XML Support In Office 2003 Isn't For Everyone

0x0d0a writes "Unfortunately, it seems that Microsoft's recent campaign to promote Office 2003 based on its XML support may be a bit misleading. Only the Enterprise and Professional releases will have this support -- not Standard. Microsoft will still be leveraging file format compatibility for at least another Office release."

Comments

Chant the mantra, brethren

[numbski]

"But analysts contend that WordML's compliance with industry standards is a misnomer. Because the schema isn't fully documented, people who want to edit files created in Office 2003 will only be able to do that with Office itself, as before. Text in Office 2003 files stored in XML format might be viewable in other desktop programs, but all document formatting would be lost and most other files would be unreadable."

Love thy neighbor. Embrace and extend my brothers.

Amen.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[torpor]

Right, like we couldn't have seen this coming from a looong way off.

I've given up on Office completely. I even try to reject .DOC files completely - thanks to .PDF, it's been mostly successful.

"Compatability" is still a bitches game.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[Anonymous Coward]

Text in Office 2003 files stored in XML format might be viewable in other desktop programs, but all document formatting would be lost

Actually, this is entirely the point of XML. XML is not Yet Another Word Processor Format. It's intended to store "content" as opposed to "presentation", leaving "presentation" up to the app, much as was the original intent of HTML. Rather than an evil Microsoft plot, they are in fact conforming to the spec when they produce such a file.

The semi-trailer truck sized hole in the notion is, of course, that "presentation" isn't really entirely separable from "content", especially in a modern document. All that graphic-artist stuff like layout and font choice and formatting actually affects the value and usefulness of the document. That's why we put it in in the first place. And that's why everyone always whines when Word strips out all the "presentation" they've spent all that effort putting into the document and just leaving them with the raw XML "content" -- a bunch of text.

The flaw here is in the attempt to erect too high of a wall between presentation and content, not in Word.

By the time you get fine-grained enough control over the presentation to create documents that actually look the way you want, the "content" usually becomes illegible. Alternatively, you have only coarse control over the presentation, in which case the content most often looks like crap. This problem is easily seen in any number of web pages that feel obliged to include some little rant at the top about bloated HTML and how they concentrate on "pure content", which usually means a sea of unreadable and undiffentiated Times Roman.

The flip side is if you actually do break up the content enough to get control over the presentation. The last time sometimes tried to create a human-readable ASCII-text format for documents, they wound up with Postscript. A typical document actually looks something like: /Euro.Helvetica
[556 0 24 -19 541 703 ]

AddEuroGlyph /Euro /Helvetica /Helvetica-Copy BuildNewFont
} if
F /F4 0 /256 T /Helvetica mF /F4S53 F4 [83 0 0 -83 0 0 ] mFS
F4S53 Ji
688 1320 M ( )S
F2S53 Ji
800 1518 M (802.3z Gigabit Eth)[42 42 42 21 42 36 21 60 23 41 37 42 23 23 21 51 23 0]xS
1431 1518 M (ernet local)[37 28 41 37 23 21 23 42 37 37 0]xS
1781 1518 M (-)S
1809 1518 M (side interface)[32 23 42 37 21 23 41 23 37 29 27 37 37 0]xS
2255 1518 M ( )S
F3S53 Ji
650 1620 M S
F4S53 Ji
688 1620 M ( )S
F2S53 Ji
800 1620 M (Supports f)[46 41 42 42 42 28 23 32 21 0]xS
1145 1620 M (ull Gigabit line rate)[41 23 23 21 60 24 41 37 42 23 23 21 23 24 41 37 21 28 37 23 0]xS
1795 1620 M ( )S
F3S53 Ji
650 1722 M S
F4S53 Ji
688 1722 M ( )S
F2S53 Ji
800 1722 M (Operates in either media convert)[60 42 37 28 37 23 37 32 21 23 41 21 37 23 24 41 37 28 22 63 37 42 23 37 21 37 42 42 42 37 28 0]xS
1888 1722 M (er)[37 0]xS
1953 1722 M ( or line)[21 42 28 21 23 23 41 0]xS
2189 1722 M (-)S
2216 1722 M (card )[37 37 28 42 0]xS
800 1817 M (mode)[63 42 42 0]xS

Here's a hint. The "content" is clearly delimited by parentheses (instead of, oh, "") Easily readable by humans, right? A cinch to import into other applications, right? Guess what: a real XML word processing document that kept the presentation information isn't going to be any more readable. You're not just going to whip out vi and fix it up any more than you can do that to your Postscript documents now.

XML is not magic application pixie dust that makes all features transparently interoperable when you sprinkle it on.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[Erik Hollensbe]

It's great to see someone else gets it. Postscript is actually a language which describes layout -- really, nothing is stopping you from doing all your work in it. Same with TeX. Of course, both languages (and they are true languages) are extremely complex and generally benefit from a middle-ground tool to do the real work (LyX, TeXinfo, Acrobat, Dia (?) etc).

Treat XML like a database. It has rules of operation, but what you contain and how you describe the data are completely arbitrary.

That said, if office is really aiming for interoperability, they would publish the XML schema and layout rules. However, as most of us already know, it's just yet another business with the desire to put "XML" on their "Corporate Resume" to make them look more "open".

Sorry for all the double-quoted words. :)

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[TeknoHog]

> Sorry for all the double-quoted words. :)

"layout" *tick*
"middle-ground" *tick"
"interoperability" *tick*
"XML" *tick*
"Corporate Resume" *tick*

BINGO!

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[torpor]

Treat XML like a database. It has rules of operation, but what you contain and how you describe the data are completely arbitrary.

Anyone who has used XML knows perfectly well that it's entirely possible to describe the complete dataset for content, layout, and presentation, within an XML document, in a form which can be easily parsed by humans and software alike. Completely. Using open standards, even.

Consequently, it's also possible to wrap it all up in 'parseable', yet 'unhandleable-unless-you're-on-the-inside' data blobs which mean nothing to no-one, yet still use 'XML' as a wrapper.

It's a liability of having such an open design, and Microsoft are exploiting this fact, in the context of *CLEAR* market-division tactics.

*They* created the artificial 'Professional/Enterprise/Standard' labels. Not the Users.

MS' use of XML here is perverted. It serves no purpose other than to give MS an opportunity to blag press release points about how their software uses 'the latest open standards' to people who have *NO CLUE* what they're talking about ...

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[0xdeadbeef]

Why is this rated 5? This is misinformation, a troll.

XML is not magic application pixie dust that makes all features transparently interoperable when you sprinkle it on.

But apparantly quoting a bunch of Postscript gibberish is pixie dust to get yourself modded up for misrepresenting both it and XML.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[nightcrawler77]

I disagree.

Of course, opening the XML file in another application would ignore formatting...just like opening a .DOC file in a hex or text editor would ignore formatting.

The issue here is the documentation of the formatting-related tags. Take the two following XML 1.0 fragments:

1:

<content>Hello! This text is <style add="italic">different</style>.</content>

2:

<content>Hello! This text is <msft secretFormattingCode="0x3B">different</msft>.</con tent>

Both are XML, both would "lose" formatting when opened in another editor, and both are probably just as easy for Office to generate. The problem is, in the absence of a published schema, the second one is much harder to understand.

MS certainly knows that their XML format will be "reverse-engineered", so I would assume they are going to make it as hard as possible to understand.

Of course, I haven't seen the actual XML format used by Office 2003, but I have to assume that if there were a nice, easy to userstand XML dialect in use, we wouldn't have all of this commotion to begin with.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, this shit is getting stale. Come up with some new jokes.
Go back to your Hans Blix alter-ego username. Mix it up.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[deaddrunk]

Leverage is a noun. Please stop using stupid businessman-speak.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[fprog]

Am I the only one here who use Word 2000 HTML web format with CSS to have "portable" word document. The word document generated -IS- readable by human, more than that it works on any browser supporting CSS: Netscape, IE, Opera. What would prevent OpenOffice, StarOffice to translate such HTML with the subfolder for images, media and similar into OpenOffice XML data? BTW, if you don't have graphics (BMP, GIF, JPG) just text layout and tables, then the HTML saving generates just one file. Why should Office 2003 would be any different. In fact, if they would use MIME or email like encoding to embed BMP/GIF/JPG images and sound inside the document, what would prevent you from reading it? As far as I'm concern you can already translate all your DOC/XLS files into HTML and still make them fully backward editable in Office 2000. Of course the CSS entry looks like .xl2819216 { }, a hash number which is ligible and comprehensible, still no bright encoder can know that this was for your special table header format for a group meeting subject header, but if you manually edit it you could specify as such easily and simplify it, but it's not even needed. Simply, search and replace .xl2819216 with .GroupMeetingSubjectHeader Still even with hash value, you can still read what the CSS looks like easily, think of it like a pointer thing. If you have HTML you can translate it to XHTML using scripts, from XHTML you can have a valid XML document, why people complain about Office 2000 propritary format? You could write a simple VB program to take a huge hard drive filled of Office document and translate them into HTML.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[JebusIsLord]

Actually, this is entirely the point of XML. XML is not Yet Another Word Processor Format. It's intended to store "content" as opposed to "presentation", leaving "presentation" up to the app, much as was the original intent of HTML. Rather than an evil Microsoft plot, they are in fact conforming to the spec when they produce such a file.

Bullshit, XML is designed to describe absolutely anything and everything.

Sure, in the case of XHTML there is a desire to eliminate presentation aspects through the use of XSL for instance, but even XSL (a stylesheet, content language) is XML.

There is no reason why a custom Word XML format can't contain both. XML does not restrict you like that.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[JebusIsLord]

shoot, I meant XSL (a stylesheet, presentation language) is XML.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[palp]

Unfortunitly, your post is not readable by humans.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Actually, your point about XML also applies to XSL. XSL isn't just for presentation. It's a data/XML proccesing language really.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[jcr]

The last time sometimes tried to create a human-readable ASCII-text format for documents, they wound up with Postscript.

You're omitting RTF. (A clean, elegant, human-readable format invented by Microsoft, and quickly abandoned once they realized that anyone could easily parse or generate it.)

-jcr

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[bigchris]

If they are just concerned about the "content" then why even bother using XML at all? why not put the file into a straight ascii text file?

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[bigchris]

Wow, how ironic.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[Anonymous Coward]

Not buzzword compliant. Nobody gets any bonuses for "ASCII text". XML.Net is where its at!

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[bill_mcgonigle]

Right, like we couldn't have seen this coming from a looong way off.

They surprised me - I expected:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<ms_word_doc>

insert base64(word97format) here

</ms_word_doc>

The DTD would be the ms_word_doc tag defined as a CDATA field. Perfectly valid XML.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[unDees]

RTF is about as human-readable as PS. Clean and elegant it ain't. Ever tried to write RTF files for input into the WinHelp compiler (not that such manual monkeying is necessary these days)? par par par curly-brace bunch-of-fonts par par... Yecch!

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[jcr]

RTF is about as human-readable as PS. Clean and elegant it ain't.

Oh, I don't know:

{\rtf1\mac\ansicpg10000\cocoartf102
{\fonttbl\f 0\fswiss\fcharset77 Helvetica;\f1\fswiss\fcharset77 Helvetica-Oblique;}
{\colortbl;\red255\green255\b lue255;}
\margl1440\margr1440\vieww9000\viewh9000 \viewkind0
\pard\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\t x5 040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\ql\qnatural

\f0\fs24 \cf0 This isn't all that
\f1\i tough
\f0\i0 to read.} ..certainly not as difficult as the typical machine-generated postscript output.

-jcr

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[Erik Hollensbe]

Anyone who has used XML knows perfectly well that it's entirely possible to describe the complete dataset for content, layout, and presentation, within an XML document, in a form which can be easily parsed by humans and software alike. Completely. Using open standards, even.

I fail to see how this is different than what I said. It's entirely possible to do all this in a database as well. All XML really does is assign data to fields that are marked up by a key. Depending on how those keys are marked up, the rules may be transformed. This certainly sounds like a set of tables to me.

