Analyst: MS Office Formats Not Open | The Coffeehouse

Cairo
I want my waffle sundae, give me my carbs!

Microsoft is trying to pitch its Office formats to Massachusetts as "open formats".

http://www.betanews.com/article/Analyst_MS_Office_Formats_Not_Open/1107211516

Wilcox was clear in a recent posting to Jupiter's Microsoft Monitor: "So there is no misunderstanding, Microsoft hasn't opened up its proprietary Office file formats for general usage. Buzz about so-called open formats is little more than PR FUD. That's my firm position on the subject."

Microsoft chief XML architect Jean Paoli clarified his company's position in a letter, stating, "We are acknowledging that end users who merely open and read government documents that are saved as Office XML files within software programs will not violate the license."
"That's a far cry from open standard or really open format, as it is more typically used," says Wilcox.

eagle

XML is an OPEN STANDARD.

Minh
WOOH! WOOH!

He wrote:
We are acknowledging that end users who merely open and read government documents that are saved as Office XML files within software programs will not violate the license.

Sounds like he's stating a specific case, in regular language, where the license is valid, not to the exclusion of everything else. I think these points should carry more weight:

The technical documentation is available on the Internet for anyone to copy and read
The schemas are based on the W3C XML standard The license is royalty-free
The license is perpetual
The license is very brief and available to everyone

Though sometimes, I wish licenses have a normal-people-talk section for me.

Rossj

eagle wrote:
XML is an OPEN STANDARD.

But individual dialects are not (necessarily) especially if you have base 64 encoded binary data in CDATA elements.

You could always reverse engineer it, but does anyone really care enough to do so? I've been using Apose in order to generate .doc files and it is great.

Cairo
I want my waffle sundae, give me my carbs!

Minh,

I think Microsoft has been very clear about the Office XML formats. They don't want anyone else writing out data in those formats, period.

They even applied for patents on their XML dialect.

Meanwhile, the EU has asked that the OpenOffice XML format be made an ISO standard.

-M

ZippyV
Fired Up

The patents on document formats are pretty stupid but I'm not fond of the OpenOffice 'XML' format either.
An .sxw file is just a zip of multiple xml-files, an extensionless file that includes some unreadable data (layout-cache) and even a folder with just 1 xml file. How are you going to read in all those files?

sbc
GW R/Me

OpenOffice manages it fine.

The perfect format would be one that is truely open, with no royalties attached or patents encumbering it (i.e. usable by GPL'ed software). Even better would be if filters were freely available, even for old versions of Office (Office 97).

Sadly I don't see that happening. The best open format available is PDF, but that is designed as a final document (for print, not to be modified later).

Any Microsoft formats will likely prevent Open Source software from ever using it.

sbc
GW R/Me

Cairo wrote:
Minh,

I think Microsoft has been very clear about the Office XML formats. They don't want anyone else writing out data in those formats, period.

They even applied for patents on their XML dialect.

Meanwhile, the EU has asked that the OpenOffice XML format be made an ISO standard.

-M

I think the best format would be one that is an ISO standard, whether it is Microsoft's, or Sun's (with OpenOffice) or someone else.

Sampy
This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

I am opposed to any solution that hinders innovation and platform differences. I'm not saying that standards lead to that but I don't think we should standardize everything; create interchange formats like XML that allow us to communicate but each side can do whatever it wants. There should be clear differences between platforms and the creators of these platforms should add things that you can't get anywhere else in order to entice customers to choose their solution.

ZippyV
Fired Up

Sure, games are a good example. But NOT textwriting applications.

Sampy
This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

Why not? If interchange formats are open, even if they are lossy, you can get your data any way you like. I think that it's good that Word offers you a richer experience than it's competitors in an effort to get you to buy it.

Interop is a feature customers want and so we're doing it. We should still try and make Word the best word processing program out there by offering you things that you can't get anywhere else: easy macros, great UI, developer support, integration with other Office pieces, etc. Like I said before, I'm not against standards as long as they don't prevent me from differentiating my platform by adding value.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

...Shouldn't a "major" feature of Word then be "100% interopability" then? Wink

Sampy
This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

Tools->Options->Save->Default Format->Xml

Bam, every document you create is now in an XML format with a published schema.

sbc
GW R/Me

But can someone write a tool, under any license (including GPL), that can work with that document (edit as well as view), without having to agree to a restricitive license?

