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Is the New Microsoft Office Really Open?
Posted by
Cliff
on Thu Dec 19, 2002 04:04 PM
from the a-window-undecided dept.
from the a-window-undecided dept.
joesklein asks: "From CNET, there is an article about the new Microsoft Office 11. In summary 'Microsoft says it's opening its Office desktop software by adding support for XML--a move that should help companies free up access to shared information. But there's a catch: It has yet to disclose the underlying XML dialect.' Could this be grounds for another anti-trust suit against Microsoft?"
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Is the New Microsoft Office Really Open?
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sure it is! (Score:5, Funny)
Are you paying attention? It's Microsoft. (Score:4, Insightful)
Dancing MonkeyBoy doesn't hop across a stage for his health. He "loves this company" because it makes money as only a monopoly can.
Silly rabbit. Open is for kids.
Re:Are you paying attention? It's Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
On any Unix or Unix clone you can just run standard tools or write your own.
Unfortunatly with everything in a proprietary format you then end up having to build scripting languages into everything making all of your data files potential entry points for malicious code.
The move to XML has the potential to eliminate that sort of brain damage once and for all provided they actually open their file formats.
I hope they do it.. but given their past I'm not holding my breath given that the options are long term financial security for MS or Security for their customers and the risk of losing market share in the future.
Re:Are you paying attention? It's Microsoft. (Score:4, Funny)
ifstream("MyOfficeFile.doc", ios::in);
Crossplatform enough for you?
As funny as it is useful. I can read the most thoroughly encrypted files that way, too. It's good to have a Windows programmer around...
Oh, you mean edit the files? I remember writing VBA code that did that just fine.. Good documentation how to do that - much easier then working with a crazy-ass XML schema?
It seems that between your first sentence and your second, you forgot the "cross-platform" part. Of course, if you're a VB programmer I can't blame you--you were probably born that way.
(I'm just kidding, no personal insult intended)
Draw you Own Conclusions (Score:5, Funny)
the Love Caculator [lovecalculator.com] demonstrates that
Draw your own conclusions. cute little widget.
Re:That's still to be seen... (Score:4, Insightful)
The same point that most technical decisions are based on. Buzzword compliance.
Re:That's still to be seen... (Score:5, Insightful)
The registry in Windows NT/2000/XP is sort of like that. It makes a lot more sense from a Microsoft-centric viewpoint than it does from a non-Microsoft-centric viewpoint. Now that it's been around so long, there are lots of ways to get at registry data (for instance, using Perl modules), but when the registry was new the only way to do it was through the Microsoft API, but until many people went through the pain of encapsulating the MS API, the pain of accessing the registry from a non-MS-centric toolset was high.
So maybe the XML format will be like that. If you're Linux-centric, for instance, the threshold of pain for accessing Word XML docs will be fairly high, but if you're Microsoft-centric, with all of their tools, code-snippets, documents, etc., then it won't be nearly as painful.
This way MS gets to claim interoperability, make Word data easily accessible to MS-centric solutions, but put a damper on non-MS-centric solutions.
Re:That's still to be seen... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think an analogy to Frontpage is appropriate here. Sure, it produces HTML, but the result just doesn't look right unless it's viewed in IE. Maybe the dtd is referenced, but encrypted or otherwise proprietary. Maybe MSXMLVIEWER (whatever it may be called) doesn't need the reference to be in plain text.
There are any number of things MS could do to ensure that the document just doesn't look right in other viewers. Since formatting is the whole point of XML, people will use MSXMLVIEWER and whatever it reads will be the de facto XML standard, just like whatever IE renders is the de facto HTML standard.
or it just ain't xml at all.
While technically correct, the point is sadly irrelevant. As long as MS is effectively a monopoly XML will be whatever they say it is, for the majority of people.
Also you aren't allowed to put binary data in an xml document
Not true. It's recomended that you don't put binary in an XML document, but nothing prevents you from doing so. This is exactly what will give MS the ability to hijack the standard.
In conclusion they would have to break xml pretty hard-core in order to make their doc types proprietary.
Only in spirit, I'm afraid, but that will likely be enough.
Besides, then what would be the point of going xml in the first place?
To make documents searchable. This is an ability which is extremely valuable to anyone who has a large amount of information they need to access. The upshot is that the actual content will likely be plain text, though important markups may not be. Sadly, format is more important than content for a lot of people.
Of course, most people won't use the XML format at all, since it won't be the default.