Don't get me wrong, XML sure makes a lot of things easier to do, but everything can be done in a database as well.

In fact, one could even abstract it to the point where the .doc format is a database as well. Most file formats are designed with extensibility in mind, and that requires some form of relational mechanism, which is one of the key ingredients in a database.

I really fail to see how you agreed with me so well, but maintained the ability to present it as an argument.

Re:Chant the mantra, brethren

[Erik Hollensbe]

Heh, if you have a buzzword/bullshit bingo card related to XML, it's a guaranteed winner no matter how you slice it. :)

That was kind of the point of what I wrote. :)

Propoganda

[ahkbarr]

This is not reliable source! This is US led propoganda campaign!

Seriously, though, who here could not have predicted this?

Re:Propoganda

[superyooser]

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information:
"I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad."

Mohsen Khalil, Iraqi Ambassador to the Arab League:
"Iraq will not be defeated. Iraq has now already achieved victory - apart from some technicalities."

Jean Paoli, Microsoft's XML architect:
"I'm out of the business of creating formats. Our focus on Office is on data exchange. There is no more difference between documents and data."

... apart from some.. err umm "technicalities"?

Not to snipe here...

[MrLint]

Of course sniping is way to eay here.. so i will,

For the love of B0B how hard is it to deploythe feature across the entire suite. What can we conclude here?

1) Its not really ready and the high end versions will ship later.
OR
2) its a cheap ploy to rake in more money later on.

*sigh*

Re:Not to snipe here...

[asparagus]

A little of both, I'd reckon.

MS is fully aware of how to play the ends against each other for their own benefit. Many in the community are wary of this, for good reason.

Swimming with a very big shark is always guaranteed to be interesting, not necessarily good or bad. This is just throwing a few drops of blood in the water to spice things up.

XML Support In Office 2003 Isn't For Everyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

but XML support in OpenOffice is.

------------
This is guarenteed to not be the first post.

In other fast breaking news....

[ralphart]

The sun rose this morning; sunset predicted for later today!

importing

[Snuffub]

But doesnt this mean that the standard will at least be able to import the office XML files? Otherwise who would use it? and if that's the case it means that at the very least the standard edition would be able to import files flawlessly from any office app that supports the format.

Re:importing

[dracocat]

Exactly. Who will use this? People in the industry have been pushing Microsoft for this for a long time, so they wanted to please their customers and put XML into their marketing language.

What took them so long was to figure a way to make things exportable to XML without being compatiable. And you have to admit, coming up with a proprietary XML format has got to take a lot of work.

So the answer is, the people that will be using this will be marketing. And they will only be using the word XML, not the actual export feature.

So, nobody is surprised, and I don't think you can blame them. A common XML language for documents will hurt microsoft--even if it is in the best interest of consumers.

------------------
eRentPayer

Re:importing

[cyril3]

The point you miss is that apart from the embrace, extend, exterminate action on XML, this is an exercise by Microsoft to get all business users upgrading to Professional from Standard. Their argument will be that XML is probably overkill for home users who only type in Outlook Express anyway.

So if they do get above their station and think they need Office then Standard without XML and no Access is OK for them to do their typing and checkbook balancing on.

But if you are in business you need the Professional version with XML and Access and Professional prices.

Schools?

[shibbydude]

I really like the idea of human-readable code, but who really wants to lose backward compatability with all the rest of the versions? At my highschool, there are about five versions of Office, all which save in different formats. Most people save as rich text just for compatability, because even the small releases or updates do not save in a compatible format for the older releases. If we introduce a format which is absolutely not readable by older versions, it will not only baffle our techies for months, but I know productivity will take a hit when students *accidentally* save in the wrong format and then cannot open it for the life of them.

This is one reason I use openoffice (openoffice.org at home as it supports most word versions flawlessly, without promting me to "insert office cd 2" to install the feature.

Re:Schools?

[Politburo]

At my highschool, there are about five versions of Office, all which save in different formats. Most people save as rich text just for compatability, because even the small releases or updates do not save in a compatible format for the older releases

This just isn't true. I'm not even going to take the effort to refute it.

On file formats

[bogie]

The entire business world is still being held hostage or pushed around by a proprietary file format. How sad, annoying, and wasteful.

I always said during the DOJ trial all I wanted was to have the Office file formats opened. That would have really lead to some change.

Btw in case your new here, try OpenOffice you might like it.

www.openoffice.org

Re:On file formats

[MyHair]

Btw in case your new here, try OpenOffice you might like it.

Picky point, but due to some copyright or trademark or something I believe you are refering to the OpenOffice.org office suite.

Although in person I use the shorter, technically incorrect name too.

Re:On file formats

[Anonymous Coward]

I was actually thinking of exploting Mico$ofts use of VBA in word against them to solve this problem. I figured that I could write a macro for word (pirated copy of course!) that would open every document in a directory/share/network/world and save it as a rtf file for use in other programs.

I wonder how long before MS came out with a patch to fix this "virus"?

Re:On file formats

[zmotula]

I always said during the DOJ trial all I wanted was to have the Office file formats opened. That would have really lead to some change.

Oh, would it? The format is quite complicated and even Microsoft is not able to implement it correctly across different versions of it's own software.

I think it would be better

[Anonymous Coward]

if there wasnt so much of a focus on crap like "productivity" and "getting things done" and "using the right tools" and everyone just switched to GNU/Linux, KDE and OpenOffice.

Sure, your business will more than likely tank as your employees struggle to get even rudimentary things like printing working, but oh my goodness MicroSoft is bad for producing a working product which has lasted for what, almost two decades now.

Re:I think it would be better

[jcast]

Actually it's not hard to get printing working if your tech people are thinking about what they're doing. Now, if you're too cheap to hire tech people with an IQ of 100, that's another story...

Re:I think it would be better

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

as your employees struggle to get even rudimentary things like printing working,

Hmmm. About once a week, Windows 2000 Server randomly reassigns my default printer. About once every three weeks, Windows XP suddenly fails to see my USB printer unless I reboot -- no explanation, no change in configuration.

If Microsoft products -- which, as everyone likes to point out, run almost all machines -- is so wonderful, and if their software is so easy and useful for the ordinary joe, then why oh why after ten years of outright dominance do people still hate and fear computers?

The only "innovation" Microsoft has developed is its ability to convince regular users that (a) the complexities and difficulties of, say, Linux, result from the innate design (and a flawed one at that), but (b) any complications or errors encountered using Windows must be the fault of the user.

Re:I think it would be better

[syrinx]

What *are* you on about? I've had far more trouble printing in Windows than in FreeBSD. And OpenOffice has nothing to do with printing, and since this article is about Office, things like printing (and KDE and Linux, for that matter) are not really the point.

Have you actually tried the things you disparage, or do you just listen to FUD?

Re:I think it would be better

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. Yesterday I was getting car insurance, ICBC, provincial auto insurance, through a local agent. The computer system wouldn't print. Long line ups. Guess whose system? Hint, not linux.

Derek

Re:I think it would be better

[Anonymous Coward]

goddamn, this was funny

Re:I think it would be better

[cranos]

Okay what the hell are you smoking and where can I get some?

Printing, Word Processing, Spreadsheet work, High End Graphics, software development and anything else you can think of are pretty damn easy to set up under Linux and the other OSS OS's. Case in point, my machine - RedHat 8.0 running on a Windows Network with a Novell server with printers attached. Took me all of five minutes to set up my shares and printers as well connect email and everything else.

fp!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates: "The Freere the standard, the more we charge. The fools who gave it out free didn't make money out of it, why not us?"

Office 2003 Beta

[bamberg29]

I've been using Office 2003 Beta 2 for about a month now and the XML support seems fairly poor. I've saved some of my Word documents in XML format and tried opening them in some other XML supported programs , but had a hard time opening them. I guess MS needs to work some more on the XML support in Office.

David

Re:Office 2003 Beta

[sciwhiz007]

We have to remember that this is Microsoft we are talking about here. Any time they say "we are going to switch to an open format", there's always a catch to it.

Is Microsoft ever going to switch to an open format? No, why would they? They will only lose money. As for the people complaining about competition, why should a company with 90 - 95% of the desktop Office suite market care?

People with little or no knowledge about what Microsoft has done in the past might think that Microsoft is taking a great step forward. But remember, this isn't going to be complete XML, it is "Microsoft XML"

All this about Microsoft doing a great thing by switching to an "Open XML base" is all hype, nothing more.

Re:Office 2003 Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't the Office tag format supposed to be

<data>
afl3iuao3fa#FA(U#F#(UFWLIJFwlkfjaw3f
</ data>

?

In related news ...

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

Microsoft announced that only the Enterprise and Professional versions of Office 2003 would support the feature of saving files to industry-standard media such as IDE and SCSI hard disks. The Standard version of Office 2003 will allow the user to save document files only to Microsoft Zippo (TM), a new proprietary USB-based external removable media device. "We believe this is an innovative way to provide extra value to our customers." said Microsoft spokesman Hugh Jass.

Re:In related news ...

[AKnightCowboy]

I know you're joking, but that's a guarenteed way for them to promote Office Professional piracy. Offer something that should be standard only in a much more expensive product. People will just ignore the low end product completely and pirate the higher end one and Microsoft will get nothing in return. Very stupid on their part.

Re:In related news ...

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Microsoft Zippo (TM), a new proprietary USB-based external removable media device.

And it lights cigarettes too?

Re:In related news ...

[__aatgod8309]

Piracy is probably one of the most effective ways of increasing market share... They lose sales from it, but it's their products that end up on someone's desktop...

Re:In related news ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in a batch produced between March 2002 and August 2002, but they're going to recall those.

Re:In related news ...

[fferreres]

Don't give them ideas, they might as well try them and find out Mom likes it, or doesn't notice it, shrinking our heritage even further...

And when...

[Black Parrot]

If they ever do make it general they'll encumber the components with so many patents and copyrights that it will be a proprietary format in spite of being XML based.

The people running Microsoft might not be "nice", but they certainly aren't stupid. Moving to an open file format would immediately saw one of the legs out from under their monopoly. Expect them instead to vaporize the file format issue and drag it out as long as possible, so that people and companies tempted to switch to a WP with an open format will think they can get the open formats without switching, if only they wait a little longer and pay for a few more upgrades.

Re:And when...

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is ... nothing will make people change from Microsoft Office, not cost, not features, reliability or compatibility.

I call it the "coca-cola" factor. Doesn't matter the cost, taste or quality, only the image of your fellow man. It's "cool" to use Microsoft Office ?!?!?!?

Re:And when...

[Anonymous Coward]

will you start making some sense?

Have you done any research on how XML is used in Office beyond reading what people say on slashdot?

If you think Office's dominance is based in any way on file format, or that people make purchasing decisions based on file formats, you need to get out a bit more.

For almost all purposes, Microsoft's *current* format is "open" and documented enough as it is.

Oh Come On

[Snowspinner]

The reason you don't have all versions of Office be identical is that then you wouldn't need different versions. The Standard versions of programs contain fewer features than the Professional and other shiny versions. This is to help justify charging more for the professional versions. This is not unreasonable. As with much of capitalism, paying more gets you more. Jesus, some days I think MS could liquidate and give all their money to the EFF and still get flamed by you people.

Re:Oh Come On

[jcast]

As with much of capitalism, paying more gets you more.

This is ok most of the time, because providing more service actually costs more money. That isn't the case here---the code exists and costed the same to develop whether 10 people use it or 100 people.

Re:Oh Come On

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

"Costed" isn't a word. Let's assume that you're correct that implementing the XML features in the home edition would not cost any additional amount (which, given no knowledge of how Microsoft develops each one of the versions, I cannot state without a doubt). That cost still has to be incurred by the user of the home edition. Basically, if you include all the features that are in the professional edition within the home edition, then they are the same program and should cost the same amount of money. If you remove features from the home edition, the home edition should be less expensive. And this is the way it is. You're arguing that the home edition and the professional edition should be exactly the same in term of functionality because all of the functionality has to be developed anyway. How exactly would you price these "different" versions? If you make the home edition cheaper, corporations are all going to switch to the home edition since it's got the same functionality as the pro edition. If you make them the same, then the home edition is put at a price point that may be higher than the average user wants to spend on an office suite.