A good compromise may be a standard that must be complied with, but can be extended. i.e. you can open the document in another tool (like Open Office), and expect basics to work (like macros and formatting). Any additional features (Sharepoint integration) may require a certain software package (Office).

Rossj

Cool. Any tools to convert all of my existing docs?

Sampy
This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

Not that I know of but they're not too hard to write.

What I used:
VS 2003
Office 2003
The Office Primary Interop Assemblies

Steps:

Create a VB Windows application
Add a text box and a button.
Put this code in your button click:

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

Dim dir As IO.DirectoryInfo = New IO.DirectoryInfo(TextBox1.Text)

Dim app As New Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application

For Each file As IO.FileInfo In dir.GetFiles("*.doc")

Dim doc As New Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.DocumentClass

doc = app.Documents.Open(IO.Path.Combine(TextBox1.Text, file.Name))

Dim destPath As String

destPath = IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(file.Name)

destPath = destPath + ".xml"

destPath = IO.Path.Combine(TextBox1.Text, destPath)

doc.SaveAs(destPath, Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.WdSaveFormat.wdFormatXML)

End Sub

Enter the directory that you want to convert all the .doc files in into the text box and press Button1. Presto!

Shaded
Mean ugly geek with axe

Cairo wrote:
Microsoft is trying to pitch its Office formats to Massachusetts as "open formats".

<Insert sarcastic sympathetic whining here>

So Microsoft is trying to sell software to Massachusetts and is saying it complies with "open formats" as defined by Massachusetts RFP. That is what for profit companies do - they respond to RFPs.

That is why it is called a Request For Proposal.

If Massachusetts wanted something specific they would issue an RFQ which is a request for quotation.

Make no mistake about it. Massachusetts could stop buying Microsoft today if they wanted to. If OSS helped the state run just as well if not better than with Microsoft, they would be hailed as heros for all that cost savings and reduced tax burden.

The reality is however, somewhat different. The money they pay to Microsoft funds developers who are making large strides ahead of OSS and will continue doing so for some time.

What Massachusetts is simply trying to do is use their large account status with Microsoft to make a product request to Microsoft that they open up their file formats a bit. Its a good thing for Microsoft, a good thing for Massachusetts, a good thing for OSS, a good thing for everyone.

When OSS advocates whine about this, well it just makes them look even more disorganized, unprofessional, and uninformed.

Manip

I think if a tool is truely as good as it claims
then it should open up its formats. This breads
healthy competition further more, it gives customers
greater freedom and shows that the company
respects its customers.

Too many companies (smaller ones are the worst!)
try to release poor products and expect to keep
customers by locking their data into a format
they cannot convert out of.

Microsoft Office is in my opinion one of the best
if not the best Office suite on the market
today... It doesn't need to lock up data in
formats without releasing a 'how to' guide to
these formats that allows others to use and
modify them.

Sampy's point about how Microsoft's innovation might
be swashed by standardization is a good one
and I respect that but nothing is stopping Microsoft
from making a new format that allows their
concept to be fully realised and later releasing a
spec to that format.

(For the record - Microsoft's Secret RTF spec is a pain in the royal ass!)

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

Manip wrote:

(For the record - Microsoft's Secret RTF spec is a pain in the royal (I need to watch my language)!)

Especially since RTF is not a Microsoft standard...

Manip

Nice job cutting that quote short - It finishes like this

<Snip>However, when I asked, he did say it was legal to convert from MPEG-4 using the DirectShow system. Therefore, I have decided the following about VirtualDub 2.0:

It will have an external input plugin SDK. It will have support for DirectShow ASF input.

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Beer28 wrote:
incidentally, asf is the win video format, it encompassess, wmv, asf, asx, mms:// and a host of other file extensions.

That's wrong. ASF is not a video format, it's a container format that can hold various types of different formats, including Windows Media Video and Windows Media Audio. The MMS protocol will indeed send its data in ASF format, but I don't see how that means that ASF 'encompasses' MMS. ASX also doesn't belong in that row, it's simply a proxy file, a text file that contains the URL of the actual media file (that may or may not be ASF). ASX can also contain some scripting iirc.