[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Word 2003 schemas available
thanks, and interesting. Actually I noticed that Word -> XML eating up disk, which is very true for large word documents (we ignored that point in previous emails). I guess I agree with necessity to define standard binary XML format, and I did hear that it has generated sufficient interest that there is a focus group created for that within W3C, if I am right.. good reasoning, and thanks for the mail. best, murali. On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, Bob Wyman wrote: > The easiest way to encourage them not to define a *custom* > binary format is to make it easy for them to use a *standard* binary > format that interchanges well with code designed to process XML. Of > course, what I'm suggesting is that by supporting the use of ASN.1 > defined encodings we can get binary/XML interchange and preserve our > investment in tools like SAX, DOM, etc. This is because the ASN.1 > defined encodings (BER, PER, etc.) provide *lossless* encoding of XML > data in highly compact binary forms. (I wouldn't be surprised, for > instance, if a typical word documents ended up being less than 10% of > the original size if encoded in PER...) > I must say that I'm very concerned about the impact that Word > documents in XML are going to have on the whole "XML movement." While > people have grumbled about XML's size for a long time, most people > haven't been exposed to the elephantine monsters that result when you > convert Word to XML. ("The Word document that ate my disk...") This is > going to start a whole series of companies and projects that will > "address the problem of XML storage compression."... Unfortunately, > most of those projects will be describing XML as a bug that needs to > be fixed. The "bad press" for XML will not be pleasant and may give > folk like Microsoft the cover they need to define "more efficient" > *custom* formats in the future. I personally feel that it is vital to > the "XML movement" that we be aggressive and accept existing, > standard, ASN.1 defined encodings as binary peers of XML in order to > address the storage space issue immediately. > Microsoft has defined their schema using WXS. However, since > the mapping from WXS to ASN.1 is defined (X.694), that means that by > releasing they WXS, they have defined more than the XML schema for > Word -- they have also defined the ASN.1 schema for Word. At this > point, providing compressed binary support for Word documents is a > trivial matter. > There is actually an interesting opportunity here... If one or > more of the recent "open office" products were to provide > XML-compatible ASN.1 encoding support, then they would be able to > argue that they have all of the benefits of the XML encodings that > Microsoft supports while also addressing the needs of customers by > providing highly compressed binary encodings. So far, all the > Office-alternatives, have been limited to arguing that they are "just > as good" as Microsoft's Office. If they were to embrase compact binary > encodings that are XML-compatible, then they would be able to argue > that they are "better." > In summary: If you want to avoid *custom* binary formats, > ensure that *standard* binary formats are available and supported. > > bob wyman
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