Re:Oh Come On

[mithras the prophet]

The article does say that this is the first time that different Office versions will have different capabilities of the same program. Previously, the more expensive versions just got you more programs, like Outlook, Access, etc.

Re:Oh Come On

[Snowspinner]

The cost of something in a capitalist system is ultimately not based on its production cost, but on its value to the end user.

The fact that MS could put the XML in the home version at no cost is irrelevent. The important thing is that there exist people who will pay more money to get the functionality offered in the Professional version of office over the Home version.

Therefore the Professional version costs more.

Re:Oh Come On

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who uses "capitalism" and "Microsoft" in the same paragraph without irony deserves to be doomed to write everything in VB for the rest of their lives.

Re:Oh Come On

[Snowspinner]

Regardless, other companies (Adobe springs most quickly to mind) have been packaging Light and Full versions of software for ages. Depending on how much functionality you want/need, you can pay more or less.

Hell, Microsoft basically did this with Windows XP Home and Professional, with Home having a cap on its network size. Though I think that particular move was fucking absurd (My home is not a small office or business, but has too many computers to network on XP Home).

Re:Oh Come On

[jcast]

No, you're wrong. Go read some economics. Capitalist systems are supposed to maximise the number of transactions; the number of transactions increases as the price decreases towards marginal cost. Draw your own conclusions.

Re:Oh Come On

[Snowspinner]

That's ridiculous. Go ahead and extend your argument. If you're going to see a musical, then should all seats be priced equally, from fourth balcony to second row?

Of course not. Better quality goods are higher prices. Any other system is idiotic.

Re:Oh Come On

[jcast]

That's bullshit. The two arguments are not equivalent. Obviously, there are a limited number of good seats that can be physically produced. Obviously, there is no limit to the number of Office XP Professional disks that can be pressed.

Re:Oh Come On

[Snowspinner]

That's not the point. The point is that it doesn't cost them any more to seat you in a good seat than in a bad one. And, as someone else pointed out, would you prefer there were only one version of the software put at the price point in between the two existing ones? I wouldn't. Honestly, I'm never going to use XML. I'm perfectly happy to pay less to scrap a few unused features.

Re:Oh Come On

[donscarletti]

You really don't get the whole mentality around here do you?

As with much of capitalism, paying more gets you more

Many Slashdotters, especially the old guard kind beleive in the open source mentality thought up by Ritchard M Stallman two decades ago. That information once distributed should be outside the control of the creator. Microsoft has a buisiness model that stops the distributed information being used to its full potential. Such as not distributing human readable code alongside the distributed product, crippling some versions such as the standard edition, stopping the creation and distribution of derivitive works, and limiting the usage of information created through the program through obfuscated file formats.

Jesus, some days I think MS could liquidate and give all their money to the EFF and still get flamed by you people.

As the BSD team, The LINUX team, GNU, the Mozilla team, the Gnome and KDE teams and others have demonstrated, revinue is not needed to create great softwear. So many (not all) Slashdotters feel that any corperation that sacrifises usability for revinue is doing something intrinsically malicious and selfish.

Belive it or not, I was actually trying to give you some insight in who you are dealing with rather than pushing an ethical barrow, but I think I ended up doing a bit of both.

Re:Oh Come On

[Anonymous Coward]

Fricking A. Of course it costs a whole lot more to create, test, and maintain code for future compatibility.

Re:Oh Come On

[jcast]

Ah... You're my AC troll.

Now the big question....

[neurostar]

Swimming with a very big shark is always guaranteed to be interesting, not necessarily good or bad. This is just throwing a few drops of blood in the water to spice things up.

...do penguins eat sharks?

Re:Now the big question....

[frankthechicken]

...do penguins eat sharks?

No, penguins eat Polar bears, they were so prolific in their dining habits that they drove the species into extinction on the south pole.

Slightly more on topic,
Microsoft's limits on XML support means that customers looking for true portability of their data will have to buy the most expensive version of Office.

I think says it all, want an extra feature, well that extra feature costs more. And lets face it portability of data will not really be a concern for the average home users, who probably don't care, and probably don't know that there is an alternative. Whether people who do want true portability of their data will consider this extra expense as the final straw for their continuing use of Office is a different question. Though I doubt it will have too much effect, at least not yet.

Re:XML Support In Office 2003 Isn't For Everyone..

[__past__]

It still sucks that OOo (like KOffice, by the way) doesn't use XML files for documents, but a zip file containing a collection of XML and possibly non-XML files. It makes sense for storage efficiency, but sucks for usefullness, you have to preprocess OOo files before you can use you generic XML tools on them.

Re:XML Support In Office 2003 Isn't For Everyone..

[myLobster]

Additionally Office 2003 will consume true XML, but will not produce it. Yet another example of them attempting to destroy standards.

I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[Trailer Trash]

Microsoft will still be leveraging file format compatibility for at least another Office release.

Here we go again. "If Microsoft would just use an open format like XML then anyone could read the documents with any program and the world would be a better place."

XML is a format for creating data formats. It is not a data format. The fact that a particular format is XML compliant says nothing for its readability, it simply means that it can be parsed into a document tree by an XML parser. That doesn't mean that anybody can determine what the tree represents, only that it can be created. My favorite analogy: "If Microsoft would just start using 8-bit bytes, then anybody could read their file formats."

Microsoft has made it clear that the dollar value of secret file formats isn't lost on them. They will continue to use secret file formats, even if they're XML-based, until someone makes them stop. At the same time, they'll be able to harvest the stupidity of PHB's who will claim that Microsoft file formats are open because they're XML. It's surprising how many people on Slashdot foolishly believe the same.

Michael

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[0x0d0a]

That doesn't affect the validity of my post. I simply said that they'd be leveraging file format compatibility for at least another release.

You're certainly correct that using XML doesn't mean that the document will be parseable and renderable, but I'd say that the move *is* a prerequisite -- no one is going to be able to implement all the quirks and legacy crap in the current parser. (This is the same parser that accidently left chunks of uninitialized data from the disk in saved files on the Mac a few years back).

My favorite analogy: "If Microsoft would just start using 8-bit bytes, then anybody could read their file formats."

More like "If Microsoft hasn't moved to 8-bit bytes, so it's unlikely that anyone will be reading their file formats any time soon."

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[jkarlin]

Excellent points. I'm using the Beta of Office 2003 Pro and I just saved 'Hello World' as an Office XML file. Thought it would be nice to actually see what we're talking about.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<?mso-application progid="Word.Document"?>
<w:wordDocument xmlns:w="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/ 2003/2/wordml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:w10="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:SL="http://schemas.microsoft.com/schemaLibra ry/2003/2/core" xmlns:aml="http://schemas.microsoft.com/aml/2001/c ore" xmlns:wx="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word /2003/2/auxHint" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C1488 2" xml:space="preserve"><o:DocumentProperties><o:Titl e>Hello World</o:Title><o:Author>Jason Karlin</o:Author><o:LastAuthor>Jason Karlin</o:LastAuthor><o:Revision>1</o:Revision><o: TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime><o:Created>2003-04-13T23: 29:00Z</o:Created><o:LastSaved>2003-04-13T23:29:00 Z</o:LastSaved><o:Pages>1</o:Pages><o:Words>1</o:W ords><o:Characters>11</o:Characters><o:Lines>1</o: Lines><o:Paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs><o:CharactersW ithSpaces>11</o:CharactersWithSpaces><o:Version>11 .4920</o:Version></o:DocumentProperties><w:fonts>< w:defaultFonts w:ascii="Times New Roman" w:fareast="Times New Roman" w:h-ansi="Times New Roman" w:cs="Times New Roman"/><w:font w:name="Tahoma"><w:panose-1 w:val="020B0604030504040204"/><w:charset w:val="00"/><w:family w:val="Swiss"/><w:pitch w:val="variable"/><w:sig w:usb-0="21007A87" w:usb-1="80000000" w:usb-2="00000008" w:usb-3="00000000" w:csb-0="000101FF" w:csb-1="00000000"/></w:font></w:fonts><w:styles>< w:versionOfBuiltInStylenames w:val="3"/><w:latentStyles w:defLockedState="off" w:latentStyleCount="156"/><w:style w:type="paragraph" w:default="on" w:styleId="Normal"><w:name w:val="Normal"/><w:rPr><wx:font wx:val="Times New Roman"/><w:sz w:val="24"/><w:sz-cs w:val="24"/><w:lang w:val="EN-US" w:fareast="EN-US" w:bidi="AR-SA"/></w:rPr></w:style><w:styl e w:type="character" w:default="on" w:styleId="DefaultParagraphFont"><w:name w:val="Default Paragraph Font"/><w:semiHidden/></w:style><w:sty le w:type="table" w:default="on" w:styleId="TableNormal"><w:name w:val="Normal Table"/><wx:uiName wx:val="Table Normal"/><w:semiHidden/><w:rPr><wx:fon t wx:val="Times New Roman"/></w:rPr><w:tblPr><w:tblI nd w:w="0" w:type="dxa"/><w:tblCellMar><w:top w:w="0" w:type="dxa"/><w:left w:w="108" w:type="dxa"/><w:bottom w:w="0" w:type="dxa"/><w:right w:w="108" w:type="dxa"/></w:tblCellMar></w:tblPr></w:style>< w:style w:type="list" w:default="on" w:styleId="NoList"><w:name w:val="No List"/><w:semiHidden/></w:style><w:sty le w:type="paragraph" w:styleId="BalloonText"><w:name w:val="Balloon Text"/><w:basedOn w:val="Normal"/><w:semiHidden/><w:rsid w:val="4E5A63"/><w:pPr><w:pStyle w:val="BalloonText"/></w:pPr><w:rPr><w:rFont s w:ascii="Tahoma" w:h-ansi="Tahoma" w:cs="Tahoma"/><wx:font wx:val="Tahoma"/><w:sz w:val="16"/><w:sz-cs w:val="16"/></w:rPr></w:style></w:styles><w:docPr> <w:view w:val="print"/><w:zoom w:percent="100"/><w:doNotEm

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[cyril3]

And on my computer it looks something like this.

Hel lo World

Ha Ha that's funny. I do a copy and paste on the text section and its got an extra space in the middle of the word Hello.

It looks like the spellchecker in 2003 Pro doesn't work yet either.

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[dspeyer]

I notice there are http URLs for the schemas. If they contained the specifications for the parse tree, it could be quite informative (even if it just listed them -- complete context is helpful). Sadly, they simply get 404s (though the schemas.microsoft.com server exists). I wonder if that violates some sort of standard....

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[ColaMan]

Fucking hell - 3571 characters to produce "hello world?"

Pity there isn't an obfuscated XML contest - we'd have a winner here.

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[Fabio Dias]

...<w:validateAgainstSchema/><w: saveInvalidXM L w:val="off"/><w:ignoreMixedContent w:val="off"/>...

Hmmm... I wonder what will happen when MS Office 2003 goes gold.

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[zog karndon]

Hm. Looks like an XMLified version of RTF. Not too surprising - MS has lots of experience in RTF, and it would be stupid to throw it away.

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[ArtDent]

Those aren't necessarily supposed to be URLs where you can find the schemas. They are namespace URIs. They are just a unique namespace identifier for the elements and attributes used in the document. Those xmlns attributes of the wordDocument element associate the namespace URIs with namespace prefixes which are used throughout the document to refer to them.

The convention is to use http-scheme URIs to identify namespaces, but in reality they can be any unique URI. Some folks, like the W3C, also publish the schema that define the elements and attributes that belong to a namespace at the namespace's URI. But there's no reason to expect that Microsoft would do the same.