Re:That's still to be seen... (Score:5, Insightful)
As some others have pointed out:
1) You don't need a DTD or Schema to have XML
2) The url used in a namespace declaration doesn't need to correspond to a real document
3) Even in case the document used a DTD or Schema, that DTD or Scheme where available, and the document actually validated against it, you still don't know what the hell the tags mean, the DTD or Scheme are just syntactical(and grammatical?) rules, and don't tell you how to interpret the tags or attributes.
4) You can always include binary data in an XML document(ie., base64 encoded)
5) The point of using XML is Buzzword compliance and *perceived* openness
There are more reasons why XML not necessarily = openness. But this ones are more than enough.
XML means nothing, it's just a way to define languages, is like an charset, just because I have a document that is ASCII doesn't mean that I understand what is written on it if I don't know the meaning of the words that are on it(eg., just because you know the name of each letter doesn't mean that you know the meaning of "lkasdertunxsjd", right?)
Even if a language is in XML, you still need to *document it* to be able to *understand* it.
Sorry if I was a bit rough, but I'm sick of people that assume that because something is in XML it's automatically open. That is one of the biggest myths the XML buzz-wagon is based on, and is spreaded by people
that don't really understand what XML is.
Please, before you post to
Best wishes
\\Uriel
LOL (Score:4, Funny)
Re:LOL (Score:5, Funny)
<head>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=3D"Content-Type" CONTENT=3D"text/html; =
charset=3Dus-ascii">
<meta name=3DGenerator content=3D"Microsoft Word 10 (filtered)">
<style>
<!--
@font-face
{font-family:Tahoma;
panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
span.emailstyle17
{font-family:Arial;
color:windowtext;}
span.emailstyle18
{font-family:Arial;
color:navy;}
span.EmailStyle19
{font-family:Arial;
color:navy;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
</head>
<body lang=3DEN-US link=3Dblue vlink=3Dpurple>
<div class=3DSection1>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 color=3Dnavy face=3DArial><span =
style=3D'font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
I agree.
</span></font></p>
Re:LOL (Score:5, Funny)
Re:LOL (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not kidding, either. Seems like an easy thing to avoid in an HTML generator. Validator [w3.org] routinely reports hundreds of coding errors in simple short documents generated by Word. Ugh. What really sucks is when you're working on a web page for someone and cleaning out all the crap that Word generates, then at the last minute they send you the same document with some minor errors corrected.... and all the same major errors generated by Word. Fun.
Even grep replacing doesn't help (Score:5, Informative)
Even with grep replace tools, cleaning up this crap takes hours.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Reverse Engineer (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of XML is to have buzzword compliance, and this doesn't defeat that.
(Of course that's not the purpose most other people use XML for, but we're talking about Microsoft.)
Defaults (Score:5, Insightful)
If the XML files office produce are not made the default save types or if the XML merely encapsulates large portions of binary code, it will not matter one lick that office can save these xml documents because the majority of people will be stuck on the default, unreadable formats.
Re:Defaults (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you really think they have no right doing these things, go live in a 3rd world country; they generallly have the government telling you less about what to do. Except once in a while when they kill your familiy. You could be armed of course. You know what a totally armed society with a weak government looks like? Afghanistan.
That being said, it's hard to see what business the government has engineering document formats. They could, on the other hand, specify disclosure of formats as a remedy in an anti-trust case, but they generally fall into one of two categories which precludes this: stupid or bought.
Re:Defaults (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, all these needs could be fulfilled by voluntary industry standards, if it weren't for those pesky human beings, fallible and greedy creatures that they are.
Re:Defaults (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. Screw and nut sizes have been standardized without government involvement.
Don't get confused. (Score:4, Interesting)
Most rational specifications are for performance. The method should not matter as much as the end result. Fire codes are an extreem example, but even there the specification is flexible. The local government does not tell people how to build buildings, only that there needs to be so many exits per so many people and floor space. They don't nail you down to real specifics. Most rational specs are such as mil-specs for acryilic - it must be able to sit in the South Florida sun for one year without delaminating. How you make the thing does not matter, so long as it does what it should.
By these rational and objective standards M$ junk generally fails. If you say that a Word doc should be legible and keep it's formatting for a number of years, Word fails. The same thing can be said of all other M$ junk - it's designed to break and therfore government should reject it's use anywhere records are kept. That's all public work. That's hardly engineering the document, it's simply stating the thing should work as advertised.
All normal standards, from ASCII to WWWC are formed by professional agreement. Governments intervention is not needed. Disruptive vendors are generally seen through.
Re:Defaults (Score:5, Insightful)
In an era of 2+ GHz computers with 7200+ rpm hard drives, it seems odd that Microsoft would be unable to write an application than can quickly save and open text files that, on average, run well under 50 kilobytes.
