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Re: Low-end Office 11 won't do user schemas, it seems

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Low-end Office 11 won't do user schemas, it seems
• From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
• Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 20:10:02 -0400
• In-reply-to: <20030411191254.E28785@r...>
• References: <20030411221833.GA28707@s...><20030411191254.E28785@r...>
• User-agent: Opera7.03/Win32 M2 build 2670

On Fri, 11 Apr 2003 19:12:54 -0400, Daniel Veillard <veillard@r...> 
wrote:

> So basically the really complex and rule breaking changes introduced
> in MS Office XML support will not be very popular.
> This gives more time to OpenOffice to deploy, perfect :-)

Au contraire, I think.  The nasty WordML stuff will be the only "XML" 
supported in most versions of Office.  To get the ability to work with your 
own or other people's schemas you need to pay the big bucks.  Most 
specifically, in order for Word to work with an OpenOffice-generated 
document, you need the high-end version.  [Or maybe you had something else 
in mind vis a vis the "complex and rule breaking changes" ... maybe their 
bizarre way of mapping URNs to schemas?]

One might argue that it creates a window of opportunity for OpenOffice 
because the XML it generates is so much more practical for downstream 
applications to work with than WordML, I guess.  I honestly don't see why 
they bother with WordML; what is the *point* of storing data in XML if the 
schema is so hideous and proprietary than no one can use it without 
proprietary API support?  What advantages does WordML have over the HTML- 
like stuff that current versions of Word generate on request?  At least you 
can tidy.exe the HTML-like stuff into standard XML, but what can you do 
with WordML except load it into Word ... unless of course you are an XSLT 
uber-geek? [only a semi-rhetorical question ... I would love to hear a 
rational explanation of why WordML exists.]

Sigh, I thought Office 2003 looked too good to be true.  I was a fool, but 
I believed ...  

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Low-end Office 11 won't do user schemas, it seems
    • From: "Alaric B. Snell" <alaric@a...>
  • Re: Low-end Office 11 won't do user schemas, it seems
    • From: Uche Ogbuji <uche.ogbuji@f...>
  • Re: Low-end Office 11 won't do user schemas, it seems
    • From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>

• References:
  • Low-end Office 11 won't do user schemas, it seems
    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
  • Re: Low-end Office 11 won't do user schemas, it seems
    • From: Daniel Veillard <veillard@r...>

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