Doug Mahugh : Tech Interop

Open XML links for 02-18-2008

dmahugh — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:11:00 GMT

Binary documentation and translator project. On Friday Brian Jones covered the availability of the Office binary formats documentation as a free download, as well as the new Office Binary (doc, xls, ppt) Translator to Open XML. Brian also announced availability of freely downloadable documentation for several supporting technologies that may be useful to Open XML developers, including the Windows Compound Binary File Format Specification, Windows Metafile Format (.wmf), and the Ink Serialized Format (ISF) Specification. Stephen McGibbon lists the planned milestones for the translator project.

Developing Solutions using Open XML and VSTO. Wouter Van Vugt has a blog post covering some of the thinking behind one of his sessions at Office Devcon last week, on building server-side solutions for managing structured content. I also see that Wouter, like David Shuster, has recently used a P-word inappropriately.

The anti-Open XML Alliance. Speaking of P-words, fans of propaganda will enjoy Gray Knowlton's analysis of a recent ODF Alliance "report." Being a typical ODF Alliance report, it's not actually about ODF.

IVA Interoperability Lab. The Interop Vendor Alliance has published the results of their recent Open XML interoperability lab, incuding a video and a whitepaper available in DOCX (Open XML), PDF and ODT (OpenDocument) format.

Preparing for the BRM. BRM convenor Alex Brown has posted a list of ten things for BRM delegates to remember as they prepare for next week's meeting in Geneva. There's nothing new there for those of us who are on various delegations (I'm on the US delegation along with representatives of IBM, Oracle, BP, DOD, and Farance Inc.), but for others there may be some useful information about what will be going on in Geneva next week.

Learning the lingo. Speaking of Geneva, my favorite "troll" Oliver Bell has some timely information about how to decode the lingo used by the professional lobbyists who will be working the corridors of the convention center in Geneva next week. Oliver's observations reminded me of a post by Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hanson a few months ago.

Video discussion with Brian Jones

dmahugh — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:43:00 GMT

I had a chance last week to talk to Brian Jones about the proposed dispositions to the DIS 29500 comments. We discussed the thinking behind a few typical dispositions as well as the business case for custom XML support and other Open XML topics.

The video is now live on the OpenXML page on YouTube. It's split into 4 parts:

	Part 1: How to deal with the comments
	Part 2: compatibility settings
	Part 3: custom XML schema support
	Part 4: Ecma TC45 dialog with national bodies

Open XML in Japan

dmahugh — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:22:00 GMT

Open XML Book. Yoko Girier of Toshiba has written a book that provides an overview of the Open XML formats in Japanese. As a member of Ecma TC45, the technical committee that created the Ecma 376 specification, Yoko offers a well-informed view of the details of Open XML. In this book her goal was to provide an overview for users and an introduction to the formats for developers. The book includes a sample of how to work with WordprocessingML and custom XML markup in Java, including a conversion from Open XML to XHTML. She has also provided an insider’s guide to how to read the Ecma 376 spec. It’s only available in Japanese currently, and you can order the book from Amazon Japan.

Skyfish's JukeDoX. Accessibility is a hot topic in document formats these days, and I'm expecting to see some cool things come out of the Daisy translator project in the months ahead. A Japanese software firm, Skyfish, offers another piece of the accessibility puzzle: their JukeDoX product can read a DOCX out loud. See the case study on Microsoft.com for some information about the thinking behind JukeDoX's development. And for general information about Open XML's accessibility support, see the accessibility whitepaper on the OpenXMLDeveloper site.

Wipse forms Open XML technical working group. Wipse, the Windows platform and services community organization in Japan, in collaboration with Microsoft Innovation Center Japan, has formed an Open XML technical working group. Monolingual English readers (like myself) can learn about Wipse on their English page.

For more information about Open XML in Japan, see the Office Open XML Formats page on Microsoft Japan's interop site.

Open XML blogging in 2007

dmahugh — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:36:00 GMT

It's been quite a year for those who have been blogging about the Open XML file formats. Here's a look back at some of the stories I remember best from this busy year ...

