possible reasons for this:
The first is obvious. You're not using Office? Ok, second class citizen, here's the data but in a format that is next to useless for you to use.
The second possibility involves Microsoft just not being where they want to be with the Office XML sharing. Keep in mind that it took OpenOffice.org something like a year and half or so to define their XML interchange format. Microsoft may be going there, but due to overwhelming inertia, it just might not be going there very quickly.
Personally, I think the first option is the most likely. However, with OpenOffice.org working with OASIS and others on a common XML interchange format, I'm hoping Microsoft will be forced by the marketplace into option 2.
Best regards,
David
Read some other articles, or better yet get ahold of a beta and try it out. The authors of this articles will feel like schmucks when they realize what they missed.
First off, by default, if you save the word document as XML, it gets saved as WordML,which preserves Word's styles and formatting in an XML name-space that's separate from the one bound to the schema-controlled data.
If you check off the checkbox "Data Only" then you will lose all formating and your own XSD will be used to map this document into XML data.
WordML looks like a XML'ified RTF language. It would be trival to create an XSL stylesheet that transforms WordML into HTML/CSS with all formating (that HTML is capable of) which directly mimics MS Word. OpenOffice could also eat WordML quite easily and have all the formating/style of Word.
What the authors of this article are REALLY bithing at, is the fact that MS didn't buy into the OpenOffice Document Specification from OASIS. MS prolly sees OASIS as the US sees the UN. Defunct, not needed.
If you describe your data using XML semantics, and all it takes to convert from semantic style A to B is some XSL, then who cares about forcing everyone to use one specific format.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
If you "Save as XML" in Office 11, then by default the data is saved as WordML. WordML is an xml version of MS internal storage format (basically RTF). OpenOffice could quite easily write an interpreter for WordML. Hell, I could write an WYSIWYG editor for WordML in a day. If that. It's pretty simple if you understand the basics of RTF.
It's only when you Save as XML with the "Data Only" checkbox that you get into striping formating (and rightly so). Word WARNS you about this. In addition, you can specify your own XSD to save to. And word will VALIDATE this for. Not to mention, you can use a word tool to map elements of Word documents to elements of your schema. DAMN COOL.
In addition (As if that isn't enough) when you save, in either way, you have the option of specifiying a XSL style sheet. It'll go ahead and transform the output for you as part of the save.
Then only thing the OpenOffice people are upset about is that MS didn't buy into the OASIS/OpenOffice Document Specification. Tough shit. I'll write them an XSL that'll work again WordML to solve that for them. Lazy bastards.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
InternetNews is authored by morons.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
I think the root of the confusion goes back to Golfarb's original theory for SGML-- that the styles in a document are secondary to the structures, and should be kept separate.
This has been a religious conviction ever since, despite the fact that most authors are messy and intuitive, and SGML-etc are very, very rigid and unintuitive. The rationalisation is that messy authors can just represent their styles using 'fake' (ad hoc) XML, but if this turns out to be 90% of the real users of MS Office, then I think MS could indeed save valid XML, but it won't be portable in any useful sense.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.