For more information, check out the W3C recommendation for Namespaces in XML.

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[Eivind]

The convention is to use http-scheme URIs to identify namespaces, but in reality they can be any unique URI.

You are rigth, they *could* be anything unique, but they *actually* look like this: http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2003/2/wo rdml

When you deliberately choose to use a valid URL for naming your schema, it's not too much of an assumption that the schema would actually be described at that URL.

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[mitchskin]

Now all we need to do is gather a large collection of documents generated by Office 2003 and run Microsoft's schema inference tool on them.

inference tool code & demo

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[ArtDent]

The Namespaces recommendation that I linked to before says:

"The namespace name, to serve its intended purpose, should have the characteristics of uniqueness and persistence. It is not a goal that it be directly usable for retrieval of a schema (if any exists)."

It then uses a fictional, non-resolving http-scheme hierarchical URI in all of its examples. I don't know if this is cause, effect or neither, but it is very common to see namespace URIs of this form that don't refer to accessible documents in the real world, as well. And it is certainly not a violation of any standard.

I didn't mean to suggest that it was unreasonable to try the URI in the first place, I was just trying to warn the original poster not to hold his breath.

Re:I'm cringing again: XML != anyone can read it

[JohnFluxx]

I would be quicker to blame it on the slashdot or the person who made the document.

I would suppose...

[Jack William Bell]

...do penguins eat sharks?

I would suppose that it depends entirely on the relative size of the penguin and the shark. Being as MS is a very big shark the penguin needs to bulk up a little more first.

Re:I would suppose...

[MWelchUK]

Or at least be a dead 'ard penguin.

Preferably with something sharp and dangerous at long range...

Microsoft Business Model

[stj]

I just wonder what kind of model exactly they have with this? If someone wants portability, they would prefer being able to import/export data to as many users as possible. So, let's look at the big picture: your company buys pro edition, you get PC at home and get home edition. In short, you're grounded at work... So, either you buy pro for home (which will be yet another license in addition to your OEM home version) or you end up doing acrobatic conversions five times a day. I'm really hoping to see some OSS office package working nicely some day.
On a side, Microsoft's idea about using XML wasn't great as yet, either. Sure you can see the stuff on the web as it looks in the MSWord's window, but the good point would be to be able to read those documents with tables and pictures as XML objects. I'm guessing that's exactly what MS would like to avoid in the first place. As with any language like that, it can be used better or worse. As yet, it's worse and doesn't seem to get better.
As I read their Office 2003 Overview, it doesn't seem like it's gonna actually save anything in XML. You can link to XML, you can import XML, but it doesn't say anywhere that you can write to XML. Am I right, or did they miss it in the ad?

Not quite as clear cut as it seems...

[ignatz]

This is the user schema support we're talking about here - which allows users to build Word templates from XML schema and then use them to save schema-compliant XML from documents. This is only being included in the professional and enterprise SKUs, not the home and SME SKUs.

User schema aren't really suitable for home and SME users - it's the sort of thing you need if you're dumping XML output into enterprise applications, and want your data entry folk to use their usual Office applications.

For XML transfer WordML is still supported in all SKUs, which is defined by a schema at a specific URI, so it will validate in most parsers.

What will be much more interesting will be uderstanding the pricing for InfoPath...

Re:Not quite as clear cut as it seems...

[cyril3]

I agree totally. I expect this is part of a push by MS to get all business users into Professional rather than the mix of Professional (for anyone who needs Access) and Standard (everyone else)

Some alternatives

[stonebeat.org]

I m not counting on MS Office Suite to provide me with a XML editor. Here are some alternatives:
DocSoft's W2XML Version 2
Authentic by Altova
i4i Tagless Editor
XMLWriter by Wattle Software
Opensource Extensible XML Modeling Application

If you know of any other GUI based XML modeling/editing apps, please feel free to add them to this list.

Re:Some alternatives

[gl4ss]

i don't think anyone was going to use it as xml editor, more like using the xml to export documents to other (free) office packages to get out of ms lock-in.

Re:Some alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

For conversion of Word to XML, these take the .doc->RTF->XML route:

Mozilla licence:
Majix is pretty good at:
http://tetrasys.dhs.org/

Commercial (RTF->XMLFO):
http://www.rtf2fo.com/
http://www. infinity-loop.de/index.html

First rule of running a software business

[littleRedFriend]

Develop once, sell many times...

Re:First rule of running a software business

[littleRedFriend]

Sorry this was removed from my post by slashdot:

By only having this in the Pro version, customers who don't want this aren't paying for it.

Develop once, sell many times...

Re:XML Support In Office 2003 Isn't For Everyone..

[the uNF cola]

It makes sense actually for usefullness.

If you xlink to another XML document or some binary data, then you need the "other document". If you need the dtd, or stylesheet information, you need the other document as well.

Zipping one XML document only has space saving as its only advantage. But for many, ensuring they are in the same place ensures you dont' get errors interpretting them and their required children/siblings/parents.

Open Office

[Anonymous Coward]

This is as good-a-time as any to migrate away from Microsoft Office. Open Office 1.1 is about to come out and it looks brilliant!! (the beta is currently available at http://www.openoffice.org/ ) It supports open standards (eg. XML), Microsoft Documents (word/excel/powerpoint) and exports to PDF (both text and graphics) at the press of a button! It also manages to count page numbers correctly when printing (* cough - word, cough *).

On the other hand, my wife prefers Word and I prefer Open Office. The only time she likes open office is when she asks me to convert a document from one word format to another - because word won't do it at all, or word converts it very badly.

Also, I save several hundred dollars every few years :)

AC

Re:Open Office

[mrscott]

There's a catch to just switching to OpenOffice 1.0, 1.1, StarOffice, etc... Outlook.

Some will start talking about Evolution and others will say that it should just be dropped because it's a security nightmare. Unfortunatey, Evolution is nowhere near on par with Outlook and newer versions of Outlook are definitely safer than the old. Besides, your average user using Office KNOWS Outlook (unless GroupWise or Lotus Notes or something is being used of course).

Fighting Outlook is going to prove an uphill battle as time goes on. It's proven itself as an excellent client from the user perspective and Outlook 11 (still in beta) rocks.

I've used Evolution -- excellent product, but limited since it uses Outlook Web Access for communication with Exchange. I've also used and administered various version of GroupWise and *nix based mail systems. While Outlook/Exchange DO have their problems, they let me provide critical services to my users pretty easily.

Re:Open Office

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the relationship between Outlook and a word processor as being important.

I prefer Eudora Light 3.0 for email (that's just me). I don't believe that a fully fledged word processor should form the heart of my email client - in the same way I don't believe a web browser should be compiled into the kernel.

If I were in favour of this model, I would prefer Next Step rather than the "tied in" approach currently seen in modern tools.

AC

Re:Open Office

[mrscott]

The discussion was about office packages. Not many companies pick and choose point products for each task. Most just pick an office suite and a mail client unless they use Exchange in which case they likely use Outlook.

Look around: there's a huge relationship between the mail client and the office suite.

Re:Open Office

[cranos]

Outlook has also proven itself to be buggy, unreliable and so full of holes the swiss could use it for cheese.

The only real benefits you get from Outlook is when it is used in conjunction with Exchange, as a stand alone email client, it is pretty average.

And to paraphrase George Carlin...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Tonight plenty of darkness, and tomorrow morning scattered light!

2 xml or not 2 xml, that is the question ...

[2TecTom]

lemme see ...

there's MS Java, then there's the other version
there's MS HTML, then there's the other version
there's MS VC++, then there's the other version
there's MS OS's then there's the other OS ...

same ol same ol ... see Bill, see Bill emulate.

Nope, nuthin new here folks, move along ... ;)

so what?

[__aaitqo8496]

...which is just fine because most peeople won't be using the xml stuff anyways. those who do will have access to a copy no matter what (advanced users warezing the programs) or a corp. with an it department devoted to dealing with the documents and setting up document definitions and whatnot.

in any case fromt he lips of a beta tester, it does have legitimate cool uses if used properly

Shh! You're giving away the plan!

[wiresquire]

Wait until everyone's using it.
Then GPL it.

That'll learn 'em.

What does that mean?

[wouterke]

Even if XML was supported in all versions of Office, would that mean that Office would suddenly have an open file format? I don't think so. It's perfectly possible for me to write anything in XML in a way that you will not be able to read it.

Which is normal. XML is a way to describe data. If you have the DocType Definition (DTD) of an XML file, the only thing you know is whether that XML file is structured correctly, and how you would create another XML file that would look like the same thing for an XML parser. Nothing more.

In the long run, XML is nothing more than a standard you can use to base other standards on. XML can be put in the same row as ASCII, bytes, the file concept, or even SGML: it's a standard intended for the creation of other standards.

Nothing more, nothing less

Therefore, I think the argument that Microsoft Office will 'support XML' is just a marketing joke. It won't do anything out of the ordinary...

XML just a feature, not a change in file format

[cyberformer]

Microsoft will still be leveraging file format compatibility for at least another Office release.

They'll do this as long as they have a monopoly (or near-monopoly). The XML support isn't about making file formats compatible with competitors, or even about pretending to. It's just one more feature that MS has added to Office, in an attempt to persuade existing users to upgrade. It means that Office can be used to edit XML documents. It doesn't mean that Office's proprietary file formats are disappearing.

XML editing is a useful feature for some people, and from what I've heard it works better than the horrible HTML support in previous versions of Office, but it's still a niche. (True, it can be used to help with cross-platform compatability, but so can RTF and other existing "save as" options.) Most users just want to write a letter or design a presentation, and aren't concerned with markup languages.

XML isn't necessarily helpful

[Eric Smith]

I fully expected that they would store the Office documents as a big blob of binary data, base64 or base95 encoded, in an XML wrapper. Technically that would be a fully standards-compliant XML file, but in practice it would be completely useless.

So it's not surprising that they haven't made their XML format completely transparent and uniform, but rather it is surprising that they haven't made it completely opaque.

Re:XML isn't necessarily helpful

[rock_climbing_guy]

XML ::doc type = M$WORD ::filename>
reply.doc ::end filename ::header
Of course, the new MSWORD 2003 files will look something like my comment\n ::end header ::msworddata
afh39 hfa3f p9a82 h3f9a phf8h a9pf3 h89pa
9a8hf 3pahf 839pa fhap9 8hf3p a928f hap98
fha38 fhalf ah38f aow3f ha8o7 3ho8r ah73w
a3r2h ilhra 8lw3r hlawh r8lai whfli awh3f
faw3h fliaw 83gth 839pa 89a3w p38a0 2p3av
fa3hf awloi 8ty02 9q285 7nvtj awoij itoaw ::end msword data ::begin authorinfo
name = "Headus Upassus"
address = "Bill must think I'm an idiot to use my real address for mandatory product registration"
SocSecNum = "314-15-9265"
MSRegId = "2718281828459045" ::end authorinfo
end XML

New Microsoft Position

[Bob9113]

Microsoft's Leach emphasized that this change in positioning doesn't negate that "customer-defined XML schema support is a feature of Pro." On the other hand...

Cool, they've actually appointed a corporate leach. Perhaps that explains why MS Office came out with XML support after it was released in OpenOffice.

Re:Propoganda (O/T)

[mickwd]

Any fans of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Information Minister (or "Comical Ali" as he is also now known) should be sure to visit this site.

I need some help here

[Morgahastu]

Explain to me why anybody would need XML documents?

Isn't the entire point of XML to share content/data and not appearances?

I can see XML data being useful for spreadsheets, config files, etc. But why documents?

If you really need a cross platform document make a pdf. Not a word document.

I am not trying to troll here, just want to know the benefits of XML documents.

At first I thought microsoft was just trying to cash into IT managers obsessions with new buzz words but now I am second guessing that.

Re:I need some help here

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks to the dickhead who made me a troll.

Rubbish!

[torpor]

It's intended to store "content" as opposed to "presentation", leaving "presentation" up to the app, much as was the original intent of HTML. Rather than an evil Microsoft plot, they are in fact conforming to the spec when they produce such a file.