January:

Brian Jones provides an overview of Passing the Open XML standard off to ISO, followed by a post on the history of Office XML formats.
My first post of 2007 covers Dr. John Tunnicliffe's ExcelPackage API for Open XML spreadsheets.
Tristan Davis explains how content controls and the XML data store (custom XML parts) enable true data/view separation.
Rob Weir kicks off the new year with How to hire Guillaume Portes and an Emerson quote about a foolish consistency, inspiring me to quote Emerson on counting spoons.
Kevin Boske releases videos on how to use Ken Getz's Open XML code snippets for the System.IO.Packaging API.
Miguel de Icaza weighs in on the debate around document formats.
Rick Jelliffe's blog kicks off Wikigate, which throws a few folks into a tizzy, and even Stephen Colbert eventually covers the "story" before the real press figures out nothing's going on.

February:

This month finds me at Linux Asia in Delhi and Open XML workshops in Sydney and Canberra.
Version 1.0 of the Open XML Translator project is released.
Datawatch announces their Monarch V9 product includes support for Open XML spreadsheets and formulas.
Brian Jones takes a close look at how ODF and Open XML handle application settings, a topic that will be revisited many times in the DIS29500 debate.
The Wraith starts blogging because he (or she) is "bored with all the nonsense written about OOXML."

March:

I'm in Redmond most of the month, musing about interoperability and catching up with friends at the Open XML workshop we did during the week of the MVP summit.
Stephen McGibbon posts screen shots of OpenOffice's Open XML support, and his Stuck in the past explores why document formats are not a zero-sum game.
Dennis Hamilton's Why not .rtfx? considers some possible creative uses for OPC outside the scope of Open XML.
Michael Scherotter blogs about Mindjet's approach to Open XML interoperability.
Art imitates life: "Pam Jones" bans "the Wraith" from Groklaw.
The last week of March finds me in Prague, Ghent and Ljubljana for Open XML workshops.

April:

The DIS ballot period begins on April 2, and technical committees worldwide begin reviewing the spec.
In April I deliver Open XML workshops in Munich, Kiev, and Beijing.
The PHPExcel API for Open XML gives PHP developers a set of tools for Open XML development, thanks to the work of Maarten Balliauw and Jakub Vrana.
Sam Hiser posts a joke that some folks don't get for a few months.

May:

May finds me doing workshops in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Kenya.
I blog about one of Open XML's most popular features in custom schemas revisited.
Brian Jones notes the formation of DIN's document translation working group in Germany.
Stephen McGibbon covers Open XML support for Mobile Devices from DataViz.
The Wraith wonders Has IBM annexed the Kenyan ISO National body?
Julien Chable's OpenXML4J API project is officially launched.

June:

I take a close look at Open XML's approach to numbering options.
We announce the Microsoft SDK for Open XML at TechEd in Orlando, and I get a chance to catch up with friends like Stephen, Ted, Patrick, Mick, Erika, Steph, and everyone I'm forgetting to name at the moment.
Altova announces comprehensive Open XML support in their XML Spy product.
Brian Jones blogs about IBM's positive comments regarding Open XML interoperability; pinch me, I must be dreaming.
Rob Weir's No representation without specification makes the case for full documentation of Open XML's compatibility settings.
Stephen McGibbon's IBM's antics carrying on and Rick Jelliffe's Fantasy Press Releases make my face red.

July:

The INCITS V1 technical committee in the US reaches deadlock after a long meeting on Friday the 13th; paraskevidekatriaphobia ensues.
Brian Jones notes iPhone support for Open XML and discusses the philosophy behind the WordprocessingML document model.
Rick Jelliffe congratulates Slashdotters on herding the beast, and offers Bribery Watch "in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, and to calm the situation down."
Rob Weir looks back on a year of anti-Open XML blogging, Stephen McGibbon reminds us that Dastardly and Muttley have been here before

Jon Udell

August:

The INCITS executive board passes a motion for the US to vote Yes with comments on DIS29500.
The revised Massachusetts ETRM includes Open XML, ODF, PDF and other document formats.
Our friends over at MSDN publish a set of developer workshop videos from the San Francisco workshop.
Brian's post on the Ecma meetings in Toronto starts a free-ranging discussion.
Mike Ormond starts a useful video series on Content Controls and Repeating Data.
Rick Jelliffe cements his reputation as a Microsoft shill with My recommendation on Office Open XML: "No with Comments"!
Wouter Van Vugt announces availability of version 3.0 RC1 of Package Explorer, and the OpenXMLDeveloper.org web site publishes his eBook "Open XML Explained".

