Office 12 file format non-proprietary?

[Jammrock]

The rumor mill has been quoting an interview with an MS Office developer who said that MS will not be using a proprietary file format for the next version of office (12). The new format will place all information in a standard XML document. The XML document and all related images, attachments, etc. will be inserted into a standard ZIP file (though with a .DOC or .XLS extension no doubt). A converter/writer patch for the new file format will be released for Office 2003/2002/2000. Documentation on the format will be made public via MSDN.

This of course means that MS will essentially be opening up Office documents to be duplicated by everyone. I would guess they will rely on their name and feature set (which is far more advanced than OO or any other suite) to push sales. Very interesting development.

Article love'n:

http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Opens_Office_File_Formats/1117692086

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163702981

Jammrock

[GNEP]

That'll be exactly the same concept the OpenOffice file system uses then Although I've read somewhere that this new format will be available but not the default - they still want files you save (without having fiddled with your settings) to be openable by older versions of MS Office, so the default will be the old-fashioned .doc, .xls etc

[Nowhere]

And almost everybody (with pirated versions of new Office) won't care (why would you NOT have MS Office after all?). And also MS centered admins won't install converter/writer (what for?)
Well, perhaps at my facility it won't be so bad (Open Office is used widely; but you know, it's hilarious in one regard - we also use SPSS, which outputs .doc files that aren't readable in OOo :/ ; and of course nobody suggests to save the reports as HTML...)

[dshumake]

But it is proprietary. See MS webpage on the topic: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/f...entlicense.asp.

If MS really wanted to use an non-proprietary file format they could have just used the one used in open office, OASIS.

Interestingly, my understanding of the XML formats is that it is more like the stream formating that Wordperfect has always used and is quite a departure from the object formating in Word.

dshumake

The rumor mill has been quoting an interview with an MS Office developer who said that MS will not be using a proprietary file format for the next version of office (12). The new format will place all information in a standard XML document. The XML document and all related images, attachments, etc. will be inserted into a standard ZIP file (though with a .DOC or .XLS extension no doubt). A converter/writer patch for the new file format will be released for Office 2003/2002/2000. Documentation on the format will be made public via MSDN.

This of course means that MS will essentially be opening up Office documents to be duplicated by everyone. I would guess they will rely on their name and feature set (which is far more advanced than OO or any other suite) to push sales. Very interesting development.

Article love'n:

http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Opens_Office_File_Formats/1117692086

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163702981

Jammrock

[Jammrock]

MS states that it is an "open format" not an "open standard." Meaning they make the standard, but other people can use that standard to duplicate file types, but they have no say in standard creation. So it's one of those part proprietary, part open, deals.

[Kurt]

If it lets other programs open Word docs with 100% compatibility, I'm for it.