Can you copyright/patent a schema ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lovely... (Score:5, Funny)
"XML dialect"?!? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's called a schema.
Talk about embrace and extend. Sounds like this will be more "XML-like" than real XML...
Re:"XML dialect"?!? (Score:5, Funny)
:-)
frob.
"Could this be grounds for another lawsuit?" WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
- A.P.
So exactly what do you call XML....? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think we've all had more than enough history to justify being suspect.
Fool me once, shame one. Fool me twice, and you know I'm a MS user.
Re:So exactly what do you call XML....? (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt you'll get an answer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being that it's NEW, people haven't really had enough time to learn enough about it (as in actually using it) to give an informed answer.
Perhaps you should re-post your question in 2 months when you can get some informed responses.
This illistrates the shortcoming of XML (Score:4, Insightful)
what does it matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Big deal if they don't open it up anyway (I don't really expect them to), staroffice/openoffice will crack it to a certain extent anyway. For most people's file conversions, its not that much of a difference to convert documents. Doesn't always look pretty, but it works fairly well.
Wake me up when something Microsoft does is suprising...
InfoWorld articles (Score:5, Informative)
Good quote:
THE GOOD NEWS is that Office 11 supports XML Schema. The bad news is that XML Schema has been described even by XML experts as "confusing," "impenetrable," "fuzzy," and "as user-friendly as a stick in the eye."
Re:InfoWorld articles (Score:5, Informative)
To clear up some points people have commented on (based on a very preliminary inspection plus a lot of discussion at the conference):
- The default save format is still
.doc (ie you have to go the extra click to save in XML format)
- If you pick to click it, the default XML format is MS's own office-document vocabulary, which retains all the formatting, held in attributes. Hairy but processable, and they will be shipping their schema for it so people can reprocess it externally. But this format will (of course) only represent the appearance, not any structure.
- It will also let you specify your own schema (or an industry standard one) and let you supply a binding of named styles to your element types, so you can edit using what look like styles but actually get represented in the saved file as XML markup. There is some debate as to whether this constitutes "being an XML editor" or just "being a wordprocessor that saves data in XML" (my money is on the latter).
- It will not support DTDs [www.ucc.ie], so you're stuck with W3C Schemas [www.ucc.ie] whether you like them or not* [slashdot.org]
- The discussion over a [more?] suitable schema/DTD for handling office documents (wordprocessing, spreadsheet, presentation) continues at the OASIS [oasis-open.org] TC on Open Office XML Formats [oasis-open.org] ** [slashdot.org]
With Office-11, Microsoft has nearly caught up with Corel [corel.ca]'s WordPerfect [corel.com], (which has had a fully-fledged SGML and XML editor built-in for years) and XMetaL [corel.com] (which Corel took over from SoftQuad earlier this year). MS still has a long way to go to match industrial-strength applications like ArborText [arbortext.com]'s EPIC [arbortext.com] or even Emacs with psgml-mode et al [compuserve.com], but Office-11 will be a solution for the masses who believe the Word interface to be more desirable, or the Microsoft licensing régime to be more attractive, or the software to be more stable.* [Bias note] I think W3C schemas were a big mistake; provision for data content typing and validation, namespaces, and extended grouping could have been achieved by extending DTD syntax; and wimpy programmers who moan about having two syntaxes to handle should get a life - it's not a big deal, the code is free and has been in use for 15 years :-)
** Sun [sun.com] has donated the OpenOffice [openoffice.org] (aka StarOffice [sun.com]) XML file formats to the public domain. It's worth remembering that {Star|Open}Office has been saving in XML as its native format for some time now, and has a lot more experience at this than MS.
well, of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course it could. But so could any bit of news about MS on
But "could" and "is" are differnent things. I suspect MS will decide that closing XML will render it useless, and make it at least as open and useable as their MS-HTML files.
So, at the worst, we'll have a new "save as" option that's bit sloppy--but since MS won't have to extend XML to get their office functionality, they probably won't do it just to spite a few OSS coders who'll figure it out in a year anyway.
Microsoft XML != XML (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, you can also save a Word document as an HTML file, however the HTML is so digusting, so non-standard that the only things that could possibly read it are more Microsoft products. The same, I would presume, will be happening to their XML feature.
Additionally, its not too far fetched that Microsoft would make their own DTD (Document Type Definition).
Points to remember... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) XML, SOAP and all these new technologies were pioneered by Microsoft
2) They killed all the standards they didn't pioneer (CORBA anyone ?).
