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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.
Well, it friggin' figgers, doesn't it? Anyone who didn't see this coming must have been living on another planet.
With the US antitrust suits off now, the EU is our only hope to curb their anticompetitive practices.
Microsoft will have to learn IBM's lesson about transforming from a company that makes standards, to one that contributes to them.
They still don't get that their attempts to "embrace and extend" the whole damn internet isn't going to work.
The rest of the world WILL produce an XML standard document format without them, thank heavens.
--
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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'm not trying to start a flame war here, but it seems that they're missing the point! We don't want it to be MS with one format and the rest of the world with another. That really wouldn't make it much different from how it is now. At least the way it is now, non-MS office software can read the MS formats. If it comes down to the choice between using the MS format or the "rest of the world" format, MS is going to win every time..
I think the point is that if you save to their XML specification, you will loose all your document formatting. So yeah, the data is there, but it can't be reopened in Office or any other word processor and be in a structured way. Essentially, it is the same as just saving as plain text which has already been available since Office 95.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
The XML features they are putting into Office XP look to me as if they will only be of use in very large companies. I don't see much benefit for small or medium-sized companies. And the expense of upgrading is such that, in the current climate, I doubt many will make the move to office XP.
Microsoft used to be able to force everyone to upgrade because if you didn't, you wouldn't be able to read documents sent to you by others. I don't think that is going to be so successful now, there's too much resistance and the price is now too high.
Does anyone know of a company that is planning to move to Office XP once it's out of beta? I don't.
I have to agree. The the basic concept behind SGML and its diminutive offspring, XML, was to separate content, structure and presentation. This just means that you have to share a style sheet, FOSSI, or whatever when you share a document if you expect the person you share it with to be able to view it.
There may be other *valid* criticisms of what Microsoft is doing but this isn't one of them.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
And this is bad how? Isn't this the dream that XML document proponents have aspired to for years? You just can't please some people...
.XML format for interoperability. If the XML format can't figure out the fonts, colors, and various drawing elements in your document, then people will abandon it for something that does - at the expense of the rest of us.
Unfortunately, Manny Manager and Sarah Secretary are now very used to depending on the formatting and presentation information. To be honest, not too many people these days subscribe to the whole minimalist document theory (unless your idea of starting your editor is typing 'vi').
The main point here is to encourage the
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Instead, create an XML format that is specific to your needs and write a DTD or XML-Schema that describes it. If you need to translate it to someone elses' XML document format, a quick XSLT stylesheet will transform the document with a minimum of effort.
Just my 2 cents.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
to switch to a free and open office suite like star office. Seeing as how Office is MS's cash cow, if sales drop, maybe they'll stop using obfuscated formats. It's obvious this is the only way to get them to stop since the DOJ seems to think that a conviction is enough to shame them in to playing fairly. The only way they'll change is if customers make them realize that it's not in their interest to use obfuscated formats. People need to understand that when you buy Microsoft, you are not just giving them money, you are encouraging them to take away your freedom of choice.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
There is a big difference between seperating presentation from content and removing the presentation totally.
Isn't part of the concept of XML relating DATA and being able to seperate presentation from pure content. Isn't the additional concept of XML it's extensibility and adaptability for one group to use it differently than another? Because if not I've been using XML wrong for about 2 years now.
This article makes it sound as if MS is doing something completely improper with XML (i.e. changing it's "standard"). But it seems to me that MS is simply separating content from presentation and relying on ????(something proprietary, xsl, more xml) to provide presentation. Just because they don't use the standard the same way you want them to doesn't mean that they are breaking the standard. I'm sure if you look at the XML that they output it's all standard XML. It also sounds as if they are not using any of the "tricks" that others have complained about (i.e. storing binary data in an xml tag).
Instead of bitching about the problem maybe we should
1) provide feedback if we are a beta tester
2) wait for it to be released
3) ready some tools to provide interoperability
4) work harder on creating tools better than MS
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
It is obvious that Office 2003 will not have a beautiful open standard the will interpolate with any piece of software. I find that unfortunate, but not unexpected. As the Oasis link points out, Microsoft is not really interested in letting its consumers out of the box of proprietary formats they are currently stuck in.
The article is on the other hand very vague (probably because the information still isn't available) about what information is left in. My interest is no so much in being able to read OfficeXML documents, though as a WordPerfect user I would find this handy. What I am really interested in is if Word 2003 can in anyway be cajoled into being an authoring tool for already existing XML formats like DocBook. WordPerfect2000's support for XML is present, but clunky. My real hope was that Microsoft would offer a more useful solution, and to spite the bad rap about "presentation information" being removed, if other more useful information like 'heading,' 'strong,' 'table' etc. are still present, then I think it is a(n admittedly small) step in the right direction.
JFMILLER
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
Isn't the whole idea of XML to separate content from format? So, Microsoft is guarding the last mile from the software infrastructure (including their data format) to the user's brain (supplied by formatting). So, to use Microsoft's data format, I have to come up with my own styling. Isn't this what happens with rss and rdf already? Isn't this potentially a win? Couldn't an industry spring up using microsoft's data format and a set of styling sheets built to transform that format (ie, xslt).
