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Tim Bray on Microsoft Office

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Oct 24, 2002 03:53 AM
from the good-things-where-you-least-expect-them dept.
jgeelan writes "The co-inventor of XML, Tim Bray, has been talking about the newly XML-enabled version of Microsoft Office, code-named 'Office 11' and tells XML-Journal that 'when the huge universe of MS Office documents becomes available for processing by any programmer with a Perl script and a bit of intelligence, all sorts of wonderful new things can be invented that you and I can't imagine.'"
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  • Yay Evil Monopoly Of Doom! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sneftel (15416) on Thursday October 24 2002, @03:57AM (#4520211)
    Wow, I was way off when I predicted that Microsoft would further obfuscate their Word format. This seems to be in all respects a Good Thing.

    StarOffice has used XML for their native file formats for some time now; I wonder if this means we'll see an even better-quality translator between the two formats?
  • However... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kubrick (27291) on Thursday October 24 2002, @03:57AM (#4520217)
    Knowing Microsoft, they don't like to give up that format lock-in. They'll find some way to make MSXML difficult or impossible to access, assuming that they haven't already.... encrypted data or something like that.

    • An eXaMpLe of MSWord XML... (Score:5, Funny)

      by FyRE666 (263011) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:33AM (#4520353) Homepage
      <?xml version="1.0"?>
      <Data>
      MSWORD$$g$%jk$%sxx"d$%^$% ^($%^m$k^a$%j^$%B$JJ"£"$M £K
      </Data>
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:However... (Score:5, Funny)

      by PhotoGuy (189467) on Thursday October 24 2002, @05:44AM (#4520532) Homepage
      They'll find some way to make MSXML difficult or impossible to access, assuming that they haven't already.... encrypted data or something like that.

      What?!?!?!? You mean they'll try and pass something off as a a "security feature," when it's really intended to protect them?

      Nah, that's not really their style.

      [ Parent ]
    • Read the article? (Score:5, Informative)

      by gazbo (517111) on Thursday October 24 2002, @05:44AM (#4520533)
      This bloke said he has had extensive access to the alphas and betas. He also said how great it was.

      So unless your mind has been slashdotted to the extent that you think that Microsoft is going to suddenly change the file-format completely between beta and release, then we know that it is perfectly easy to read.

      And if you do believe they will change the format, then you are a moron.

      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Read the article? by Neil Watson (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:20AM
      • Re:Read the article? by InternalWave (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @03:09PM
      • Re:Read the article? by kubrick (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:43PM
      • Re:MOD PARENT UP by a_n_d_e_r_s (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @06:25AM
        • Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Interesting)

          by danheskett (178529) <danheskett.gmail@com> on Thursday October 24 2002, @07:41AM (#4521042)
          They already done that with other products and wrote it in thier halloween-document. Where do you have any indication that they should change stratagy now ?

          Because they have competition now, and thats makes people do funny things.

          Did you ever think that maybe all thing things MS has done in the last 24+ months that show an increasingly high level of support for interoperability and standards compliance is more than just show?

          Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, that the head people at MS read the halloween documents and discarded them as garbage?

          The format is XML, its going to be open, and its going to be great. I am willing to make a cash bet on it. Yeah, sure, some data inside it will probably be a binary representation of an object - maybe graphs, charts links to external programs, images, etc. If you want to take that bet, e-mail me.

          Most people here on slashdot know that even with a level playing field of open file formats that Office will *still* dominate the marketplace for Office software.
          [ Parent ]
        • Re:MOD PARENT UP by dbrutus (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:54AM
        • Re:MOD PARENT UP by Milican (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @09:06AM
        • Re:MOD PARENT UP by Planesdragon (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @10:27AM
        • You can't put a EULA somone else's document by bay43270 (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @11:03AM
      • Re:MOD PARENT UP by greenrd (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @06:25AM
        • Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)

          by gazbo (517111) on Thursday October 24 2002, @06:37AM (#4520676)
          Slight difference this time. Now, we actually have a beta release, seen by independent parties (such as Tim Bray) who have praised the file format. As I said, unless you seriously think they will completely change the file format between beta and release...

          Now, whether they can license the format so as to make it illegal for other apps to use it, I don't know. However, I suspect this is not the case as it more or less removes the advantage to having invested in XML in the first place. Well, sure there's good publicity, but how long would that last when people immediately discover it is worthless?

          And of course, the vast majority of people don't care about file formats. The only people to whom this news is of interest are those who will want to either access Office docs themselves, or use other apps (e.g. Open Office) to view Office docs. If this sector are banned from doing this, why did MS spend so much money on using XML in the first place?

