Mexico workshop, Open XML links

The Mexico City workshop for Open XML developers was the fourth and final one on the latest tour, and it had a great group of attendees. Everyone asked Mauricio more questions in Spanish than they asked me in English, but I've learned not to take that personally in these Spanish-speaking countries. :-)

At the Mexico workshop we had a very interesting guest presentation from the developers at Intellekt, who have developed a cool Open XML solution for a customer who uses XML invoices. I'll be writing more about that solution when I get a chance. (And after writing about Digital China's cool Open XML solution -- I've been busy, Daniel, but will get back to that soon!)

Here are a few Open XML links from this week ...

I blogged a while back about Datawatch's new Monarch V9 release that features Open XML support. Now there's a case study of their work on Microsoft.com here:
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000000028

Wouter van Vugt is looking at how to give Package Explorer the ability to add/delete parts, which would be very useful for experimenting with Open XML. Wouter's latest post includes some sample code for a proposed object model that would be part of this new refactoring of Package Explorer. If you're interested in contributing to Package Explorer, you can sign up on Codeplex.

I always enjoy reading Rick Jelliffe's opinions, regardless of whether I agree or disagree. In a post earlier this week, he boldly asserts a set of "reasonable principles for reviewing Open XML and other standards." I hope we'll see more results-oriented thinking like this as the technical committees dig into the details of their work -- it's time to get beyond posturing and start delivering results.

Infoworld's Ephraim Schwartz dared to point out the name-calling that has been used by some members of the anti-Open XML crusade, and -- worse yet -- suggested that both IBM and Microsoft are motivated by corporate interests instead of glorious matters of truth and freedom. He's paying for those reckless observations in the comments thread of the article. Hey, if you think the ODFhideen is being hard on you, Ephraim, just look at what Rick has to put up with.

Finally, a new blogger has joined the Open XML discussion this week: Greg Thomas. Greg is an outspoken guy who loves a vigorous debate, so I expect to see some interesting conversations on his blog going forward. His first post is about Microsoft's support of ODF as an ANSI-approved format this week. I told Greg I'd try to send some traffic his way, so help me out -- if I said anything above that you find upsetting in any way, please post your reaction on his blog.