Microsoft Releases Pre-2007 Binary File Format Specs

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has released the specifications for the binary file formats used by pre-2007 Microsoft Office applications. They're accurate this time! Honest! While the documents are enormous (Word alone requires 533 pages; Excel runs over 1000 plus another 850 pages for the Office 2007 binary format), they hopefully will be useful to developers trying to create or extract information from Microsoft Office files (which despite their flaws, have been the de facto standard in many fields for some time now)."

Comments

Re:How freaking "open" of them...

[Mongoose Disciple]

Probably, you (being a lot of folks here) should just accept that Microsoft's moves will never be "Open enough" for you and call it a day.

Their goals aren't your goals, and never will be.

Re:How freaking "open" of them...

[blincoln]

(I assume from the summary that we're talking about the mirror universe Microsoft, the universe in which in 1976 Bill Gates wrote an open letter to the hacker community praising them for their efforts and exhorting them to "keep software free for the good of everyone, for the good of the world.")

Unfortunately, it turns out that by doing that, he set the mirror universe Microsoft up to be enslaved by a coalition of IBM, Sun, and the FSF. You might think that's awesome, until you find out that their Intendant is a promiscuous bisexual RMS and are forced to gouge out your own eyes when he walks off camera with his pet Microsoft slave Steve Ballmer and Carly Fiorina.