[wellylug] Microsoft Office - Is anything wrong with their support of XML ?

Rob Giltrap rob at ubietygroup.com
Tue Nov 4 15:03:14 NZDT 2003


Nigel Walters wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Does anyone know if their is anything wrong with the MS Office
>implementation of XML. I am interested in all the applications of MS
>Office (particularly the forms generator InfoPath)
>
>I ask on this list because I had always heard there was a problem, and I
>want to be able to critique accurately when suggesting open source
>alternatives.
>
>Nigel
>
>  
>
My understanding is that the office file formats are simply binary code 
within an XML wrapper.

As far as I know their implementation of XML is standard it's just that 
99% of the office file format is not XML. The XML component basically 
says "this is the document owner, when is was written and the next bit 
is a MS Word document" which means that the data is not open which is 
the whole purpose of XML in that it allows easy data interchange

Rob.




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