XML Support In Office 2003 Isn't For Everyone 213
0x0d0a writes "Unfortunately, it seems that Microsoft's recent campaign to promote Office 2003 based on its XML support may be a bit misleading. Only the Enterprise and Professional releases will have this support -- not Standard. Microsoft will still be leveraging file format compatibility for at least another Office release."
XML Support In Office 2003 Isn't For Everyone... (Score:5, Informative)
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This is guarenteed to not be the first post.
Not quite as clear cut as it seems... (Score:3, Informative)
User schema aren't really suitable for home and SME users - it's the sort of thing you need if you're dumping XML output into enterprise applications, and want your data entry folk to use their usual Office applications.
For XML transfer WordML is still supported in all SKUs, which is defined by a schema at a specific URI, so it will validate in most parsers.
What will be much more interesting will be uderstanding the pricing for InfoPath...
Some alternatives (Score:5, Informative)
DocSoft's W2XML Version 2 [docsoft.com]
Authentic by Altova [altova.com]
i4i Tagless Editor [i4i.com]
XMLWriter by Wattle Software [xmlwriter.net]
Opensource Extensible XML Modeling Application [xerlin.org]
If you know of any other GUI based XML modeling/editing apps, please feel free to add them to this list.
Open Office (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, my wife prefers Word and I prefer Open Office. The only time she likes open office is when she asks me to convert a document from one word format to another - because word won't do it at all, or word converts it very badly.
Also, I save several hundred dollars every few years
AC
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh Come On (Score:2, Informative)
Hell, Microsoft basically did this with Windows XP Home and Professional, with Home having a cap on its network size. Though I think that particular move was fucking absurd (My home is not a small office or business, but has too many computers to network on XP Home).
Re:Chant the mantra, brethren (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, opening the XML file in another application would ignore formatting...just like opening a
The issue here is the documentation of the formatting-related tags. Take the two following XML 1.0 fragments:
1:
<content>Hello! This text is <style add="italic">different</style>.</content>
2:
<content>Hello! This text is <msft secretFormattingCode="0x3B">different</msft>.</co
Both are XML, both would "lose" formatting when opened in another editor, and both are probably just as easy for Office to generate. The problem is, in the absence of a published schema, the second one is much harder to understand.
MS certainly knows that their XML format will be "reverse-engineered", so I would assume they are going to make it as hard as possible to understand.
Of course, I haven't seen the actual XML format used by Office 2003, but I have to assume that if there were a nice, easy to userstand XML dialect in use, we wouldn't have all of this commotion to begin with.
Re:Rubbish! (Score:5, Informative)
XML is a text-based system for data storage and retrieval, intended to be *self documenting*. In other words, the details on what fonts are used, what settings The User has set for individual parts of the documents, the parameters for those setting, etc. ARE ALL SUPPOSED TO BE STORED IN READABLE FORMAT WITHIN XML TAGS, CONFORMING TO A KNOWN, PUBLISHED DOCUMENT DESCRIBING THE CONTENT.
No it's not. XML is not supposed to store information such as 'font' and other presentational features. This is the job of the XSL stylesheets or CSS etc. XML is designed to store data in a structured way. So for instance you may have a <chapter> tag, but what font to use for chapter tags is only supposed to be specified in the XSLT. If I did an XML export of my word document, I would expect (hope for) an XML document, and either an XSLT stylesheet transforming the XML to HTML, or an XSL:FO stylesheet so that I can turn the XML into a pdf or postscript file. However, the stylesheets would be the 'icing on the cake'. The essential item is the XML formatted data, not the presentational information.
True, true... (Score:4, Informative)
The hell it isn't. Ever try to open an older works document in 'X' version of MS Office?
How about support of international versions? Can a Japanese student use their version of Office 97 to write an English document, printable in our labs? Dunno. Sometimes.
How about opening say, a Word 97/2000/XP doc in Office 95? Oh, right, that doesn't work either.
Schools aren't like your average corporation. We can't always afford to go out and get the latest and greatest. I also have to question WHY we'd even bother doing so and I wish our public schools would seriously consider this question as well - our tax dollars can be better spent. To be honest, Office 97 was all we ever really needed functionality-wise.
Then there's what happens when a student goes home and works on a paper. Who knows WHAT format it'll come back in. The biggest problem for us has been when an upgrade cycle comes around and some of my students (or parents) end up with it (came with their brand new PC).
Last year I posed a question to the teachers: Why not use Open/StarOffice? This has (for the most part), solved our compatibility issues. As I work for an international school, we have students with every version of MS Office, Works, Wordperfect, hell, even NOTEPAD!
Standardizing everyone (teachers, parents, students) on OpenOffice.org was the smartest thing we've ever done. Document compatibility was major factor in that decision.
XML in Word 2003 is actually pretty good (Score:4, Informative)
You need a schema, which is a bit of a pain, but it's at least as friendly as most of the XML editors out there. Plus you can embed all the 'normal' Word formatting content where any CDATA would go.
I'd like to see a better UI for entering attributes rather than having to right-click the tag -- there's this handy-dandy task pane on the right, why not default to attribute entry there?
The live validation is pretty good, the pick-and-choose entities is just fine. The best part, is that the XML is accessible from VBA,
I'm starting to look into their "SmartDocs" SDK, where you can have behaviors appear in that task pane (probably can do the attribute editing there), based on the XML tags. It's an extension of their SmartTag interface, and not the most straightforward interface I've ever seen, because the tag is just a parameter to a generic call, but I think I can make it work.
I'm less impressed with their XML form editor Infowhatever -- it appears to be limited to usability with certain kinds of schemas (and never DTDs, it seems), more database-like, less document-like. If its forms could be embedded ito Word, it would be even nicer.
FYI, the DTD I'm working with is the International Council of Harmonization's [ich.org] Electronic Common Technical Document, which is not a document, but the table of contents for submissions of data to the Food and Drug Administration and regulatory agencies worldwide (Ok, only Europe and Japan, with Canada and Australia and others riding the coattails).
Lots of people have (even on /.) (Score:1, Informative)
There are even some posts with it in this article, but since slashdot munges it up in the posting code (adding random spaces), and it's more complicated than two lines of code, people are already dissing it as "typical MS trash".
There are two "flavors", one that strips out all formatting, and another one that is supposed to be able to round-trip all the word features.
It can also be set up to use user-defined schemas, and do lots of other neat and useful stuff in an environment people are used to, but that goes against the slashdot group-think, so you won't hear anything positive about any of this here.
Sure (Score:3, Informative)
WOW, I only pay for what I get? What about xBox, Hotmail etc. Afaik they are being paid or by unsuspecting/ignorant Office-users.
Yes I did purchase an xBox for the very same reason