September:

The voting results for DIS 29500 are this month's big story, and Stephen McGibbon's DIS29500/IS26300 ballot results in charts provides a clear visual overview of the outcome.
Jason Matusow posts Independent Implementations of Open XML and Open XML Implementations Part 2.
Blogging from Malaysia during TechEd, I post a set of OPC test documents for developers.
Dennis Hamilton comments on the state of the debate from a long-term perspective, and Mick Lohan explores dynamic Open XML tables from a an Irish VBA perspective.
NOOOXML.org reviews my latest videos, granting me the sexy screen name Hug Madog; how'd they know?

October:

David Gainer posts about conditional formatting on the Excel team blog, and I show some Open XML markup samples.
Brian Jones blogs about a beta version of Wordperfect that supports both Open XML and ODF.
Oliver Bell covers the public rift between ODF supporters that has started popping up in comments on document-format blog threads ever since Gary Edwards let the cat out of the bag.
RosettaNet Malaysia announces Open XML support in their RosettaNet Automated Enablement standard.
NOOOXML.org announces that Microsoft is the winner of their 2500-Euro Kayak award, as I had requested back in July.

November:

The Open XML to DAISY translator project is announced by Reed Shaffner at TechEd/Barcelona.
JTC 1 publishes Alex Brown's much-needed and much-appreciated ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) FAQ on the JTC 1/SC 34 web site.
Barack Obama tells Google he would "put government data online in universally accessible formats," which eWeek interprets as Obama voices support for ODF.
Andy Updegrove kicks off his ODF vs. OOXML: War of the Words eBook project. (Note to self: get to work on screenplay project.)

December:

Wouter Van Vugt releases the Word 2007 Databinding Toolkit
Gray Knowlton blogs some interesting data on File size reduction for Open XML and Compatibility pack for Open XML: 20 Million downloads and counting.
Brian's Why all the secrecy? starts a lively debate, as does Jesper Lund Stocholm's Hypocrisy 101.
NOOOXML.org congratulates Eric White and me on our recent role changes at Microsoft.
Eric continues his series on Using LINQ to XML with Open XML Documents with WordprocessingML and SpreadsheetML classes.
James Newton King covers LINQ to XML over large documents and explains how LINQ can handle WordprocessingML structure in "LINQ over OOXML: Loving it.
After writing and reviewing hundreds of proposed dispositions for NB comments, TC45 reaches the 2/3 point and heads into the home stretch.

What a year. If 2008 is just half as busy, and Open XML gets just half as much attention, and I travel just half as much as I did in 2007 ... that will be plenty.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Symbian support for DOCX/XLSX

dmahugh — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 10:23:00 GMT

Quickoffice Premier 5.0 is the first mobile productivity software suite to support Office 2007 file formats on the S60 platform.

The Symbian S60 platform is used by Nokia, Samsung, and many other manufacturers, and you'll find S60 smartphones in the hands of many people these days. Now all of those people can read and write Open XML documents on their phones. You can send a DOCX or an XLSX to a colleague with a Nokia 5500 Sport like the one shown here, and they can edit it and send it back.

There probably won't be many books written on these devices, but I'll bet quite a few busy managers will browse XLSX spreadsheets on them. Dataviz's Documents to Go offers similar read/edit/create capabilities for the PalmOS (they support PPTX files too), and the iPhone offers Open XML support too.

XML 2007 Conference

dmahugh — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:08:00 GMT

Next week's XML 2007 conference in Boston features speakers from all sides of the document format debate, including a document interop session with Miguel de Icaza (Novell) and Vijay Rajagopalan (Microsoft) that I expect will offer a lively discussion around Open XML, ODF, and XML-based interoperability in general.

