MS releases Word Doc XML schemas

Hi all,

Sorry if this is something that SIMS CDE has already announced...

The XML schema for MS Office Word 2003 is now available to the public:

http://rep.oio.dk/Microsoft.com/officeschemas/Navigation.htm

The "patent license" for creating software that can read and write
documents that conform to this schema seems to be very liberal...

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/format/xmlpatentlicense.asp

This is potentially good news for web developers and/or third-party
products such as OpenOffice:

http://www.openoffice.org/

News.com has an article about it here:

http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5108018.html?tag=nefd_top

This is great news, no doubt about that. However, as always with MS, you
have to careful. Two paragraphs from the news.com article:

"Microsoft said it is using a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard
called XML Schema Definitions (XSDs) to publish the information. But
unlike industry standards controlled by industry committees, Microsoft
will dictate the development of the Office schema, noted Ron Schmelzer, an
analyst at ZapThink.

"The challenge is that Microsoft is in control of the format, and so they
retain control over the timing and nature of the changes to the format,"
said Schmelzer. "So any vendor that looks to support interoperability with
Office 2003 will need to stay on their toes."

-lucas
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Received on Mon Nov 17 10:32:56 2003