This is just the sort of disinfo that MS themselves love to seed. Classic post, nice try.

It's just not true. XML is *NOT* 'just' a presentation format, a la HTML (nice smear), nor is it 'inevitable' that the fileformat ends up like Postscript.

XML is a text-based system for data storage and retrieval, intended to be *self documenting*. In other words, the details on what fonts are used, what settings The User has set for individual parts of the documents, the parameters for those setting, etc. ARE ALL SUPPOSED TO BE STORED IN READABLE FORMAT WITHIN XML TAGS, CONFORMING TO A KNOWN, PUBLISHED DOCUMENT DESCRIBING THE CONTENT.

You're trying to swing the definition, and it's not working here, buddy.

XML *IS* a solution to the problem of data longevity.

Microsofts' perversion of it, is a solution to theirs.

Re:Rubbish!

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize, of course, that you are wrong? At any rate, typing in all caps does nothing to support your argument. Cheers.

Re:Rubbish!

[MrWa]

It's just not true. XML is *NOT* 'just' a presentation format, a la HTML (nice smear), nor is it 'inevitable' that the fileformat ends up like Postscript.

So wait a second - the original post stated that XML is ALL about the content and specifically NOT the presentation. Now you are saying that XML is apparently *self documenting* and the USER decides how the content should be displayed.

So, according to your post, Microsoft is correct when their XML file output includes the *content* and the *user* can display it however they want.

Re:Rubbish!

[torpor]

No, what I'm saying is that there's no reason for Microsoft to not have used the parseability features of XML to make their document formats more open - to do so would have fulfilled the actual purpose of XML.

These other posts are out of field. XML can be used to store content, as well as all significant details about how that content should be displayed/portrayed to the user in various scenarios, in a way in which the details can be easily parsed - both by software and by human.

XML is an attempt to prolong the longevity of data, forever. The thinking goes that if the data is described in a meta-language (which can also be described), it's easier to - many, many years into the future - parse the details from those documents and render them appropriately.

Microsoft aren't doing it. They're just wrapping up the users data in incomprehensible data formats, within XML, and then 'playing the Open Standards' card...

There's no justification for not including presentation details - content and layout - within the context of XML. It's perfectly applicable in this regard, parent posts notwithstanding...

Re:Rubbish!

[MrWa]

That makes more sense.

From a layman's perspective it appears that the biggest problem is that people just don't understand XML and what it is used for (I admit that I don't.) So, while a document may be XML-compliant, from what have seen, it isn't necessarily readable by any other program.

If the data it not readable by any other program then, yes, that is pretty useless as far as data lifetime is concerned. Does this data, though, differentiate from content and presentation? Is it important to know exactly how the data is to be presented or important only to have the content?

From a *user* viewpoint I would have to say that, if someone else can not view the data exactly as I want them to, then it is useless. This doesn't mean that the other person has to look at the content this way, just that it should be possible. If the XML document can specify this - the content, the fonts, the headings, the layout, etc. - and this data can interpreted by other programs then, yes, that would be useful. Just getting the content is not that useful (you can open a Word document in a text editor and pull out the content; oddly enough, saving a document in OpenOffice.org format can't be read in a text editor...hhmmm)

Re:Rubbish!

[MisterFancypants]

Well, XML is, at the end of the day, JUST a file markup language. No company in the world (be they Microsoft, Sun, or IBM) is going to write an XML document that can just instantly be loaded in any application -- there always has to be code to parse that XML file and do something with it (like display it on-screen).

I'm not sure where these people who thought Office being XML would instantly make it compatible with other word processors are coming from -- if the other word processors don't implement support for Microsoft's XML format, it won't happen. For compatibility, the only thing XML gives over the .doc format is it is harder for Microsoft to hide undocumented features in it since it is primarily text based. That's it!

Re:Rubbish!

[Chokolad]

> Microsoft aren't doing it. They're just wrapping up the users data in incomprehensible data formats, within XML, and then 'playing the Open Standards' card...

Have you actually seen WordML ? Or you just assume that it is the way you describe here?

Re:Rubbish!

[tinrib]

XML is a text-based system for data storage and retrieval, intended to be *self documenting*. In other words, the details on what fonts are used, what settings The User has set for individual parts of the documents, the parameters for those setting, etc. ARE ALL SUPPOSED TO BE STORED IN READABLE FORMAT WITHIN XML TAGS, CONFORMING TO A KNOWN, PUBLISHED DOCUMENT DESCRIBING THE CONTENT.

No it's not. XML is not supposed to store information such as 'font' and other presentational features. This is the job of the XSL stylesheets or CSS etc. XML is designed to store data in a structured way. So for instance you may have a <chapter> tag, but what font to use for chapter tags is only supposed to be specified in the XSLT. If I did an XML export of my word document, I would expect (hope for) an XML document, and either an XSLT stylesheet transforming the XML to HTML, or an XSL:FO stylesheet so that I can turn the XML into a pdf or postscript file. However, the stylesheets would be the 'icing on the cake'. The essential item is the XML formatted data, not the presentational information.

Re:Rubbish!

[cduffy]

IIRC, you can run the OpenOffice output through gunzip and *then* read it comprehensibly.

Or maybe I'm thinking of AbiWord.

Re:Rubbish!

[Jerf]

1. XML is not supposed to store information such as 'font' and other presentational features.

2. This is the job of the XSL stylesheets

Bzzzt. XSL is XML. XSL stores fonts.

XML stores data. [text location='1.25 from left margin, 8in from top']This is [italicized angle='23.t degrees']text[/italic].[/text] (with appropriate bracket substitutions) is a perfectly valid XML document; your computer doesn't crash nor does the universe blow up if you submitted this to an XML processor.

Now this document format is nearly useless, what with the problems in parsing plain English into meaning data, and what the hell is 23.t degrees anyhow? But it's perfectly legit XML.

Re:Rubbish!

[torpor]

Yes, I have. It's crap. I will not use it, because I will not use Word.

Or, for that matter, any Microsoft product.

They no longer deserve my support - and I've been supporting them since GWBASIC was something I had to burn myself.

Re:Rubbish!

[torpor]

For compatibility, the only thing XML gives over the .doc format is it is harder for Microsoft to hide undocumented features in it since it is primarily text based.

That sounds like a good enough reason to use XML to me.

Re:Rubbish!

[Anonymous Coward]

<ecode>

is your friend!

<text location='1.25 from left margin, 8in from top'>
This is <italicized angle='23.t degrees'>text</italic>.</text>

Not that your "XML" is valid, though.

Re:Rubbish!

[TummyX]

No it's not. XML is not supposed to store information such as 'font' and other presentational features. This is the job of the XSL stylesheets or CSS etc.


Um. XML is for storing any kind of information -- including font styles. It's just a better idea to seperate those two concerns into seperate schemas.

PS. XSL uses XML!

Re:Rubbish!

[drdanny_orig]

Yes, that's true (OO.o, not abiword). That means you can just "mv foo.sxw foo.gz" and your file manager (nautilus, explorer, konqueror, whatever) will probably just do the right thing.

but on the good side...

[di0s]

Two other features also are similarly restricted: the document protection technology Windows Rights Management Services (RMS), and Excel List, a feature for improving analysis of data lists. Microsoft plans to deliver the three features only in the Enterprise and Professional versions of Office 2003, the company confirmed late Thursday.

No DRM in the Standard version means no DRM'd documents for the Office version that 99% of people use(and the version that comes with most OEM PCs). So at least Rights Restriction won't become widespread except for businesses.

Re:but on the good side...

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

What they probably mean, is that you can create a document with restrictions.
I suspect however, that all verisons will have DRM to obey any restrictions on a document.

WordML's copyright, or patent

[Opiuman]

WordML isn't stripped of the formatting, it is simply very obfuscated XML -- but it will be translateable / transformable as soon as we gets our hands on it. That said, however -- I'm still waiting to Microsoft's other foot to drop -- namely, they'll patent some part of WordML or go after people who reverse engineer it using the DMCA. *Sigh*

Re:XML just a feature, not a change in file format

[stj]

Well, if you look at MS Office format, MS has been amazingly consistent in keeping it for 6 years now. Ah, those format and version number wars between MS Word and WordPerfect. Anybody again? OpenOffice?

Re:XML Support In Office 2003 Isn't For Everyone..

[torpor]

a) What, you can't stick 'gzip' in your pipe and smoke it?

and:

b) It's *GREAT* for usefulness. Docs that depend on each other are 'stuck' together and commute well ... this is good.

XML Formats and Openness

[MasterVidBoi]

There was that glimmer of hope, but I can't say I'm too suprised.

It's sunday, meaning it's "Microsoft is evil, and Apple is being good... for now" day. XML itself isn't the holy grail. Without proper documentation, it can be just as nasty to figure out as the binary Word file (depending on how competent the designers of the format were). But properly documented format, with schema, XML or not, can be a really nice thing.

Has anyone actually seen MSXML?

[overshoot]

I ask because of persistent rumors that "MSXML" is effectively an XML wrapper around a binary blob that only MSOffice components can read.

Before someone corks off that that wouldn't be legal XML, please note that XML can carry encrypted content. As an existence proof, please note that MS could encrypt parts of the file such that decryption requires an MS key. The result would be perfectly legal XML, and perfectly useless without the MS key.

Re:Has anyone actually seen MSXML?

[stj]

And perfectly easy to hack in about 5 minutes, which leaves us again with POMSOF (plain old MS Office format)...

This is a lie.

[Mohamm3d Al-Sahaf]

XML is an standard. Microsoft supports as many standards as possible.

Microsoft Office is fully compliant with Microsoft Office. If you want to read an Office document, use Office.

You are safe now.

Atleast

[Anonymous Coward]

Atleast Enterprise/Professional/Standard all support my pirating habit equally.

You seem to be missing the point:

[torpor]

Which is, in a nutshell, that these issues *SHOULD* be brought to light, and people *SHOULD* stop using MS Word to edit documents.

That you think the /. crowd is stupid for bringing this issue up like this is missing the point completely, which most 'smart' /.'ers know, and which Microsoft do as well, as they are proving here:

There's just no reason to use MS Word any more. None at all. Edit-wise, people don't even use %20 of the features for editing in MS Word, generally. The GUI game is over.

MS Word only has relevance when it comes time to send a completed document to someone else.

The Solution: Use .PDF to send to people when you want to guarantee it'll look (and print) right, and .XML for *All Other Editing Purposes Requiring Openness and Flexibility*.

XML use by Microsoft is just an attempt to curb this strategy.

Re:You seem to be missing the point:

[cyril3]

F**k me I wish we could use some other example than Word and pdf as an alternative. pdf describes layout. XML describes data.

As an accountant I'm interested in the XML tags that tell me a number is an asset or a liability. I don't care if you want it printed in Tahoma or Wingdings A.

The only real problem will be if MS doesn't allow users to save in non-ms schema.

That would be truly anti-XML.

And as an Accountant I get pissed off when I get told by Quicken that their new versions will use XML extensively but in the next breath am told that "No, you won't be able to export transcaction data from your database except through smart tags." And I bet that will be limited.

Re:XML Support In Office 2003 Isn't For Everyone..

[LimeColoredSloth]

Also, I recall a long time ago when I tried abiword, the default .abw file format was in xml. I think ooo is rather slow and poorly designed, despite being feature-rich (or feature-bloated). Too bad...

OMG....!

[IWannaBeAnAC]

What is RMS going to do when he finds out MS has named "Rights Management Services" after him?

Is it possible this was deliberate?

Re:OMG....!

[Larthallor]

Insist they call it GNU/Microsoft Rights Management Services, of course.

What? You didn't see that coming? :)

There is no stinkin' schema

[Anonymous Coward]

"But analysts contend that WordML's compliance with industry standards is a misnomer. Because the schema isn't fully documented, people who want to edit files created in Office 2003 will only be able to do that with Office itself, as before...."