My good friend and colleague Craig Kitterman has helped organize the event, and as you can see in the speaker list, they'll have many well-known presenters on XML technologies, standards, and related topics. If you're in the US Northeast or can get there next week, this conference is a great event for XML developers.

Open XML Portfolio Manager

dmahugh — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 07:45:00 GMT

An open-source demo application on Codeplex shows how a Java application can generate Open XML spreadsheets to track a stock portfolio, including creation of graphs from a web application. The first release of the code was just uploaded a few days ago by my colleague Amir Shevat, a Microsoft Israel developer evangelist, so you can be among the first to download it. The setup instructions tell how to build and install the application on Apache Tomcat 5.5 and BEA WebLogic Server 9.2.

Most people keep track of stocks and similar information in a spreadsheet, and this application will generate XLSX spreadsheet files on the fly from the portfolio you set up, using a web service to retrieve the latest stock prices. Microsoft stock has been more variable in the last month than at any time since I started at the company, so this type of application is a little more interesting to me than it would have been last year. :-)

You can create your portfolio by entering the stocks into a template spreadsheet (provided), or you can use the web interface to create your portfolio:

After the portfolio is set up, you can generate a graph of any stock price, as an Open XML spreadsheet in an XLSX file:

The application, including source code, binaries, and setup instructions, is available here.

Open XML to DAISY XML Translator

dmahugh — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:39:00 GMT

Microsoft announced today a project to create a "save as DAISY" plug-in for Word that will be available as a free download on SourceForge.

DAISY (Digital Access Information SYstem) is a standard for digital talking books (DTBs). DAISY-encoded DTBs include content that can range from XML text only, to text with corresponding spoken audio, to audio with little or no text, and they're designed to make print material accessible and navigable for blind or otherwise print-disabled persons. (Print-disabled is a term used in the accessibility community to describe persons who are unable to read print due to any visual, physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disability.)

A good way to get a feel for what DAISY is designed to accomplish is to check out the prioritized feature list for DTB playback devices referenced by the DTB specification. DAISY uses several W3C specifications and also takes advantage of standards from the Open eBook Forum, and the resulting documents can be used with any DAISY playback device.

The DAISY Standard has been adopted throughout the world by libraries and organizations producing and distributing accessible reading materials. So this new plug-in, which will be available in early 2008, will allow those organizations to save any Open XML word-processing document in DAISY XML format as a "DTBook." the benefits of this capability are explained in the DAISY monthly newsletter:

Everyone who uses desktop publishing to create content in Word will be able to save this content as DAISY XML. As content creators will not need to be DAISY or XML experts to use this converter, the number of DAISY publications should increase substantially. Individuals who have a print disability will thus have access to a greater number and much wider choice of reading and research materials.

George Kerscher, secretary general of the DAISY Consortium, explains the DAISY translator plug-in project this way:

“Microsoft’s announcement is monumental in greatly facilitating the availability of text in DAISY books. It provides a clear, production path for organizations and universities who will be able to use the Microsoft plug-in to move into DAISY XML. Putting tools in the hands of people who create content is a giant step toward creating equal access to information ... It’s going to move DAISY ... from the niche of the libraries for the blind community into the mainstream.”

For Open XML developers, the DAISY project will also offer a sample Open XML implementation that will demonstrate best practices for Open XML development. One of the goals of the project is to provide a reference model for other Open XML solution providers, and the project on SourceForge will make the architectural details available for developers to study. As this project progresses, I'll be covering some of the more interesting technical details here, as examples of how Open XML content can be transformed for a rich variety of output devices.

Microsoft press release:
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2007/nov07/11-13DAISYPR.mspx

The Daisy Planet, Daisy's monthly newsletter:
http://www.daisy.org/news/newsletters/planet-2007-11.shtml

Quotes from the DAISY community:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/nov07/11-13daisy.mspx

Official DAISY web site:
http://www.daisy.org/

Microsoft accessibility web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/

Open XML links for 11-04-2007

dmahugh — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:07:00 GMT

There has been quite a bit of Open XML discussion in the blogosphere recently, and I've not posted on my blog for two weeks (a personal record, if not one to be proud of!), so without further delay here's a recap of some of the posts and articles I've found most interesting lately ...