I sense some of the shock and outrage around this article is that people would like to be able to use excel as their data viewer, with an open file format that they could write to. What about simply treating excel as a data publishing system, perhaps even transforming its output to the more open standard developed by OASIS? This starts to consign excel to legacy that needs an adaptor.
I don't think this means that there is no stylistic information in the document, rather that the style information is contained within the proprietary code segment of the document.
If Word documents all utilised the same style for various elements, it'd all be hunky-dory. However, users like their choice of a 50pt purple serif font for a title to stand, so the formatting information MUST be included with the document.
Perhaps a better format would be a zipped file that contains seperate XML and XSL documents...
"has been so seriously crippled as to be useless to anyone but the big content management and collaboration system providers."
That indicates to me that the problem is really that the document format is so complicated that it takes tremendous resources to understand and implement compatibility with it, as this implies that larger companies like say a Xerox will have no problem producing tools to work with it.
So from a business consumer perspective this is still a tremendous win.
This sounds like more whining from the open source crowd.
"Right now OpenOffice can't import word created .RTFs with nothing but text properly. This could a massive step towards compatability."
You know that Word has always been able to save in the Text(.txt) format don't you? Were was the massive step then?
You seem to forget that, in the context of office programs such as Word, the 'content' is the sum of 'text' + 'formatting' + 'presentation'. You need all 3, or you do not have a workable document. Having 'text' only is not enough. We are not talking about being able to read a .doc file on your scrollable cellphone screen here. We are talking about interoperability between all major office suite producers.
Proprietary document formats were fine at one point. Most people shared documents via printed paper, or shared them via "soft copy" within their own organizations. However, the time for printed documents and interoffice "soft copies" is over. We need the ability to share documents with the world in an easy to use, feature rich, and easy to edit format. Since a significant part of a document's legibility is in its style and formatting (or at least people are more apt to read a well formatted document over one which is not) text files are out.
.DOC file attachements.
Once an easy to use, open document format is created, and the ability to read and write those documents is built into many programs, I think we will see an end of
While there are currently some "open" formats like PDF and PS, the problem is that they are not easy to create for the average user, nor are they easy to edit. While PDF may be a good format, we need something better.
XML is a logical choice as a base for an open format because it is a well defined standard, it is text based, and is quite easy to parse.
But I ramble.
Nononono. Word is all about presentation of data. Some of the data IS the presentation. Writing, "The bullet points below" with a list of bullets below.
Taking the presentation out of data would be like making PSD"s xml but putting the colour in some hidden away place. You'd have only the useless basics and nothign else.
At least XLink the "presentation layer" you are imagining in, in a seperate resource file... ala XSL or SOMETHING.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
"The idea is for XML not to specify how the information should be processed, but
rather leave that task to XSL (define) templates and other post-XML
processing steps," he said. "XML is supposed to be a presentation-neutral
format."
What a stupid comment from an "analyst". XML itself certainly is NOT "supposed to be presentation-neutral", if only because XSL, SVG, XHTML and myriad others presentation formats are still valid XML. What XML is is just a structured container for any data you want to store, which can be presentation or content, or both. The idea of separating content from presentation is valid, but it's pretty much orthogonal to XML. Moreover, XML formalisms (such as namespaces) make it quite easy to store both content and presentation together in one document and still be able to easily tell them apart and manipulate separately.
The fact that MS decided to not do that and just pretend that "XML means pure content" is another matter. In fact I expected that they will try to obfuscate formatting information in XML by storing it as an encoded binary, but they found an even simpler "solution" by just dropping it. Bravo Microsoft!
And I can take that gif, jpg, psd or pdf and open it in another application, make changes, etc...
/. too long :)
Basically, I'm not forced to use the Adobe product.
I'm sure that Microsoft realises this and would hate to let the users have a choice of what they can use. Why let them choose when they can almost be foreced to use the MS product.
I dunno...maybe I've been hanging out on
Your use of the tired "Bzzzzt" exclamation at the beginning of your post completely overwhelmed any potential interest in whatever it was that you were trying to say.
Please, next time try to avoid the condescending tone, people might respond more constructively.
Without going into the evils of microsoft and it's office products, how there are better OS's and products out there on the market, I'd like to ask: WHY??? Office 95 to 97 was a substantial jump. 97 to 2000 was a fairly substantial jump. Stability, document abilities, general ease of use. Most people were happy with 2000. Stable, if large. 2000 to XP: Smaller install, activation / registration nightmare, some interface changes, but otherwise the application is the same. How documents are saved, their base format has been changed, yet to the end user this should be transparent. XP to 2003: What is the major differences? I mean... yes, it's going to be new, in a new year, but why would Joe Schmoe, Enterprise User (Or home user for that matter) want to shell out a couple hundred dollars per license where the increase in functionality will be limited? Increased document collaboration would be good, yes, but is it truly worth the cost? How many users don't KNOW how to use the advanced features? I work as a sysadmin at a plastics factory, and the majority of the users barely know how to use a keyboard. I've worked in an insurance company, where I had to teach the corelation between moving the mouse and the pointer on the screen moving. I've done the dot-com thing, with users wanting more but not using it properly. What are the odds that an entire company would be utilizing the software to it's fullest potential? And what percentage of a company would actually get an advantage out of using these features, compared to the time required to train an entire office? Half of it would backfire if some users didn't understand the base concepts, as most don't.. Thoughts?
