We’re holding a workshop in Redmond on July 30 to talk about our ODF support in Office 2007 SP2. This is a free workshop that we’re doing as part of our Document Interoperability Initiative, to share information with the developer community and solicit feedback on how we can work together to improve interoperability.
We initially invited the members of the ODF TC, but it looks like we may have a few more slots open, so I thought I’d extend the invitation more broadly. I can’t guarantee that we’ll have room for everyone who would like to attend, but please let me know if you’re interested and I’ll see if we can get you in. Priority will be given to those who are working with the ODF format, including developers who are implementing ODF, organizations that are using ODF, and persons who are contributing to the evolution and maintenance of the ODF standard.
Here’s a general outline of what the workshop will include:
This event will provide a unique opportunity to get an early look at how we’re planning to implement ODF support in Office. If you’d like to attend, please let me know via email (dmahugh at Microsoft dot com) as soon as possible. For those who aren’t able to attend, I’ll be covering some of the content from the workshop here on my blog afterward.
Wow, your new blog theme looks good!
As of furthering the DIN work I wonder if the Microsoft office team could provide a list of missing semantic features in ODF for the faithful representation of electronic Office documents. So far the DIN work mostly extends to Word compatibility but there are other important products.
That's a good suggestion, Andre, and I think we can contribute to those efforts. We're still learning about how ODF compares to OOXML, and that's one of the reasons we decided to do this workshop: to get feedback on how we're handling those cases where there isn't an obvious mapping between semantics. As we learn more, I'll be covering some of those details here, and we'll also be be contributing to the working groups that SC34 is setting up.
Mr. Mahugh-
This is offtopic to the current post, but there's a question I wonder if you couldn't facilitate answering.
In quite a few of the OOXML/ODF debates one sees various forms of the statement "Even MS Office doesn't use OOXML." And I have spent a bit of time looking for a definitive and fairly succinct way to check this claim. But aside from the naysayers, I've found no head-on answer to this question from an authoritative expert at MS and/or within the standardization process.
Probably everyone in the debate understands that .docx exists; but few seem to understand its precise relationship to OOXML. So I'm wondering if someone like yourself has or could set that record straight in one simple link-able blog post or reference document. If .docx/xlsx/etc are OOXML, which version are they (ECMA, pre-ECMA, something else)? What is the roadmap for the OOXML formats once ISO/IEC publish the standard?
It seems like such a simple and foundational question, yet I'm finding the answer difficult to obtain without wading through a gazillion documents. So I'm hoping an SME like yourself can give it a go. Preferably in an article with a descriptive title and URL (to make the answer easily searchable).
Thanks for any attention given to this!
[quote]If .docx/xlsx/etc are OOXML, which version are they (ECMA, pre-ECMA, something else)?[/quote]
As far as I can tell all current implementations of Office Open XML are Ecma-376. Which is of course the only published standard version available at the moment.
Also I do remember that MS have already stated they will support the ISO 29500 version in Office 14 which is likely to be Office 2010 at the moment so I would not expect that to be launched in less than about 18 months.
hAl-
Thanks for the answer, but there's the issue. "As near as I can tell" - and you're a guy I see posting in multiple forums and blogs about this stuff.
It would clear up a lot if an authoritative MS person, speaking for MS, would say what you said. Only answer specifically about .docx, .xlsx, etc rather than saying OOXML again.
So thanks, but I hope you see what I am getting at here.
Today I am in a rather overcast Redmond for Microsoft's workshop on ODF support in Office 2007 SP2.
Based on feedback from the DII workshop in Redmond this summer , we're making plans to host another event