3) There is NOTHING in the XML spec that _requires_ people to open up their schema definitions. Its purely a structure definition in the same way as Microsoft's old Word documents were stored, its just that now the markers are in Text format and any standard XML parser will be able to read the file.
4) Open Office can already read word documents even though they aren't in XML.
5) So can Word Perfect.
6) Using XML doesn't stop you embedding binary into the document, often people do this to store data (images for instance), thus an OLE reference might still be binary.
7) Pure XML and XSLT are great ways to use up all the power on your processor. Binary has previously been used here because its inefficient, if MS had opened the format up everyone would just complain that its too inefficient and its quicker to save using an older format. So MS are either trying to burn cycles or are customising the XML or their application for speed, is that wrong ? Would it be wrong if KDE did it ?
8) People won't switch to or from Word because of XML, Open Office and other tools will be able to read the Word files because other tools (Google for instance) need the format and MS can see real business need to allow them to see it.
9) XML is a meta-language as such anything can be written. Hell they could have a bitch of an external format and then a simple parser that makes it useful, but not tell anyone about the simple parser so everyone elses documents take years to load.
10) XML is the buzzword of today, OLE to be replaced by SOAP as the buzzword for Office next ?
Get off the high horse guys, whether its binary or XML is irrelevant, making something XML doesn't make it open. Thats like saying that everything you do makes sense, but just because people don't understand the Mayan Calendar and Ancient Greek they complain.
MS will always use Mayan and Ancient Greek, and we _can_ understand them, its just easier for them as its their native language and calendar.
Re:Points to remember... (Score:4, Insightful)
XML came out of "SGML for the Web" team sponsored by the W3C. I think this was back in 97/98.
Enjoy,
Re:Points to remember... (Score:4, Funny)
You keep using that phrase, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Open? (Score:4, Informative)
Adoption of standard no guarantee of interop... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft (and Netscape) essentially tried the same thing with HTML. Sure, we're using HTML, but to actually view our HTML, you have to use our browser.
Adoption of a "standard" is no guarantee of interoperability. Understanding the conceptual underpinnings of the standard is just as important. The question is, when Microsoft says they are using XML as a document format, are they doing it because they believe in the principles underlying it, or solely for the cynical "this is what is selling now" aspect?
The body of HTML out there is an paresable, babble of a mess, largely because the two dominant browser makers did not respect many of the underlying notions of markup and hypertext to begin with. The state of the art progressed, but not in the way a lot of people wanted it to go.
This could bode poorly if the meme survives somehow that the Office format is now equivalent to XML. When it "doesn't work," who knows where the blame will fall?
XML can be as cryptic as binary (Score:5, Insightful)
The Office file formats will be open if M$ decides to:
- Document them, and
- Not change them with every update.
I doubt they will do either of those things.Give me a break... (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't even intelligent spin from MS. This is fucking brain dead stuff. They simply have no reason to play nice in an industry consortium to agree on a DTD/Schema when they have 90% market share. But as long as they publish the details of their Schema and don't leave chunks of encoded COM schwag lying all over the place it doesn't matter. Of course, we all know the likelihood of that happening.
Details on Microsoft's new XML format (Score:3, Funny)
<base-64>
R0lGODlhSwA3AIQAAA8NDZqHf5I/NldIQszKyE
T6uZj+dkb8
ZGUgd2l0aCBHSU1QACH5BAEKAB8ALAAA
jqBj
GBMQFz4IBgkZCQZDRBwJkC0Zbg
A3p0VR0eDjOeIg9uwBlgZCwvjJZIuU8GMr3DOgkDDzN0FhsBo BVMBaiqb3FJSqpw5AseBehMwI8K
Mn3VNx0Bs5hQ6/1y9gAJ
RUf+8HAgkmlBBmHVAsiBedGChQNaxOlktySJq1csMh
8LDUxCugBwNOPW
cq7xOVYK5CK2yCMBgiNJiAxeC+7JAgWTqxAI
QmZDlKzd
ira7rmkawDsO6PXyA4h88i06ifMYMq
ar
2gNKWD5OIiR6L7LggiIGdJiJ
CipwBPZmLQu448RdqQQKzxIc0FnRBgMAFpifnv1ZS2dNPM
74Cq6ialAsRdI8+suC
ltAdcwZl60UQkERHUhDN5MmZS9WScBxuAzW30IYK
2QEJdLRcFyDx
pYWEpRF4kATDJEFqRt9MAvtiAALZwPVHII
E+A5IQ
2GhAnFWCW9VyMuC2elnCAzphAk8i
eaUi8rkjHDhMumrE8xJmwI
BCI+pqA/eehAGciR9z4QgMpJ5keNioM+jAANYDSkZJLy
NkOO9fUwM6ygk5h+
</base64>
</OfficeDocument>
This is very simple (Score:4, Interesting)
Open but Secure (Score:5, Interesting)
Edit this file outside of MS Office (invalidating the hash code) and suffer the consequences: MS treats it as "untrusted" input and rips out only the text content, no formatting.