Think of Word documents as files selected to render more-or-less properly on their corresponding binary. Now considering that the word codebase predates XML, it's unlikely that a document could satisfy the structured grammatical constraints of a schema, unless through mandatory style sheets--an unlikely tactic I think.

No, I think MS has simply mapped the atoms of the current Word format to XML-ish tagging that Word can parse, but most likely will not satisfy any defined schema for the foreseeable future. What motivation would MS have to ease their customers' migration to other products while simultaneously constraining users' choice on formatting/tagging options?

Schema? There is no stinkin' schema!

Why not write yourself a plug-in?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you wait for Microsoft to provide you an XML format option? Why not write yourself a plug-in that runs in office and outputs to the format you want? This is what you would do in many other kinds of applications, for example 3D apps. The SDK for Office is on MSDN. (In fact, the .doc format is there as well somewhere)

I love this quote...

[26199]

"By only having this in the Pro version, customers who don't want this aren't paying for it."

I wonder how much more Microsoft would be forced to charge for Office with XML support? It's truly good of them to try and save us money this way...

Maybe next year...

[b3h]

This is what happens when you have complete market control. Why innovate when you can duplicate and still rake in hundreds of dollars per copy of the same suite you released last year?
OpenOffice, the world needs you!

technology optomist: is xml standard published?

[goon]

does anyone know for certain if the xml output is going to be published?

Is the file output in a readable format?

I would be interesting to see if they allow for reading the file like openoffice and allow text processing.

Re:technology optomist: is xml standard published?

[jkarlin]

I posted this above but wanted to give everyone another chance to see and stop spreading fud. I just opened Word 2003 Beta and typed 'Hello World' and saved with the XML format. Check out the format...no encryption!! Everything is human readable, or at least geek readable. Open Office or hundreds of useless SourceForge projects will be able to read and write in this format if they want. Now please, can we stop all the comments about evil Microsoft corrupting xml with encrypted binary data tags.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<?mso-application progid="Word.Document"?>
<w:wordDocument xmlns:w="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/ 2003/2/wordml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:w10="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:SL="http://schemas.microsoft.com/schemaLibra ry/2003/2/core" xmlns:aml="http://schemas.microsoft.com/aml/2001/c ore" xmlns:wx="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word /2003/2/auxHint" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C1488 2" xml:space="preserve"><o:DocumentProperties><o:Titl e>Hello World</o:Title><o:Author>Jason Karlin</o:Author><o:LastAuthor>Jason Karlin</o:LastAuthor><o:Revision>1</o:Revision><o: TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime><o:Created>2003-04-13T23: 29:00Z</o:Created><o:LastSaved>2003-04-13T23:29:00 Z</o:LastSaved><o:Pages>1</o:Pages><o:Words>1</o:W ords><o:Characters>11</o:Characters><o:Lines>1</o: Lines><o:Paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs><o:CharactersW ithSpaces>11</o:CharactersWithSpaces><o:Version>11 .4920</o:Version></o:DocumentProperties><w:fonts>< ; w:defaultFonts w:ascii="Times New Roman" w:fareast="Times New Roman" w:h-ansi="Times New Roman" w:cs="Times New Roman"/><w:font w:name="Tahoma"><w:panose-1 w:val="020B0604030504040204"/><w:charset w:val="00"/><w:family w:val="Swiss"/><w:pitch w:val="variable"/><w:sig w:usb-0="21007A87" w:usb-1="80000000" w:usb-2="00000008" w:usb-3="00000000" w:csb-0="000101FF" w:csb-1="00000000"/></w:font></w:fonts><w:styles>< ; w:versionOfBuiltInStylenames w:val="3"/><w:latentStyles w:defLockedState="off" w:latentStyleCount="156"/><w:style w:type="paragraph" w:default="on" w:styleId="Normal"><w:name w:val="Normal"/><w:rPr><wx:font wx:val="Times New Roman"/><w:sz w:val="24"/><w:sz-cs w:val="24"/><w:lang w:val="EN-US" w:fareast="EN-US" w:bidi="AR-SA"/></w:rPr></w:style><w:styl e w:type="character" w:default="on" w:styleId="DefaultParagraphFont"><w:name w:val="Default Paragraph Font"/><w:semiHidden/></w:style><w:sty le w:type="table" w:default="on" w:styleId="TableNormal"><w:name w:val="Normal Table"/><wx:uiName wx:val="Table Normal"/><w:semiHidden/><w:rPr><wx:fon t wx:val="Times New Roman"/></w:rPr><w:tblPr><w:tblI nd w:w="0" w:type="dxa"/><w:tblCellMar><w:top w:w="0" w:type="dxa"/><w:left w:w="108" w:type="dxa"/><w:bottom w:w="0" w:type="dxa"/><w:right w:w="108" w:type="dxa"/></w:tblCellMar></w:tblPr></w:style>< ; w:style w:type="list" w:default="on" w:styleId="NoList"><w:name w:val="No List"/><w:semiHidden/></w:style><w:sty le w:type="paragraph" w:styleId="BalloonText"><w:name w:val="Balloon Text"/><w:basedOn w:val="Normal"/><w:semiHidden/><w:rsid w:val="4E5A63"/><w:pPr><w:pStyle w:val="Ba

Re:technology optomist: is xml standard published?

[alangmead]

There was a post a little further up that showed an example of the output of word 2003. It wasn't necessarily unreadable, but it seemed to have a lot of tags that seem to fall out of Microsoft's implementation. For example, why should I be concerned that the w:latentStyles has its defLockedState attribute set to "off".

A quick google search for wordml schema led me to this document which says that the XML schema is in the word XML Content Development Kit. I have no idea what sort of license a CDK would have.

Re:technology optomist: is xml standard published?

[goon]

thanks for posting this. It answers what I really wanted to know about nature of the xml format. If you can get into the guts of a document like this, you can do a lot of nify coding including something along the lines of (round-tripping):
Word2003 => doc <=> foo-tool<=> (html form|email|database)

This is good news from MS.

Re:technology optomist: is xml standard published?

[goon]

beaut. I'll be checking this further.

word XML Content Development Kit. I have no idea what sort of license a CDK would have
Hate it when you have to ask permission :)

Plaintext

[NitsujTPU]

Storing that much data in plaintext is kind of inefficient anyway, but that's just my point of view. XML is a nice toy, but it's not the answer to all that ails you.

Re:Plaintext

[otis wildflower]

plaintext == portable across binary platforms
plaintext == greppable usefully
plaintext == mungable inline easily

plaintext + stream encryption = very good and space-efficient thing.

plaintext + CPU and disk subsystem from the last 3 years = 2-5% more load when gening/parsing XML.. boo hoo hoo!!

welcome to the 21st century, where we can afford convenient 'waste' like XML!!

If I hear one more person whinge about XML's 'bloat' I think someone's gettin a slappin... Spoken as someone who's had to emacs binary files to 'relink' a hardcoded shared lib reference.. Netscape Enterprise server admin junk.. :/

Re:Plaintext

[NitsujTPU]

Eh, true enough. I think that XML is a good thing, but I am always a bit cautious, because I feel that many people use the power of modern computers as an excuse to write poorer quality software.

Re:Plaintext

[trouser]

I've just created a new doc using Word on a Mac running OSX.

I typed "Hello." and saved. Six chars. Assuming unicode encoding that'd be 12 bytes. Plus a header and some style information to specify the font, colour, size, etc. Maybe 100 bytes total.

So why is the file 24kb ? You think XML is inefficient. Have a look at Microsoft's proprietary formats.

Not that I'm saying XML is good. XML is stupid. I was just saying Microsoft suck rocks. Big fat hairy rocks.

Re:Plaintext

[GenetixSW]

If I hear one more person whinge about XML's 'bloat' I think someone's gettin a slappin

Besides, XML doesn't really have any additional bloat over the standard Word file format anyway. Ever looked at how much stuff comprises a 10.5k *blank* document?

Re:Plaintext

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead wrong on all accounts. THat's a typical Mac luser for you... A little advice... Quit trying to be "cool" by hopping on the "XML Sucks" bandwagon. It's making you look like an utter fool.

Re:Plaintext

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, some people will and some people will use the power to write brilliant new apps that allow people to do things they never could before. What's your point?

True, true...

[Chordonblue]

"This just isn't true."

The hell it isn't. Ever try to open an older works document in 'X' version of MS Office?

How about support of international versions? Can a Japanese student use their version of Office 97 to write an English document, printable in our labs? Dunno. Sometimes.

How about opening say, a Word 97/2000/XP doc in Office 95? Oh, right, that doesn't work either.

Schools aren't like your average corporation. We can't always afford to go out and get the latest and greatest. I also have to question WHY we'd even bother doing so and I wish our public schools would seriously consider this question as well - our tax dollars can be better spent. To be honest, Office 97 was all we ever really needed functionality-wise.

Then there's what happens when a student goes home and works on a paper. Who knows WHAT format it'll come back in. The biggest problem for us has been when an upgrade cycle comes around and some of my students (or parents) end up with it (came with their brand new PC).

Last year I posed a question to the teachers: Why not use Open/StarOffice? This has (for the most part), solved our compatibility issues. As I work for an international school, we have students with every version of MS Office, Works, Wordperfect, hell, even NOTEPAD!

Standardizing everyone (teachers, parents, students) on OpenOffice.org was the smartest thing we've ever done. Document compatibility was major factor in that decision.

Re:True, true...

[cyril3]

Ever try to open an older works document in 'X' version of MS Office?

How about opening say, a Word 97/2000/XP doc in Office 95

The way I read the post in question the poster referred to the difficulty of opening in say Office 97 a document saved in the format of a later version say XP. As far as I know apart from one stupid upgrade a while back which they fixed, any MS office prog can save in the format appropriate to an earlier version. Please let me know where I'm wrong. (International version differences excepted)

Your examples are not on this point at all. As for Works, I can't remember the last time I got one of their documents to open in anything other than Works.

And Standardizing everyone (teachers, parents, students) on OpenOffice.org was the smartest thing we've ever done. Document compatibility was major factor in that decision. I mean seriously. Substitiute anything for OpenOffice.org and the thing still makes sense and is just as valid.

Re:True, true...

[spinkham]

Except OpenOffice.org is feature-rich, free, and cross-platform, making it a better then average choice for standardization.

Re:True, true...

[Chordonblue]

"any MS office prog can save in the format appropriate to an earlier version..." ...as long as you HAVE it. That's my point! Only endless upgrades will ensure this kind of compatibility unless you can standardize on a more open standard.

Also, you'd be surprised how many people have a difficult time understanding why their .doc here doesn't work with their .doc at home. Doesn't make much sense to me either - how the hell can you tell? Why should it matter?

And as I believe I did mention international compatibility is a MUST. With fully 30% of our students coming here from other nations, this 'feature' isn't an option.

Which brings up the next point.

Me: "Standardizing everyone (teachers, parents, students) on OpenOffice.org was the smartest thing we've ever done. Document compatibility was major factor in that decision."

You: "I mean seriously. Substitiute anything for OpenOffice.org and the thing still makes sense and is just as valid."

Sure. And with endless gobs of cash, I could buy a copy of MS Office XP for every parent, student, and faculty member. I thought I had made the point about money being a factor, but let me make this clear here: MONEY IS A FACTOR.

Because of various incompatiblities, we HAVE to standardize here or else chaos ensues (the state in which I found this network originally). We can't afford the amount of licenses that this would come to, certainly not at MS's prices.

Open/StarOffice offered us the means to that end. Are you critical of this decision because you have a bias towards OOo? I'm not sure I fully understand why you're arguing here.

Re:True, true...

[zog karndon]

And Microsoft makes uplevel converters for old versions of Word & Works, too. If you go to the Office download center, you will find Word 2000/2002 converters for all Microsoft products. Since Microsoft uses the same converter format for all their word processing programs, the same converter will work in Works, Word 97, Word 95, Publisher, and probably a few more that I've forgotten. Oh yeah, and they're free. You don't need to update anything, just do a little research. You know, like you're supposed to do as a good little Linux user.