          [ Parent ]
      • Re:MOD PARENT UP by FortKnox (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:45AM
      • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
    • I expect them to use legal means by Greyfox (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @07:10AM
    • format lock in rebuttal by kbs (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:30AM
    • Viruses? by Capt Dan (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:46AM
    • What really is going to happen by spitzak (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @12:04PM
    • Re:However... by iabervon (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @01:42PM
    • Re:However... by tshak (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @01:43PM
      • Re:However... by kubrick (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:30PM
    • Re:However... by tabby (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @09:15PM
      • Re:However... by kubrick (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @10:49PM
        • Re:However... by tabby (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @11:43PM
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Incompatibilities Once Again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by robbyjo (315601) on Thursday October 24 2002, @03:57AM (#4520218) Homepage Journal

    .... I guess it's just MSXML rather than THE standard XML. But we can figure it out with some "intelligent guesswork" now because the file would be human-readable.

    • Re:Incompatibilities Once Again (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JaredOfEuropa (526365) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:18AM (#4520292) Journal
      It's just like the old SGML module for Word they used to have about 6 years ago. My guess is that there will be some significant drawback to saving documents in XML, such as loss of some formatting information. That would convince users not to save in the XML format... but that isn't the important thing to Microsoft.

      More significantly, there might be small incompatibilities, or ways that Word-created XML documents divert slightly from what is normal and proper in XML. Perhaps Word will make some (intentional) mistakes when reading back XML files generated in other applications, just like Word's old SGML module would choke on many proper SGML documents.

      Make no mistake: the fact that almost everybody is using Office and the associated file formats makes it very hard for a new contender to enter the office suite market. Microsoft must be aware of the power they have over the market with their Office file formats. Think of it: when you exchange files with other businesses, you have two realistic choices of file formats: Office or plaintext. And now Microsoft is introducing compatibility with an open and well-defined markup langauge, in favour of their proprietary language? I'll believe it when I see it.
      [ Parent ]
    • MS-standards (oxymoron?) by billybob2001 (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @06:05AM
    • Re:Incompatibilities Once Again by surprise_audit (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @01:20PM
  • wicked :) by oo7tushar (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @03:58AM
    • Re:wicked :) by Mnemia (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:40AM
  • Too good to be true by trustno_one (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @03:59AM
    • Re:Too good to be true (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Masa (74401) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:14AM (#4520277) Journal

      Because it doesn't matter if everyone is able to read, modify and generate Office-compatible files. People will us Office products in future. Opening the file formats doesn't change anything.

      XML makes it easy to create programs that will depend on MS Office. So this only makes it easier to create programs which depend on Microsoft products.

      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Too good to be true (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bokmann (323771) on Thursday October 24 2002, @05:28AM (#4520494) Homepage
        Except I will look to xml.openoffice.org to write some xslt transformations to take Microsoft office documents and liberate them once and for all.

        Once I can move my team of 20 people to open office with no real worries or complaints about 'interchanging' files with lusers still using Microsoft, I will.

        BUT, have you ever looked at an HTML file generated by Microsoft word? It is a GREAT example of how they can pollute a standard into something unreadable.

        I suspect that they will copyright or otherwise lock up their DTD/Schema, and try to lash out at anyone that uses them in other than 'approved' ways.

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Too good to be true -- WRONG by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @06:11AM
      • Re:Too good to be true by RPoet (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @06:59AM
      • Re:Too good to be true by SurfTheWorld (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @09:25AM
    • Re:Too good to be true (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MrHanky (141717) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:21AM (#4520303) Homepage Journal
      Maybe they need a migration path away from the win32-based format they use now. .NET also seems to follow that path. Remember that MS needs access to other platforms than the i386/desktop in the future - mobile devices for instance. Keeping a format that is basically a binary image from a PC is good for locking out competition, but not when you have to start competing with yourself.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Too good to be true by Petronius (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @07:30AM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • by leandrod (17766) <`leandro' `at' `dutra.fastmail.fm'> on Thursday October 24 2002, @03:59AM (#4520225) Homepage Journal

    The most important question, besides if the MS Word XML format will be well-documented enough, is if it will be the default saving format. Most MS Office users simply don't care enough to save MS Word documents in RTF, for example, even if it's more than good enough for the vast majority of the documents.

    Not the main issue on the article, but it is unfair to single someone as the inventor of XML, which is just a streamlined version of SGML which is an evolution from IBM's GML.

  • I doubt it. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by theLOUDroom (556455) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:00AM (#4520226)
    I really have my doubts about wether Microsoft will allow "any programmer with a Perl script and a bit of intelligence" to muck around with Office documents.
    I'm guessing their XML document format will be just as hard to decyper and the current office formats.
    • Re:I doubt it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sql*kitten (1359) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:59AM (#4520425)
      I really have my doubts about wether Microsoft will allow "any programmer with a Perl script and a bit of intelligence" to muck around with Office documents.