Two new articles on OpenXMLDeveloper.org have been posted this week:

Custom XML Mapping in SpreadsheetML
covers how to set up custom XML mapping through the Excel user interface. The ability to map spreadsheet cells to an external XML data source can be very useful, and this article shows you how to get started.
DrawingML implementation for Image/Picture in SpreadsheetML covers the basics of how images are handled in spreadsheets as DrawingML objects. If you want to add images to an XLSX that you're generating for reporting purposes, start here.

A new MSDN whitepaper on Open XML in health care provides an in-depth look at how Open XML's custom schema support can solve common interop challenges. Don't let the title fool you: "Using Office Open XML Formats to Support Electronic Health Records Portability and Health Industry Standards" is much more than a health-care scenario; it's a blueprint for how to work with custom XML parts in any scenario. The authors are all very experienced Open XML experts: Wouter Van Vugt, Ted Pattison (who delivered the first Open XML development session I ever saw, in Toronto nearly two years ago), and Chris Predeek (who wrote most of the hands-on labs for the developer workshops we delivered all over the world last year). And the whitepaper includes code samples, markup samples, detailed explanatations, and diagrams to pull it all together. Great work, guys!

Want to take advantage of the techniques in that article from PHP instead instead of .NET? Maarten Balliauw's "Open XML in Healthcare in PHP" tells you how. He has ported the code from the MSDN whitepaper to PHP, including everything except the digital signature portion. An amazing piece of work, especially considering that Maarten just did this "for fun" in his spare time. Maarten's one of those guys who makes me wonder "when does he sleep?"

TechEd/Barcelona this week has three Open XML sessions. You can get all the details at the TechEd web site, but here's a synopsis of what's being offered:

OFF201, "An Introduction to Open XML," has Wouter Van Vugt (author of "Open XML Explained") and Peter Smulovics (Microsoft/Hungary evangelist) covering the basics of Open XML development;
OFF310, "Open XML in the Real World," adds Julien Chable (architect of the OpenXML4J project) to Wouter and Peter for a look at typical architecture and implementation details for Open XML projects built on both the .NET and Java platforms;
OFF03-IS, "Discussing Open XML in the Real World," will be an open "chalk talk" session where Wouter, Peter, Julien and others will be available to discuss your questions about hands-on Open XML development issues. This should be a great session, so be sure to attend if you have specific questions about how to implement Open XML in your own projects.

Speaking of Wouter (and really, who isn't these days?), he has embarked on a new phase of his career as an entrepreneur, starting a company called Code Counsel to counsel coders on Office, SharePoint, and Open XML development topics. His blog has moved, so be sure to updated your RSS feeds to keep up with what's going on with the flying Dutchman going forward.

An assortment of articles and blog posts on Open XML and related topics:

"The X Factor: As the industry battles over XML file formats, what should dev managers focus on?" by Michael Desmond has some interesting perspective and quotes from Microsoft's Brian Jones, Altova's Alexander Falk, and others;
Alex Falk also offers some great tips in his post "XMLSpy Tip: Using the XPath analyzer to quickly find information in files" -- the dynamic evaluation of XPath expressions makes XMLSpy a nice XPath learning tool;
Michael Scherotter is at it again, with tips on how to transform WordprocessingML into XAML in "Better Online Documentation: Creating WPF FlowDocuments from Word 2007";
Erika Ehrli recaps the first "100+ Office Visual How To's," and many of them offer great examples of Open XML development techniques;
Rick Jelliffe's series on converting XML schemas to Schematron includes a wealth of information on both approaches to XML validation. If you're familiar with XML schema but would like to explore the expressive power of Schematron, check it out: he's up to Part 8 and there's still more to come;
ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn and Paula Rooney started a heated discussion with their post "Will GNOME split give Microsoft [sic] Open XML standards win?"