The hash will be a giant number created through a secure portion of the Intel-ish hardware calls. Keys hidden where? That'll be interesting to see who posts 'em first. Perhaps on a
Curious Curious.
mug
XML-Dev thread on WordML (Score:4, Informative)
Yes it could be grounds. (Score:4, Informative)
Simply because the Anti-Trust trial focused on the OS rather than Office software, does not mean that the government has no reason to impose restrictions to keep MS from shifting their monopoly power. MS's monopoly has been under government scrutiny for almost 10 years, but we still get a bunch of posts on here about how the government shouldn't be able to tell 'a company' what to do. Either the trolls are really busy or you guys decided to skip Economics 101 for Libratarian Fanaticism 101.
In order to maintain a capitalist system, we must have competition. Without healthy competition, we don't have capitalism. The government has an obligation to step into an otherwise free market to ensure that competition stays healthy. There is no magical 'Free Market Fairy' that is going to come along and restore health to the industry.
So yes, depending on the result of the States' AG cases and the DOJ's settlement, MS could very much be liable for making their document formats some sort of completely bastardized XML. If you want to know the probability, then you should go read the settlements, and the grievences in the new filings against MS.
It's XML, get over it. (Score:5, Informative)
The new Visio is using SVG.
The new Word lets you use any XML vocabulary you like. How obfuscated it is is *entirely* up to you.
It's not using base64 to put binary propietary data into XML documents. It's using plain XML.
It's well-formed, and Word appears not to make up thousands of elements. The person in charge of this project is actually clueful, and was in the W3C XML Working Group (1996-1998 by the way).
The tools all use XSLT extensively.
It wouldn't surprise me if you could get Word to read and write the OpenOffice format just fine. There's a restriction that you can't re-order content in Word right now, I think.
People claiming to have "insider info" and then posting blatant falsehoosd, or claiming you can put binary data directly in XML, aren't helping here. Even if you get high from hating Microsoft, the open source community and Free software world need to understand that the goalposts have moved a little.
The extent of corporate assets tied up in memos, reportsand other documents is very large, massively higher than the collective value of relational databases.
Yes, it looks as if Microsoft has suddenly discovered XML just as they suddenly discovered the Web. In fact, they were involved heavily in XML from the start, were among the first to ship commercial support for XML, and have been working on XML in Office 11 for a long time.
--
Liam Quin
1337ness (Score:3, Funny)
Huh.
Open as in chest wound... (Score:3, Funny)
In other words they're involuntarily providing the bare minimum of interoperability that the marketplace demands. News for nerds to yawn at.
XML != open. XML only makes *syntax* clear (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because a file format is XML, it does not mean it's open. Even if it's "real" XML and not a wrapped binary dump (Vvjfio1@1/515...). All XML does for you is to make the *syntax* of the file format clear, not the underlying meaning. Analogously, in German, every noun begins with a capital letter, and root verb forms generally end with "-en"; this tells you a bit about the phrase "Mit grossem Bedauern haben wir vom Ableben Ihres Gatten erfahren", but it's certainly not enough to understand it.
Even an XML schema is not enough - that just tells you which elements can appear where and what they can contain. That's like knowing that a normal German sentence has the main verb in the second position in the sentence. This still doesn't tell you the meaning of the above sentence, though you can see that "haben" is the verb and "Mit grossem Bedauern" is the first part of the sentence.
For an XML language to be open, you need a full description of what each possible construct in that language means.
Re:Embrace and Extend (Score:5, Funny)
1) Establish a monopoly on office productivity software
2) Profit!
3) See income drop once everyone has Office. Market saturation!
4) Less Profit
5) Release new Office with new file formats; use monopoly to get it pre-loaded on all new PCs.
6) Eventually everyone else upgrades Office in order to read new file formats they're getting from their co-workers.
7) Profit!
8) Release new OS with filesystem that looks like a database.
9) Release YAO (Yet Another Office) [see 5 & 6] that only works with new database/filesystem in new OS.
10) Now, not only do the masses have to upgrade Office to read co-workers files, they have to upgrade Windows as well.
11) Profit!!!!!