Here are some links with interesting information about Open XML documents. The latest draft of the ODF Specification is also available now. I have posted the link to download the same.

Merging Comments from Multiple Open XML Documents into a Single Document. Eric White has posted sample code for how to merge comments from multiple copies  of the same document into a single consolidated copy.  This technique can be very useful for creating systems to aggregate feedback from multiple reviewers of documents, and Eric plans to create a cmdlet for the PowerTools for Open XML project that will provide this functionality for PowerTools users as well.

APIs for the Open Packaging Convention.  The new Packaging Team Blog has a post by Ali Naqvi that compares the native-code and managed-code APIs for OPC.  Windows 7 comes with a new native-code API for the Open Packaging Convention, and Ali’s post goes through the difference between this API and System.IO.Packaging, which has been in the .NET framework since version 3.  If you’re using the Open XML SDK, the OPC layer is handled for you automatically (through calls to System.IO.Packaging), but if you want to have more control of the packaging details these APIs are very useful.

Customizing the Fluent UI (ribbon) interface.  Open XML documents can contain customized versions of the ribbon, stored in an XML part inside the document package so that the customized ribbon will appear when the document is opened in Office.  Zeyad Rajabi has a post on the Open XML SDK and Fluent UI extensibility that explains how developers can customize the  ribbon through use of the SDK’s strongly typed access to the custom UI xml part.  Erika Ehrli has a comprehensive post about resources for Fluent UI extensibility, and for non-developers, or developers who want to quickly prototype ideas for ribbon customization, there’s a new version of the Office Custom UI Editor available on the Open XML Developer web site, including support for customizing the ribbon in both Office 2007 and Office 2010.

ODF 1.2 committee draft 03 available.  The latest committee draft of the ODF 1.2 specification is available for download here.

Will share more such knowledge rich tidbits and links soon….

A key milestone for Microsoft Office was the release of the Technical Preview for Microsoft Office 2010 on the 13th of July 2009. Another key highlight was the release of the Office 2010 Beta documentation on MSDN and the release of the implementer notes for IS0/IEC 29500 and ODF 1.1.

The Office team achieved the goal of providing technical documentation for the implementation of Office 2010 Beta. We published a total of 256 documents which included new and updated documentation for Office 2007 and Beta Office 2010 on MSDN.

We also rolled out the implementer notes for the IS29500 and ODF 1.1 specification on the DII (Document Interoperability Initiative) website.

Links to the documentation are:

Microsoft Office Protocol Documentation

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc307432.aspx

Microsoft Office File Formats

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc313105.aspx

ISO/IEC 29500 Implementer Notes

http://www.documentinteropinitiative.org/ISO-IEC29500-2008/reference.aspx

ODF 1.1 Implementer Notes

http://www.documentinteropinitiative.org/OASISODF1.1/reference.aspx

This first blog post is just about ME! :-)

I just started at Microsoft a couple of months back with the Office Interoperability Team.

Will be posting more on the cool stuff that we do here in Office soon ...