      Why not? After all, the high-quality ActiveState port of Perl to Win32 exists because Microsoft paid for it, and you can download it for free. Not only that, but if you want to write your own code to manipulate Office documents, you have been able to do that for years in VBA - all the Office programs expose rich APIs. In fact, they are composed of Objects that you can instantiate and use in your own programs if you want - all MS care about is that there is a licensed copy of Office on the user's machine. One of the easiest ways to do charting is to simply reuse a bit of Excel, for example. From there it's a short hop via COM to any program you want.

      I'm guessing their XML document format will be just as hard to decyper and the current office formats.

      The fact that Office documents have been in a proprietary format in the past is actually unimportant, since the interfaces to the applications (and hence their documents) are well documented (check MSDN or Barnes & Noble if you don't believe me). So the reason that Microsoft are doing this is that they lose nothing and gain from making the platform even more attractive to developers.
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:I doubt it. by jkramar (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @05:14AM
      • Re:I doubt it. by Penguin (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @05:39AM
      • Re:I doubt it. by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @05:50AM
      • Re:I doubt it. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by khuber (5664) on Thursday October 24 2002, @07:05AM (#4520791)
        The fact that Office documents have been in a proprietary format in the past is actually unimportant, since the interfaces to the applications (and hence their documents) are well documented

        So you can read Office documents with other programs as long as you have Office and MS dev tools?

        You do see the folly in that, right?

        -Kevin

        [ Parent ]
        • Re:I doubt it. by buzzcutbuddha (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @09:06AM
          • Re:I doubt it. by khuber (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:09PM
            • Re:I doubt it. by buzzcutbuddha (Score:1) Monday October 28 2002, @11:49AM
      • Re:I doubt it. by Hooya (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:11AM
      • Re:I doubt it. by Avumede (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @09:14AM
        • Re:I doubt it. by sql*kitten (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @09:41AM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:I doubt it. by spongman (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @05:08AM
      • Re:I doubt it. by greenrd (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @06:31AM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:I doubt it. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ianezz (31449) on Thursday October 24 2002, @05:19AM (#4520471) Homepage
      I'm guessing their XML document format will be just as hard to decyper and the current office formats.

      There are 2 problems with the current format of Microsoft Office file:

      1. Give the correct interpretation to the bytes representing the document content, in order to import the Office document in some other office suite using a different representation.
        This is mostly solved (thanks to years of trials and errors).
      2. Give the correct interpretation to the bytes representing the document itself AND all the extra cruft having nothing to do with the document contents that the Microsoft Office suite puts in, in order to generate documents readable by the various versions of the Office suite.
        This is definitively more difficult, as nobody knows Office internals and how they expect such additional data to be. StarOffice guys managed to make an acceptable job, at the price of years of trials and errors. It's like watching at a dump of your computer's memory, guesssing what's code, what's data, what's padding and the meaning of every byte...

      Now, do an XML format simplifies things? Well, yes, just as an RTF text is easier to manage than a pure binary format, but nothing prevents putting extra cruft in an XML document, so it's just that instead of having to use a hex editor, you now may use a text editor, but giving a correct interpretation of tags and attributes is something that only Microsoft can do, unless it publishes the full specifications (present and future: after all, XML is eXtendible, right?)

      Personally, I think that:

      • Microsoft is realizing that the current Office formats are getting out of control, so it wants to get rid of them, because mantaining backwards compatibility is becoming too much painful.
      • An XML-based format may be the right answer for Microsoft, in that all the subtles of parsing binary data simply disappear, while it may still make difficult to everyone else to understand what's the real meaning of data. Let's say <obscuretag_42 foobarizer="xyzzy"/>
      • Microsoft was not giving out the specifications of the formats of its Office suite before: should we now suppose it's giving out the DTD/Schema AND a good explanation of how to interpret it? I'd hope the answer is yes, but giving the company's precedents...
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:I doubt it. by Bartmoss (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @05:37AM
      • Re:I doubt it. by commodoresloat (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @06:09AM
        • Re:I doubt it. by Reckless Visionary (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @10:53AM
      • Re:I doubt it. by ipjohnson (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @06:50AM
      • a middle road? by Simon (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @07:01AM
      • Re:I doubt it. by tshak (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @02:06PM
        • Re:I doubt it. by theLOUDroom (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @02:58PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:I doubt it. by tburkhol (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:21AM
    • Perl Marco Fun by jiminim (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:27AM
  • Historical turningpoint? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by haeger (85819) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:00AM (#4520229)
    I just thought about someone saying that somewere, when you look back in history, you can see some historical turningpoint where tings just went wrong or right.

    One small such point is when IBM gave out the specs to their hardware for PC allowing everyone to clone it, while Apple did not.