As far as international versions go, as far as I know, any version of Word after Word 97 (I think - could have been as early as Word 95, but probably not Word 6) is exactly the same for all international versions except for one DLL that contains the international resources. Can't speak for Works; didn't work on it. So if you've got Word 2K, you should be good to go.

Re:True, true...

[Politburo]

As the other replied pointed out...

The parent to my post appeared to be saying that even conversions between close versions of Word (and only Word) cannot be done reliably. That is not true. I am most familiar with the 97 line and the 2000 line, and have gone between these products seamlessly. I assume to complete his "5" versions of Word, there may be an XP version, and perhaps a few Mac versions. Back when I was actually near macs (high school, 5 years ago), I also had no problems between the PC and Mac versions.

I have no experience with internationalization and cannot comment on it.

It's great that you standardized on OpenOffice. But your specific example includes software that is 8 years old. Do you think the OpenOffice of today will open an OO document 8 years from now? We'll see..

PS. I hope the answer is yes.

Re:True, true...

[Chordonblue]

I hope it's yes also, but consider this: Why wouldn't it?

Microsoft has every reason in the world to insure that you will run into difficulties if you're not using the latest and greatest. I don't see this same motivation with OpenOffice.org.

Either way, there will be a way, it's just how much you want to put up with I suppose. :)

Re:True, true...

[cyril3]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not critical of your decision to go with openoffice. The problems you face with various versions of Word would face you in five years time with open office if at that time the latest version of openoffice has features that aren't currently supported and we all hope that there are some of those.

But that won't be a problem because you can keep all installations at the same level because they are free. So your main problem with MS product is MONEY. Now I know you have other problems with MS but the comments you made related to money as the problem. I understood that while reading your first post.

But you ended with the statement that Document compatibility was major factor in that decision."

So my comments were meant to suggest that the technical arguments you used against the MS products in that conclusion were more a secondary issue arising from the primary issue of cost.

I can beat up MS as good as the next guy but I'm also happy to critisise anti MS arguments that I think are wrong or misguided. Because I think if you gonna fight you might as well fight with appropriate weapons.

Re:True, true...

[Chordonblue]

"The problems you face with various versions of Word would face you in five years time with open office if at that time the latest version of openoffice has features that aren't currently supported and we all hope that there are some of those."

Not proven either way, but if you look at the XML spec, unsupported future features would simply be ignored by an older version - basic document compatibility should be stable. That's been a design goal of the OOo project. MS's goal seems to be breaking compatiblity for these two reasons: 1) Eliminate competition. 2) Make upgrades a mandatory thing.

There is evidence that a well-organized open source project can still maintain compatibility for years. Look at 'X': It's compatible to a fault!

The other non-issue here is that why wouldn't we USE a newer version in the future? It's not like it costs anything. :)

now c'mon

[standsolid]

who else read this and thought "and..."?

in other news: garvity keeps you on the ground! more at eleven!

depends on one factor...

[morgajel]

do the sharks have laser beams on their foreheads?

I hope they thought ahead this time...

[PetoskeyGuy]

...and made sure to put in the tags. It would make detecting the little bastards so much easier.

Keep it polite please

[Anonymous Coward]

Number one I run Open Office on windows. I don't aggree with pirtacy but I am not prepared to layout $500 plus on MS Office it is not bitching even if micrsoft mucks with xml you can almost bet they will stuff it up somewhere and give the system another fault. Just like mucking with RPC and other open system. HTML was mucked with modes that make you look like a idiot when you view the code from netscape. These faults go on and on and on. I think you are missing the worst of facts of microsoft.

Re:Keep it polite please

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you :)
you made my life worth living.

Look at the beta

[mrscott]

Take a look at the beta of Office 2003 before going TOO far with this thought. I got the beta and installed it on my lab machine. After a VERY good experience (especially with the new Outlook), it's now running on my home desktop as well as my machine in the office. I don't generally run beta software like this, but for the new Outlook alone, it is WELL worth it.

I used Outlook, Word and Excel every day. The new versions aren't dramatic in their changes, with the exception of Outlook 11.

Re:Rubbish! - Yes total rubbish

[jkabbe]

You keep talking about how it is "supposed" to work but they are just tools. XSLT do not have to be used just for presentation. XSLT can be used to transform from data from one format to another (for instance when converting from one vendor-specific format to another). On the flip side, an XML document can contain all the formatting information ala the Apple Keynote software and its open DTD.

Certainly if one WANTED to erect a high wall between content and formatting one could use XML and XSLT to do so. But to argue that this is the only acceptable use for XML is just rubbish.

XML in Word 2003 is actually pretty good

[unfortunateson]

I haven't looked at the XML generated by saving 'normal' docs to XML, but I'm rather impressed by Word's ability to edit XML.

You need a schema, which is a bit of a pain, but it's at least as friendly as most of the XML editors out there. Plus you can embed all the 'normal' Word formatting content where any CDATA would go.

I'd like to see a better UI for entering attributes rather than having to right-click the tag -- there's this handy-dandy task pane on the right, why not default to attribute entry there?

The live validation is pretty good, the pick-and-choose entities is just fine. The best part, is that the XML is accessible from VBA, .Net, and anything else that can talk COM/OLE.

I'm starting to look into their "SmartDocs" SDK, where you can have behaviors appear in that task pane (probably can do the attribute editing there), based on the XML tags. It's an extension of their SmartTag interface, and not the most straightforward interface I've ever seen, because the tag is just a parameter to a generic call, but I think I can make it work.

I'm less impressed with their XML form editor Infowhatever -- it appears to be limited to usability with certain kinds of schemas (and never DTDs, it seems), more database-like, less document-like. If its forms could be embedded ito Word, it would be even nicer.

FYI, the DTD I'm working with is the International Council of Harmonization's Electronic Common Technical Document, which is not a document, but the table of contents for submissions of data to the Food and Drug Administration and regulatory agencies worldwide (Ok, only Europe and Japan, with Canada and Australia and others riding the coattails).

Your sig.

[Malcontent]

I read the page. I am not surprised. History shows that all opressive governments got that way with the approvals of the majority of the citizens. You know..

First they came for gypsies, then they came for jews etc.

I wonder when they are going to come for me and you.

Lots of people have (even on /.)

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's not a "binary blob inside two tags".

There are even some posts with it in this article, but since slashdot munges it up in the posting code (adding random spaces), and it's more complicated than two lines of code, people are already dissing it as "typical MS trash".

There are two "flavors", one that strips out all formatting, and another one that is supposed to be able to round-trip all the word features.

It can also be set up to use user-defined schemas, and do lots of other neat and useful stuff in an environment people are used to, but that goes against the slashdot group-think, so you won't hear anything positive about any of this here.

Office 2005

[lymond01]

It'd be nice if Microsoft distributed their next power suite in 2005, when more of the industry standards have been thought out.

With that, I'd also like a starship with hyperdrive.

In other news...

[brundlefly]

Microsoft seeks to make money off their own technology. News at Eleven.

Big deal. Grow up.

Re:In other news...

[0x0d0a]

Microsoft seeks to make money off their own technology. News at Eleven.

Ah, but this *is* important.

Capitalism doesn't benefit the consumer any more when a monopoly exists -- by leveraging incompatibility, Microsoft is using monopolistic approaches. So, it's not necessarily that what they're doing is dumb from their point of view, but that consumers are justified in doing whatever they can to eliminate this, because it *is* hurting them.

It's not the same as Microsoft charging an arm and a leg for their software. Then a competitor could come along...and if it doesn't, then MS can keep raking in the money.

Do YOU agree?

[Chordonblue]

Yes, I'm very familiar with the converters, but my ultimate point here is this: Why go through this crap when you don't have to? Standardizing on an open format eliminates the need for a converter AND it solves the international issues.

Look, we're a secondary school. Some of the younger students are completely clueless about this stuff and get frustrated easily. Can they be taught? Sure. Will they retain it? Dunno. Most of the students here aren't Slashdot readers. Most just want to do their assignments and move on. More often than not, staff resources get stretched even further to deal with issues like this.

Hey, it's too bad those conversion programs won't actually convert their documents to something more useful (as in open), eh? Can you say, 'Lock-in'?" And now we hear the the much-vaunted XML format will be for those 'preferred' customers only? Color me shocked. Yeah, the companies that get XML ability are those MS are terrified to lose contracts with to software like StarOffice. I'm sure that's just a coincidence though.

Just because some of you out there are willing to be led around by MS and their licensing tactics doesn't mean we have to be. We studied our needs and made the appropriate decision. EVERY organization should be considering open source when appropriate to do so. To do otherwise makes you a 'good little' Microserf. You do a disservice to your company/org/edu, when you take the easy way out and simply sign on the dotted line everytime MS has a new license 'agreement' to bend you over with. Unless you're some huge corporation which demands things like XML, there's no 'agreement' other than you 'agree' to be their bitch. No two ways about it. How much control does your org want over the software they use and how they use it? Shouldn't that be as much of a factor as 'Ooooohh.. Office 2003. NEW TEMPLATES!'

And just for the record, three years ago I was a trainer on MS networking product. I've worked with MS and Citrix for years before that. I'm more than familiar with the advantages of using MS in an enterprise (we're certainly not all Linux at my .org!) but I'm no longer in a corporate situation. .Org's rely on donations to stay alive. Looking for alternatives is something I do all the time. My interest in Linux happened because it offers an alternative - something I'm not frightened to explore. I'm not a zealot as your 'good little' comment suggests, but I'm certainly open to what does the job with the least amount of hassle / cost.

Re:Do YOU agree?

[zog karndon]

How hard is it to click on a dropdown box? How hard is it to select 'save as RTF'? It's no harder than selecting 'save as XML'. And, Slashdot FUD aside, all office versions will save/load XML documents using the office schema. Home users aren't going to be editing Docbook XML, by and large.

Re:Do YOU agree?

[Chordonblue]

That's not the point again.

This idea of having an upper strata of 'exclusive' software is scary. Let me give you a GREAT example as to why:

Our school (Linden Hall School for Girls in Lititz, PA) has been running a Windows-based domain with a proxy/filtering system based on Proxy Server (now on ISA). Standardizing on the MS product meant that different age profiles can be set up along with different and corresponding access levels. Until Windows XP came out.

The HOME edition of XP doesn't allow you to connect your machine to a domain, after all you're at HOME, right? Well, this fact wasn't clear to me until after the next year new student packet information went out. So all these girls went out and got fantastic brand new computers preloaded with XP Home and couldn't connect to their home directories or use the Internet. The temporary solution for this year was to put XP Home users on a Citrix server and give them a few choice apps to run but they hate it.

The alternative is to have them upgrade to XP Pro and yes, next year I am going to require that our students do not bring XP Home. If they do, we will not be able to offer them connectivity. Strange though, when you think about it. From Windows 9X, to NT, to 2000, the Mac OS, and even Linux can be made to use domain resources. It would of course, take Microsoft to insure incompatibility wouldn't it?

This is a big problem with MS - no flexibility, no recourse, no exceptions. Why should my students be forced to upgrade to a clearly corporate version of this software just to be able to get their shares automatically and use domain resources? We're a non-profit educational facility, not Ernst & Young.

If you don't think this will matter as far as Office versioning goes, you are clearly ill informed. Once it was MS's goal to ensure compatibility with their products, but no longer. They lower the hook, you bite, and then they pull you in for more and more.

You adequately explain the procedure for using XML, but again, why isn't this full functionality just included with every version of the new MS Office by default? No space on the CD? Misstep by marketing?

Hint: LOCK-IN.

Re:Do YOU agree?

[zog karndon]

So let me get this straight. When Microsoft includes some feature that you don't need, it's bloatware, but when they factor their product line, it's 'scary'. Make up your mind, dude.

And Microsoft has *full* compatibility across Office versions. You can download converters (that run on old versions of Office) to load and save files in the new version of Office.