ZDNet Asia's "RosettaNet targets standard at SMEs" covers how RosettaNet Malaysia has taken advantage of of Open XML's architecture to enable low-cost implementation of procurement standards for small and medium-sized enterprises. This is the result of a collaboration with Microsoft and Intel announced last year, and Malaysia's numerous small and mid-size hi-tech manufacturers will benefit from this approach. (Hat tip to Oliver on this story, and congratulations to Dr. Dzahar, Patrick, and my other friends in Malaysia who have been instrumental in driving this project forward.)

One topic that's getting a lot of attention lately is the rift in the ODF camp around Compound Document Format. I'm not yet sure what to make of it all, but here are a few links to all sides of the debate:

the home page of the OpenDocument Foundation web site offers a summary of the reasons for their withdrawal of support of ODF in favor of CDF;
Cnet's "Former OpenDocument advocates bolt for W3C standard" by Martin LaMonica pulls together quotes from Gary Edwards and others;
Jason Matusow's "Document Formats Discussions" frames the discussion well, and includes some interesting comments from key players;
Oliver Bell's "Inconsequential Drama in the ODF Camp" offers a long-term "get on with it" perspective on the story;
For French speakers, Julien Chable's "Ca gronde du côté de l'ODF!!! Enfin?" covers the story.

New role, same Doug. I mentioned above that I've not posted on my blog for a couple of weeks, and one of the reasons has been that I've been busy with a transition to a new role at Microsoft. I'm still 100% focused on Open XML, but from a slightly different perspective now, having moved from a technical evangelist position in our Developer Platform Evangelism organization to a product manager position in the Office organization.

My new role is primarily about enabling interoperability for the Office clients, and that means Open XML first and foremost. As a practical matter, you'll probably find me leading fewer developer workshops in the future, and I'll probably have even more to say about how Open XML interacts with other technologies going forward, but other than that I'll be active in all the same places, including this blog and the OpenXMLDeveloper web site. The Open XML story is just beginning, and I'm looking forward to an exciting 2008 as we see more and more adoption by developers and users.

document formats legislation in the US

dmahugh — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:06:00 GMT

Shane Peterson, who has been following document formats legislation in the US for some time, has a new article on Public CIO entitled "What Domino Effect?" that takes a close look at how the situation has evolved in Massachussetts and Texas.

The article includes some quotes from my friend and colleague Stuart McKee on the value of choice:

"The reality is that many file formats exist to satisfy the incredible diversity of needs in software applications," he said, noting that some document formats present a fixed representation of information so that it can't ever be changed.

"Other formats are designed to maximize the ability to edit documents, and formats for spreadsheets or designing page layouts to suit the specific needs of software applications and systems.

"Since each of these features can be necessary given the goals of a specific project, locking in a single file format standard simply makes no sense," McKee said. "Choice among overlapping and even competing file format standards best enables governments to meet their needs, today and into the future, and ensures the efficient use of government resources and taxpayer monies."

Stuart discusses some related concepts in his column last week on "Translating Interoperability." As a former state CIO (Washington), his pragmatic perspective is very much in line with the thinking behind the Massachussetts ETRM (Enterprise Technology Reference Model), which stipulates a list of open-standard document formats for various types of applications including text, HTML, PDF, ODF, and Open XML.

XML@Boeing

dmahugh — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:42:00 GMT

There are two rules of blogging that the experts seem to all agree on: don't don't blog about the fact you've not been blogging, and don't post pictures of your cat. So I'll not say anything more about the fact I've been really busy lately and haven't been blogging as much as I'd like ...

One reason I've been busy was that I spoke at a local event yesterday, the annual http://www.ecnw.org/BoeingXMLconf/Boeing_xml_conference_2007.html conference. It was a great opportunity to hear firsthand about some of the XML projects that Boeing is tackling, and it was also fun for me because I worked at Boeing long ago ... I remember the excitement of typing Fortran programs directly to disk when we got a shiny new PDP 11/70 minicomputer. Compared to submitting batches of punch cards to the IBM 360 mainframe, this represented a big leap in programmer productivity!

At yesterday's conference there were presentations on specific XML projects around standards like S1000D, vendor presentations on emerging XML technologies, descriptions of Boeing's XML and SOA infrastructure, and a panel discussion on how to get started with XML.

