[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: XML in .NET - more than just SOAP?
What I meant by "Office is not generating XML" is "Office is not generating complete well-formed XML documents". Office is "using" XML though. This is a true statement. It is embedding chunks of well formed XML inside it's HTML output - for round-tripping purposes only. There has been a LOT of mis-understanding about this use of XML in Office. A lot of it by marketing types who didn't understand enough about XML at the time. But I know for a fact from the Office people I have worked with that making Office 2000 a general XML authoring tool was not a design goal. Having a future version of Office generate XHTML would be a great idea. There are some very real challenges to that though, which is why they didn't tackle it in the current vesion. -----Original Message----- From: johns@s... [mailto:johns@s...] Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 9:12 AM To: Chris Lovett; xml-dev@l... Subject: RE: XML in .NET - more than just SOAP? Chris Lovett wrote: "Office 2000 does NOT generate XML." The following are from Microsoft documents: From http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/press/1997/dec97/HTMLPR.asp 'Taking HTML editing further, Office documents stored in HTML will enable "round-tripping" by implementing Extensible Markup Language (XML) technology to preserve all the Office-specific formatting in a document.' From http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/press/1998/Oct98/XMLcapPR.asp 'In addition to these innovations, Microsoft is using XML in its applications software. For example, the next major release of the Microsoft productivity suite, Microsoft Office 2000, elevates HTML to a companion file format and uses XML to store additional document information. By using XML in this way, Office 2000 users can save documents as Web pages and then later return these documents to their original Office state for editing. Once again, Microsoft is delivering XML technology first, making Windows the premier platform for driving Internet standards and interoperable applications.' It seems hard to reconcile these statements with the claim that Microsoft never said that Office 2000 would generate XML. In particular, the claim that, with this capability in Office, "Microsoft is delivering XML technology first" is clearly an attempt to position Office as an XML technology platform. It may be that Microsoft marketing went overboard in claiming to be delivering XML technology (rather than using (near) XML technology in its products). The result is that people like me mis-interpreted the statements above to mean that Word 2000 would be an XML authoring tool. I think that the mis-information referred to below is not all on the side of people like me. Yours, John F Schlesinger SysCore Solutions 212 619 5200 x 219 917 886 5895 Mobile -----Original Message----- From: Chris Lovett [mailto:clovett@m...] Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 11:13 AM To: xml-dev@l... Subject: RE: XML in .NET - more than just SOAP? Let me correct some mis-information floating around this thread. Office 2000 has never claimed to be an "XML" authoring tool. The http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?URL=/library/officedev/ofxml2k /ofxml2k.htm page says: "Microsoft Office 2000 supports Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) as a native file format. Using HTML, Office documents and data can be stored, distributed, and presented in a format that can be viewed using most Web browsers, while retaining the rich content and functionality of Office documents stored using the traditional companion binary file formats." Office 2000 generates a flavor of HTML that "can be viewed using mose Web browsers". This is the stated goal, nothing more. Office 2000 does NOT generate XHTML, but as some have noted, it does consume it ok. Office 2000 does NOT generate XML. Office 2000 is not "broken". General XML authoring was not a stated goal. It does however embed some islands of well-formed XML inside the HTML pages. This is intended for Office use only. If you can figure out how to post-process the HTML to extract and manipulate this XML then more power to you. The Office team has not stated any future goals about turning Office into a general XML authoring tool, but there are plenty of ways you can voice your opinion on this subject. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/technical/community.asp. Chris Lovett Program Manager WebData Team Microsoft.
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|