When all else fails, use fire.
You must not be familiar with the Slashot business model:
(1) Post Inflammatory (or sometimes Blantantly Unfactual) Story on Issue X
(2) Get lots of hits from pro and anti-Issue X people
(3) Get lots of hits from people who waste time informing everyone how ignorant the Slashdot editors are
(4) Profit!
Michael and CmdrTaco specialize in these stories. See CmdrTaco's recent post about SuSE "back away from UnitedLinux" to see an excellent example of this.
It really comes down to all they want are page hits. They couldn't care less or are may too ignorant to care about things like journalistic integrity.
Illustrator and Photoshop can open PDF files is basically just an afterthought. Maybe if the native Photoshop file format (PSD) was open you'd have a point. Anyway...
If Microsoft followed a similar model, I'm sure that Microsoft Word will continue to be the industry standard in word processing software, and Microsoft as a business won't be any less richer for it.
Photoshop's competitors - from Fireworks and Freehand to Corel Draw to all the little graphics apps that you can pick up for fifty bucks or that come with scanners/cameras - have a far greater market share than Word's competitors. There is absolutely no incentive, from Microsoft's point of view, to risk giving them more.
Agreed. Truth is, even if they exposed ALL of the formatting properties available in Office documents via XML, they would still be the only product on the market to implement all of the formatting features completely. By the time anyone caught up, MS could extend the functionality further. It's one thing to own the standard document format, it's another to be the market learder with the only product that fully supports the industry's open standard.
"Watch your cornhole, bud."
How do you figure this is anti-trust? Microsoft has been judged a monopolist. Since past behavior is a good indicator of future behavior, there is a presumption that this is anti-competitive behavior until proven otherwise.
This is simply a company who has the dominant product protecting their lead.
For a monopolist, nothing is simply any more. In the absense of market forces to correct misbehavior, exactly how they attempt to protect their lead does matter.
And quite honestly, I dont see anything wrong with that, as long as they confine their practices to their product (ie. they arent making Office the only suite that can run on windows) [emphasis added]
As long as nothing in the Office Suite promotes the Desktop OS monopoly.
As long as nothing in the Desktop OS monopoly promotes their own Office Suite.
But this isnt a game, this is business.
And screwing your customers is bad business.
And screwing your suppliers is bad business.
And screwing your investors is bad business.
And screwing your employees is bad business.
Even screwing your competitors is bad business.
And since businesses are SUPPOSED to make money, they need to make sure people continue to buy MS Office.
And General Motors needs to make sure people continue to buy Chevrolets.
And making an office suite that shares documents with all the various third-tier office suites just doesnt do that.
It just makes incomprehensible gibberish unless the recipient happens to have the exact same sooper-dooper magic decoder ring. Unless I can read my stuff, under circumstances of my own choosing, I have a problem. Unless I can send stuff to my correspondents and they can read it un circumstances of their own choosing, I have a problem. If my documents are hostage to the whims of a supplier, I have a problem.
Why should my company buy MS Office if the documents it produces are exactly the same as those of FreeBeerOffice?
New twist on Clippy?
No reason they should. That's Microsoft's problem, not yours or your company's (unless you work for Microsoft;)
people who are users like me just want a fscking file that i can open with Word, with OOo, with iWrite.. whatever... and then send it to other people. If it requires the use of pixie dust or ass cream - so long as it works, that's all anyone wants.
.doc format. Like i can even buy fuscking Office 97....
.pdf) and editable (.doc only) we're stuck realistically with .doc... as bad as it is.
Relgious zeal with XML content being separated doesn't MEAN SHIT to users. And it doesn't get me anywhere when the fact remains that when i send in my busines proposals to the government, they want it in Word-97
wankers. However you want to make an open format - be our (the Joe Salesdepartment) guest... until there is something which is universal (.doc and
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
I think its about time someone points out that this article, or whoever those "testers" are, are full of sh*t, or have serious problems using a computer.
.DOC document. I saved a 20-page research with all kinds of pictures (stretched/cropped etc) and using bullets, italics, bold text, different sizes and fonts. I re-opened the document with Word, and it looked just like its .DOC counterpart.
Saving in XML format keeps 99% of all the formatting in a
*FURTHERMORE*, Microsoft has even added an option called "Data Only", which will save only the Data itself in the XML file (-as the format was MADE FOR-). You can then choose to append an XSL file for the format.
MS pleases both sides, both the strict-XML-Data-Only group, as well as the maximum-openness group, and yet over 550 post are complaing about an article with no substance. I don't love MS, but don't bash them for something they've done right.
The XML saving feature in Word is flawless and semes to be standard-compliant. Any XML reader should be able to display the document properly, under any OS.