The Q&A after the sessions provided a glimpse of the internal dialog at Boeing around XML technologies, and many questions reflected a hands-on perspective. As Altova's Alexander Falk posted yesterday,

XML is now ubiquitous. It is all-pervasive, all-encompassing. It is the lingua franca of how systems talk to one another, how data is transported, how content is stored, reused, and manipulated.

Thanks to Gene Owen, Kathryn Breininger, Scott Tsao, and everyone else for putting on a great event at Boeing. I hope to get a chance to attend again next year, to follow how the use of XML continues to grow at my "alma mater."

WordPerfect Office beta supports Open XML

dmahugh — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:57:00 GMT

Interesting news out of Ottawa today:

Corel Corporation (NASDAQ:CREL; TSX:CRE), a leading developer of graphics, productivity and digital media software, today announced a new beta version of Corel® WordPerfect® Office that supports both the Open Document Format (ODF) and Microsoft® Office Open XML (OOXML), the default file format for Microsoft® Office 2007.

The new beta will allow users to open, view and edit ODF and OOXML files and uniquely positions Corel as the industry's format-neutral vendor of productivity software. The free beta will allow customers to test WordPerfect Office's ODF and OOXML capabilities and evaluate which of these emerging standards best meets their needs.

"Open standards are increasingly important for our customers, especially in government," said Nick Davies, Vice President and General Manager, Graphics and Productivity at Corel. "A multi-format approach allows Corel to provide our customers with maximum compatibility and archival options, and harnesses our deep expertise in file formats to deliver flexible document solutions for our customers."

The introduction of ODF and OOXML support in the new WordPerfect Office XML Format Beta is the latest example of Corel's long standing commitment to multi-format compatibility. In addition to ODF and OOXML, the Beta supports Microsoft Office binary formats, Adobe's PDF, Corel's own WordPerfect Office formats and over 60 others. It also includes an integrated XML Editor capable of creating custom XML publishing solutions.

OPC implementation test documents

dmahugh — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 07:03:00 GMT

In my presentation at TechEd SEA yesterday, I explained the importance of writing code against the relationship structure of an OPC package instead of hard-coding URIs that point to specific part names in specific folders. That's a key concept for building flexible Open XML implementations that interoperate with other implementations: follow the relationships, and ignore the part names and locations, which may vary between different implementations.

The attached ZIP file contains three sample documents that demonstrate this principle. I've included a DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX that have start parts named whatever.xml, and don't include the word/xl/ppt folders that Office uses for storing the start part. So the content of these documents is physically different from what Office would generate, but they're valid Open XML documents that conform to the spec.

Here's the root folder of the ZIP package for each of these sample documents:

If your Open XML implementation is written against the spec, it will open these documents just fine because you're just looking for the officeDocument relationship type to find the start part, and the name and location of that part don't matter at all. But if an implementation is written against something other than the spec (oh, say, Office's implementation), then your app won't open these documents.

You can use these documents to test an Open XML implementation for conformance to the rule that it's relationships and not URIs that define the structure of an OPC package. And in case you're wondering, yes, Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 open these files just fine:

If you find another implementation that doesn't work with these documents, you might want to let the developer know. When you're just working with documents created in Office, these details don't matter, but the pace of delivery of new Open XML implementations is accelerating, and we all need to follow the spec to deliver on the interoperability that it enables.

Voting on DIS 29500

dmahugh — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:23:00 GMT

The voting has closed on the Open XML ballot, and ISO has issued a press release that explains the outcome:

The five-month ballot process ended on 2 September and was open to the IEC and ISO national member bodies from 104 countries, including 41 that are participating members of the joint ISO/IEC technical committee, JTC 1, Information technology.

Approval requires at least 2/3 (i.e. 66.66 %) of the votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 to be positive; and no more than 1/4 (i.e. 25 %) of the total number of national body votes cast negative. Neither of these criteria were achieved, with 53 % of votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 being positive and 26 % of national votes cast being negative.

