Stop with the FUD already (Score 2)

I'll probably get modded too, but what's been missing here is a clear discussion about how smart tags actually *work*. (wooo-- technical details ahead!)

In Office XP, Word and Excel can load smart tag DLLs (SDK here).These DLLs implement two COM classes: ISmartTagRecognizer and ISmartTagAction. The recognizer scans text for patterns specified by the developer. For example, I wrote one that recognizes FedEx package tracking numbers. You can write a recognizer to recognize anything you can code, using pattern matching, database lookup, or whatever kind of heuristic you like.

When your smart tag recognizer recognizes something, it calls the CommitSmartTag method. All that does is stamp some XML into the source document, indicating the schema name for the smart tag type you just recognized. When you save the document, the XML gets saved with it.

Actions specify which XML schemas they're interested in. If a recognizer tags something with schemas-smarttagworld-com/zip#zip, then any action that wants to offer actions for that data type (like "look up this zip code", "find FedEx boxes in this zip code", etc) can do so. That means that anyone can write an action that overloads the smart tag types that MS supports in Office.

So, what about IE? Remember the XML? You can tag pages yourself by including the XML in the page (see this article and and actions, without any whiff of Office XP nearby. He missed some key points, though:

• Smart tags are marked by a dotted purple line (example). When you hover over the link, you get a little icon that expands into a pulldown. There's no automatic linking or redirection, period.
• There's no content substitution. You can write smart tags whose actions change content in a Word or Excel document, but the actions have to be triggered by the user. So, don't worry about MS making a tag that does s/Linux/Windows/.
• Anyone who can figure out VB or VC++ (and probably C#, but who cares) can write smart tags. UPS, OAG, and a bunch of other companies are already doing so (partial list). Everyone's invited to the party.
• Users have to turn on smart tags. They're off by default so that MS doesn't get inundated with millions of calls asking what that little purple line is for.
• There's a META tag that turns off the recognizer/action combo in IE6, so you can add that tag to your pages so that no smart tags will be active therein. Perfect for paranoid penguins.

HTH.