[wellylug] Microsoft Office XML format -- It appears to bereasonably open & useful !?

[Tony Booth]

> On Tue, 2003-11-18 at 11:55, Nigel Walters wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-11-18 at 09:32, Centurion Computer Technology Ltd wrote:
> > Microsoft wouldn't give anything away without a catch.
> > 
> > According to the liscense, they either have or are applying for 
> > patents on the schema or any implementation which will allow other 
> > programs to work with word documents using their schema.
> > 
> Yes, but it appears to be licensed under reasonable terms to 
> everyone. See 
> http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/format/xmlp> atentlicense.asp
> 
> Nigel
> 
> 
> > On Tue, 2003-11-18 at 11:16, Nigel Walters wrote:
> > > Slashdot has an article today pointing Microsoft's Office XML 
> > > schemas and the licensing for them. It appears to be realtively 
> > > open. Am I missing something ?
> > > 
> > > A useful link is
> > > 
> > > http://isb.oio.dk/info/news/wordml+published.htm
> > > 

Let's just say that I'll believe Microsoft will release a truly open
specification when I see it.

If you look at the schema, you will see that there is still some binary
data in there (search for base64, for example).  Now granted, it's not
practical to store some things any other way (bitmaps etc.), but
"toolbar customizations, envelope data, and the Visual Basic project"?
You might also have to deal with embedded OCX objects.

Here are some questions I would ask, bearing in mind that I don't know
what you are trying to do here:

1) Will all versions of Office be able to save in this XML format? (I
have a feeling only corporate versions are equipped)
2) Will Microsoft feel free to change the XML format to something which
is not valid XML in the future, as they changed (polluted) HTML and DOM?
3) Could there be problems with the patent license and GPL projects?
(looking at this sentence in the license: "You are not licensed to
distribute a Licensed Implementation under license terms and conditions
that prohibit the terms and conditions of this license.")

<tinfoil_hat_mode>
The thing that makes me most suspicious is that I haven't been able to
find mention of this new format on the OpenOffice.org site.  You would
think they would be falling over themselves to write a converter for
this easy-to-understand format, since it would overcome many of the
problems they have, but they don't seem to be.  I seriously wonder if
this "open format" is a trojan for preventing people converting MS
Office documents to other formats using GPL software, using patents.
</tinfoil_hat_mode>

Cheers
Tony