As for XP Home being unable to connect to a domain: Oddly enough, I'm running XP Home right now, and I can access domain resources at will. I have to type my domain username & password for each server, but I get access to them. My machine isn't *part* of the domain, and I can't *log into* the domain (which is why I have to type the username/password combo), but I can certainly access the resources.

Oops. Microsoft paranoia strikes again!

Re:Do YOU agree?

[Chordonblue]

"When Microsoft includes some feature that you don't need, it's bloatware, but when they factor their product line, it's 'scary'. Make up your mind, dude."

I have 'dude'. It's very simple actually. We use OOo and StarOffice to avoid getting bogged down with various conversion programs. You chant *full* like it's some sort of mantra, but I once again ask, are you including *full* compatibility with versions from South Korea, Japan, and Saudi Arabia? I call you back to my original statement about having international support. We are an international school.

I love how you put that - 'factor their product line'. I'm not saying MS doesn't have the right to include features. Of course they do. What I am saying is that in this instance, it's pretty apparent that MS is creating a special class of corporate user with the XML feature. The fact is, they simply don't want to move away from using proprietary .doc-types.

"My machine isn't *part* of the domain, and I can't *log into* the domain (which is why I have to type the username/password combo), but I can certainly access the resources."

We have three drives map when a user logs in. So... Basically, a student would need to log in THREE times to get to each for each reboot, right? Hmmm.. Good usability there.

Oh, and don't forget about the ISA Server which relies upon domain security and logins. I'm not certain, but I'd bet my students aren't prepared to login EVERY TIME they open a browser window.

"Oops. Microsoft paranoia strikes again!"

Is it that you want so bad to believe MS is perfect and are blind to all else, or are you on their payroll?

I've got a job to do here, and I do it well. I use what tools are appropriate whoever they're from as long as we can afford them. Looking for alternatives isn't somehow being disloyal or paranoid (although given court judgments against MS, perhaps we all should be); it's simply common sense.

Re:Do YOU agree?

[zog karndon]

First, may I quote you?

So all these girls went out and got fantastic brand new computers preloaded with XP Home and couldn't connect to their home directories or use the Internet.

Well, I hate to tell you, I do this every day. So, it's obviously possible. I never claimed it was the world's easiest solution. Personally, I find mapped drives to be a pain in the ass, but, even with mapped drives, you only have to log in once you use the drives.

Second, you obviously haven't even bothered learning item one about any version of Office, since two minute's googling would tell you that yes, the converters are fully compatible with all international versions. The converters use RTF as an intermediate format. So, if Works has an Arabic version (which I doubt, incidentally), you should be able to save your works document as Word2K and open it up in Word2K (assuming that you have the appropriate fonts - arabic fonts aren't standard with english Word).

Since you've obviously got this massive hard-on hatefest for Microsoft going, I doubt that anything I say further will change your opinion. But, for the record, I don't believe that MS is perfect; I just believe that they're better than Linux.

Re:Do YOU agree?

[Chordonblue]

"The converters use RTF as an intermediate format.."

Come again?

"The converters use RTF as an intermediate format.."

Right, that's what I thought you said. So you end up stripping out anything that may have to do with graphics or proper formatting. What the hell kind of 'solution' is this?

"Since you've obviously got this massive hard-on hatefest for Microsoft going..."

It's not a hatefest, it's a protest. .ORGs like mine get steamrollered everytime another incompatible format/program/OS comes out of MS. I know why they're doing it and I disagree with it.

There's a reason why Linux is gaining a real foothold and [hint] it doesn't necessarily have to do with it being 'free'. Some of us out there are becoming increasingly disgusted with who we have to buy these products from. MS is doing the job for us right now, but I'm increasingly open to alternatives.

price atm?

[jago25_98]

hmm could do with some prices in this thread

Re: Smell the mantra, brethren

[johannesg]

If all I want to do is exchange content I can do so just fine using a raw text file, no need for fancy XML stuff. If I want to exchange a word processed document I do not want to "separate presentation", because presentation is the primary reason for using the format in the first place.

OO output

[IamTheRealMike]

For comparison, here is the equivalent (empty) document in OpenOffice.

content.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE office:document-content PUBLIC "-//OpenOffice.org//DTD OfficeDocument 1.0//EN" "office.dtd">
<office:document-content xmlns:office="http://openoffice.org/2000/office" xmlns:style="http://openoffice.org/2000/style" xmlns:text="http://openoffice.org/2000/text" xmlns:table="http://openoffice.org/2000/table" xmlns:draw="http://openoffice.org/2000/drawing" xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:number="http://openoffice.org/2000/datastyle " xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:chart="http://openoffice.org/2000/chart" xmlns:dr3d="http://openoffice.org/2000/dr3d" xmlns:math="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:form="http://openoffice.org/2000/form" xmlns:script="http://openoffice.org/2000/script" office:class="text" office:version="1.0">
<office:script/>
<office:font-decls>
<style:font-decl style:name="Arial Unicode MS" fo:font-family="'Arial Unicode MS'" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
<style:font-decl style:name="HG Mincho Light J" fo:font-family="'HG Mincho Light J'" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
<style:font-decl style:name="Nimbus Roman No9 L" fo:font-family="'Nimbus Roman No9 L'" style:font-family-generic="roman" style:font-pitch="variable"/>
</office:font-decls>
<office:automatic-styles/>
<office:body>
<text:sequence-decls>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Illustration"/>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Table"/>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Text"/>
<text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Drawing"/>
</text:sequence-decls>
<text:p text:style-name="Standard"/>
</office:body>
</office:document-content>

meta.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE office:document-meta PUBLIC "-//OpenOffice.org//DTD OfficeDocument 1.0//EN" "office.dtd"><office:document-meta xmlns:office="http://openoffice.org/2000/office" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:meta="http://openoffice.org/2000/meta" office:version="1.0"><office:meta><meta:generator> OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 (Linux)</meta:generator><!--SRC641_[7663]_LINUX_IN TEL__stripples.devel.redhat.com_at_9/10/02_8:50:05 --><meta:creation-date>2003-04-14T09:09:00</meta:c reation-date><dc:language>en-GB</dc:language><meta :editing-cycles>1</meta:editing-cycles><meta:editi ng-duration>PT0S</meta:editing-duration><meta:user -defined meta:name="Info 1"/><meta:user-defined meta:name="Info 2"/><meta:user-defined meta:name="Info 3"/><meta:user-defined meta:name="Info 4"/><meta:document-statistic meta:table-count="0" meta:image-count="0" meta:object-count="0" meta:page-count="1" meta:paragraph-count="1" meta:word-count="0" meta:character-count="0"/></office:meta></office:d ocument-meta>

That is only 2 out of the 4 or 5 files openoffice saves. Oh, and for all those who made sucky Base64 jokes about MS WordML, take a look at this:

<config:config-item config:name="PrinterSetup" config:type="base64Binary">ugL+/0dlbmVyaWMgUHJpbnR lcgAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAU0 dFTlBSVAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWAAMAAAIAAAAA

Re:OO output

[Overly Critical Guy]

Gotta love double standards.

Sure

[Peer]

"By only having this in the Pro version, customers who don't want this aren't paying for it."

WOW, I only pay for what I get? What about xBox, Hotmail etc. Afaik they are being paid or by unsuspecting/ignorant Office-users.

Yes I did purchase an xBox for the very same reason ;)

"In related news..."

[Overly Critical Guy]

1.) Skim article summary.
2.) Begin post with "In other news..." or "In related news..."
3.) Write unrelated and obviously impossible "news article" that is in no way clever or original.
4.) Wait for "+5 Funny" moderations.
5.) Gloat over what intellectual fortitude it took to craft the phrase "Microsoft Zippo (TM)."

I will either be modded down, ignored, or there will be those who feel the need to continue the lameness with further attempts at being funny by extending my list of steps with references to this post, or worse yet, a "Profit!" joke.

Geez! What is all this shit about?

[Alex Belits]

XML is just a way to design data formats that are supposed to have data (and metadata) represented in a structured way. What that data may represent, how convoluted it is and what insane algorithms it can require to be parsed and used is still entirely the decision made for the developer.

XML _can_ produce readable formats however it has no facilities to ensure that XML-based formats will be readable -- just the opposite, XML itself is an example of a hopelessly over-complicated (though at least deterministic and documented) system made for a trivial purpose. The possibilities of using it as a wrapper for incredible amounts of convolutedness are endless.

Re:True, true... - ms word- internationalization?

[Anonymous Coward]

essentially...

bollocks....

if you've ever worked in an intensively multilingual environment with W2K and Office 2K (e.g. Dutch, English, French) you'll know that it simply doesn't work. Files created in one language setting often don't display properly in another, and this is from Word 2K to Word 2K, not even involving older versions.

Re:XML Support In Office 2003 Isn't For Everyone..

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. If you don't know why OOo needs to create a GZip to keep your data sane, and you don't know how to "pre-process" a damn GZip...wow. Seriously. Wow.

Embrace? Extend? (Throw?)

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Create valid XML document in E.g. OOo
2. Send that document to your Office 2003 using customers
3. Customer opens document in Office 2003, but then needs to save it. The customer has to save it in the native Office 2003 format (Or if you're lucky, Office 2003 MS-XML)
4. Customer sends non-XML document back. Now you have to be able to open that Office 2003 document.

Embrace and extend? Vendor lock in? Open standards? Not us 'guv.

Re:I think it would be better (Office 1985?)

[gosand]

if there wasnt so much of a focus on crap like "productivity" and "getting things done" and "using the right tools" and everyone just switched to GNU/Linux, KDE and OpenOffice. Sure, your business will more than likely tank as your employees struggle to get even rudimentary things like printing working, but oh my goodness MicroSoft is bad for producing a working product which has lasted for what, almost two decades now.

Pssst. Open Office runs on Windows you know, so cut the Linux FUD (or is it just ignorance?).

And MS Office has not lasted for almost two decades now. Every couple of years they force everyone to upgrade. At best you'll get 4 years out of a version before you have to upgrade. Unless you are currently running MS Office 1985, you should ponder the facts.

come on

[strombrg]

Give me a break. Microsoft isn't going to give up their lockin.

Using XML is:

1) An attempt to gain buzzword compliance
2) An attempt to popularize their dialect of an open standard

A document in XML can be every bit as proprietary as a binary document.

This is just going to make people wonder why non-MS-Word wordprocessors do such a "crappy" job of "reading/writing XML".

XML for front-end tool

[StarbuckZero]

Here at the company I work for, we use XML for CBT (computer base training). There is a tool developed in VB that our Instructional Designers use to write the lessons for our courseware then once they are done it is saved out in an XML file. Then the programmers are free to write a front-end in any programming language/tool they want just as long as they build the required components that are used in the lesson builder. The first front-end tool was built in VB6 which is being use for running off a local hardrive and the second one we're developing now Macromedia Flash MX for online training.

Since the same programmers that developed the course editor build the VB front-end to run the lessons they used built-in APIs for the Microsoft XML parser. I had to write some converters in Actionscript (Flash scripting language) to make up for them using built-in Microsoft APIs. Is it wrong that they used something like that? In a way I'll have to say yes and no, because we are not really trying to protect anything by using the APIs that took me 3 days to right a converter for just for plain text. It does make it harder for the student to open up an XML file with IE and look at the question text, graphic file and anything that was stored in the XML file as a simple string, but if the student wanted to figure out what the text is he'll write his own converter or use the built-in Microsoft APIs to decode the stuff any ways.

I know most of you hate the fact that Microsoft is using XML and still protecting the data that is stored in it, but if you want the data then figure it out. I did it when the other programmers here at this company used one of Microsoft APIs. Isn't that the same thing that was done with Open Office and Word Perfect? So stop bitching and get to work and trust me I know that a Base64 converter is nothing compared to what has to be done to figure out the new Microsoft file formant. It's not like Microsoft is going an open file format so stop thinking that they will. They are out to make money just like any other company.