Comments that accompanied the votes will be discussed at a ballot resolution meeting (BRM) to be organized by the relevant subcommittee of ISO/IEC JTC 1 (SC 34, Document description and processing languages) in February 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The objective of the meeting will be to review and seek consensus on possible modifications to the document in light of the comments received along with the votes. If the proposed modifications are such that national bodies then wish to withdraw their negative votes, and the above acceptance criteria are then met, the standard may proceed to publication.

As Jason Matusow says today, "The next 6 months will be where the rubber really meets the road for the work on Open XML."

[Addition: Stephen McGibbon has some interesting charts that show the balloting results in visual form, and also a set of charts comparing the Open XML and ODF ballots.]

Open XML sans le drame

dmahugh — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 06:25:00 GMT

I just finished reading the comments posted on a few Open XML blogs over the weekend, a task which took much longer than I expected. My impression is that people want to talk about the outcome of the voting period that ended yesterday, but we don't have a public result yet to talk about, so all that pent-up energy is going into rehashing the debates and rumors of recent months. Emotions are running high in many places.

But in the midst of all the conspiracy theories, finger-pointing, and name-calling (Hug Madog? Come on, you can do better than that!), I came across two posts that stood out as calm and pragmatic voices of reason. How refreshing.

Mick Lohan has some subtle but powerful ideas in his post "VBA -> Open XML Part II (cont) - Displaying a Dynamic Table." As he explains in his usual formal and stuffy style:

Being a very lazy West of Ireland guy , I never like having to do the same thing over and over again - after all, that's what programming is all about - code once, use many times. The snippet above contains 3 types of Sections (document sections if you will) - one produces the Report Title , then there's a line break section and finally there's the the table section - if you need any more types you just add to the case statement in the code (Line 81 in Module1.vb) - again extend once, use many times. With a little thinking (preferable on a hilltop over looking a stretch of water with a gentle westerly breeze in your face - and your mind full of the great ideas disseminated by a podcast from Dot Net Rocks that you've just listened to on your MP3 player) you'd be saying to yourself - All I have to do is change the Title , the SQL Query and the Column Captions and Widths and indicate if I want subtotals and I'd have a new report - but then you' ld say - Couldn't I just add a root element say <Printout> and then a 2nd element like the one above with the new details - save it off to a file and then call the file from my program [next installment] - then to produce further reports all I'd have to do is edit the xml file that is external to the program with Notepad.

It's great to see Mick diving into Open XML and applying his "XAML for VB6" approach to reporting concepts. Mick has been delivering "custom" applications for a long time that are simply XML configuration files that get processed by an EXE processor designed around a simple and flexible schema he has developed for representing common user interface elements. This has always provided his clients with "Notepad customization at runtime" capabilities as mentioned above, but reports were generated by automating the Office clients. Now that the Office default formats are XML-based, he's moving beyond automation of the Office clients and generating Open XML reports dynamically. The code samples Mick has generously started sharing will be very useful to VB developers who want to work with Open XML.

Dennis Hamilton has been watching the tecnology standards world longer than most -- he was a contributor to some of the first programming-language standards, including Fortran and Algol, and he has contributed to the ASCII, TIFF, ODMA, and DMA standards as well. His 9/2 post acknowledges the harsh tone of the debate without dropping down into it:

We are seeing conversations and posturing reminiscent of the cold war, the "axis of evil" proclamations, and other excesses of global politics. You'd think the stakes were civilization as we know it. I suspect many of the participants believe exactly that. All I can say is, "Follow the money." Then get a grip.
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From my perspective, the OOXML and ODF efforts are merely the start of an important journey where we improve our mutual understanding of what it takes to operate with standard document formats in collaboration, interchange, and preservation using different implementations (of the same or different formats). This is important work, and we need these standards as a starting point. It's a long and winding road ahead, and we need to have as many positive contributions as can be found.

That's the long-term perspective I'd expect from Dennis, and he goes on to list some of his great posts on Open XML, ODF, document interoperability and related topics, offered as "This is the easiest way to understand what I value, what I think is important, and how one can go about reconciling these differences in a professional, considerate manner."

Both Mick and Dennis have more coming on these topics (according to their latest posts :-)), so add these two to your RSS reader and enjoy some non-controversial Open XML coverage in the weeks ahead.