I'd been meaning to post a write-up on how to create a simple SpreadsheetML document from scratch, but just haven't had the time this week to pull it all together. Hopefully I'll get that out early next week. I had already done a similar post for WordprocessingML (both for Beta 1 as well as RTM). Here are a couple things I wanted to point out for the week:

1. Arccast interview on Office Open XML - Doug Mahugh and I did a live webcast last month with Ron Jacobs. Ron now has both Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview available up on Channel 9.
2. Upcoming SpreadsheetML Generator - Stephane Rodriguez (who also wrote the Open XML diffing tool) is getting really close to releasing the latest version of his xlsgen tool; and it will include SpreadsheetML support (http://www.arstdesign.com/BBS/BulletinBoard.php?qs_id=1661). I think he's planning on still going with the B2TR version of SpreadsheetML and won't update to the RTM version until after Office 2007 ships. There were still a couple changes that tool place between B2TR and RTM for spreadsheetML that brought it fully inline with the Ecma standard, but that resulted in B2TR not having the ability to open RTM spreadsheetML files (similar to what all three applications experienced between B2 and B2TR).
3. Apose.Words supports WordprocessingML - I saw this blog post the other day that mentions that Apose.Words now supports exporting as WordprocessingML.
4. Document your SQL DB using WordprocessingML - From this blog post: "Data Dictionary Creator (DDC) is a simple application which helps you document SQL Server databases. It stores all the information in Extended Properties, so it's easier to keep the documentation in sync with the database as it changes… DDC exports to WordML, Excel, HTML, and XML."
5. Generate Wordprocessing Documents from your SAP Web Application Server - This is a cool intro article that shows how you can leverage WordprocessingML to generate rich documents directly from your SAP server. It would be really interesting to see some examples of leveraging the custom defined schema support and content controls in Word 2007 to not only populate the documents with SAP data, but to also mine that information back out of the document if the user has edited it.
6. Leverage SpreadsheetML to build rich reports - I actually don't know anything about this product :-), but I randomly came across it and noticed that it allows you to generate spreadsheets using the original SpreadsheetML format we started working on over 8 years ago (and shipped with Office XP): "Perfect table creation – NEW SPREADSHEETML The new Microsoft format SpreadsheetML is supported. Based on XML, it generates richer editing and formatting of Excel files optimized for Windows Office 2003. Your tables are perfectly reproduced in Excel 2003, retaining the text and the colored background." I always love seeing people leveraging the existing technologies. The new SpreadsheetML format will give them a lot more power, as the old one didn't support Excel's full feature set.
7. WordML import and export on the Mac - I think that this tool is built on top of the TextEdit functionality built into the Mac (which supports WordML itself). Not sure if they actually do anything additional in terms of the WordML support.

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

-Brian