    This could be such a point. Maybe in 10 years we'll look back at this and ask ourselves "Why the heck did MS XML-enable their Office app, releasing the hold that they had"

    Only time will tell I guess.

    .haeger


    I Play Hattrick [hattrick.org]

  • Codename? by furchin (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:01AM
    • Re:Codename? by Dausha (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:05AM
    • Re:Codename? by Cainam (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:30AM
      • Re:Codename? by spongman (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @05:11AM
    • Re:Codename? by misterhaan (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @08:10AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • *when* ? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Monty Worm (7264) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:01AM (#4520233) Journal
    when the huge universe of MS Office documents becomes available for processing by any programmer

    I beg you pardon? Smelly programmers can keep their hands off my documents. If I wanted you to have them, I'd have emailed them to you as plaintext. I wasn't aware the the Office license meant my documents were common property....

    • Re:*when* ? by SmlFreshwaterBuffalo (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:20AM
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • The right time for MS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by terminal.dk (102718) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:03AM (#4520238) Homepage
    MS is trying to time this right.

    Right now they are seeing diminishing sales, possible shrinking market share. Most of the danish public sector is looking to save money using OpenOffice/StarOffice.

    MS needs to increase their compatibility with other options, as they would otherwise force customers to convert every single user away from MS at once, instead of OpenOffice coming in slowly.

    They can also hope, that their format is setting the standard, and the other companies will have to play catch-up rather than the other way around.
  • imagination (Score:5, Funny)

    by selderrr (523988) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:05AM (#4520245) Journal
    ...all sorts of wonderful new things can be invented that you and I can't imagine...

    When will MS ever learn that we don't WANT to imagine how wonderfull the MS Office Universe is ?
    • Re:imagination by dbrutus (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @11:38AM
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  • read through "EULA" in the XML? by GnomeKing (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:05AM
  • WTF???? (Score:3, Informative)

    by jericho4.0 (565125) on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:06AM (#4520251)
    from the article;
    The most important question, besides if the MS Word XML format will be well-documented enough,...

    WTF!? XML shouldn't need to be documented. The whole point is to create a human readable file that is parseble by computer. If MS Word delivers an XML file that I can't figure out, it's not XML.

    • Re:WTF???? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lovebyte (81275) <lovebyte2000@NOSPAM.gmail.com> on Thursday October 24 2002, @04:10AM (#4520262) Homepage
      Have you ever seen some complex XML file? Without documentation it could be as difficult as binary to reverse-engineer!
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:WTF???? by jericho4.0 (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:30AM
        • Re:WTF???? by lovebyte (Score:1) Thursday October 24 2002, @05:00AM
        • Re:WTF???? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by vidarh (309115) <vidar@hokstad.com> on Thursday October 24 2002, @05:25AM (#4520483) Homepage Journal
          The point of XML is not for it to be human readable, but to allow easy automatic processing of various kinds.

          With XML Schema and DTD's, you can validate various aspects of the data without writing a custome validator.

          With XPath and XPointer you can refer to parts of an XML document without needing to understand what the document contains.

          With XSL you can translate all or parts of the document from one format to the other without your application needing to know the structure, and without needing to understand more of the format than the parts you are extracting.

          With SAX and the DOM you can programmatically traverse and extract information from an XML file without having to write a custom parser.

          With CSS an editor or viewer for instance can use a standard mechanism of applying styles to elements without hardcoding the style attributes for elements anywhere.

          With XML namespaces, you can intersperse data in various formats in the same file, and the components handling each of the vocabularies need not know anything about the other components - an example would be embedding SVG in HTML: The HTML renderer doesn't need to understand any of the SVG tags, only that it should delegate contents with other namespaces to another component. And the SVG renderer couldn't care less about the HTML.

          And this doesn't even touch on the benefits of all the various interchange formats that have been specified on top of these base technologies.

          The importance of XML is that it opens up the doors for building interchangable components that operate on data without needing any hardcoded application specific knowledge of the data.

          Most of the time, you still have to write some code to tie it all together, but you don't have to build your own parsers, your own document object model, your own styling system, your own way of handling contained data of other types, your own way of transforming data between formats, etc.

          For me as a software developer XML delivered years ago. I use XML technologies daily, and it saves me work.

          [ Parent ]
      • Re:WTF???? by WhaDaYaKnow (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:33AM
        • Re:WTF???? by SlamMan (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @05:51AM
    • Re:WTF???? by Anonymous Coward (Score:3) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:28AM
      • Re:WTF???? by richie2000 (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:51AM
      • Re:WTF???? by spongman (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @05:13AM
      • Re:WTF???? by Nailer (Score:2) Friday October 25 2002, @03:52AM
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    • Re:WTF???? by anshil (Score:2) Thursday October 24 2002, @04:31AM