[October 11, 2005] "Open Document Commitment to Action." By Bob Sutor (IBM). October 11, 2005. "They are your documents: you should be able to do whatever you want with them, whenever you want, with whatever application you wish to use." See the slide. Six elements of Open Document Commitment: (1) "Insist today that the provider of your office applications (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software) is committed to support the OASIS OpenDocument Format for Office Applications standard in their products by January 1, 2007. (2) Insist today that the office applications you deploy allow users to easily set the OASIS OpenDocument standard as the default "save" format for your documents. That is, you should not have to go to a lot of trouble to avoid using proprietary formats. (3) Get a commitment from your office applications provider to join and contribute to the OASIS OpenDocument standard technical committee. (4) Ask your CIO when you will be able to use office applications that support the OASIS OpenDocument standard. (5) Ask your local and federal governments when they will be supporting the OASIS OpenDocument standard. (6) Insist that any XML document format you use is not encumbered by proprietary extensions, and that the format is freely available for anyone to implement without restrictions, including open source communities that use a GPL license. Ensure that if implementers must accept a license covering the format, the license is clear and unambiguous on these important issues."

[October 04, 2005]   Sun Patent Non-Assertion Covenant for OpenDocument Offers Model for Standards.    On September 30, 2005 Sun Microsystems published a declaration of non-enforcement of its U.S. and foreign patents against any implementation of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification or of any subsequent version of ODF. This non-assertion covenant is being praised as a creative mechanism for patent management in the OASIS context — a "model for patent protection that doesn't involve the glorification of software patents." Sun's public non-assertion declaration may be summarized unofficially as an irrevocable covenant not to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the OASIS OpenDocument specification; however, this commitment is not necessarily applicable to any individual, corporation, or other entity that asserts, threatens or seeks to enforce any patents or patent rights against any OpenDocument Implementation. Clarification of terms governing the use of the OASIS OpenDocument Standard is especially important because the final version of the Enterprise Technical Reference Model Version 3.5 published by The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and made effective on September 21, 2005 features the OpenDocument spefification. As presented in the ETRM Version 3.5 Introduction and Information Domain final documents, the Commonwealth defines open formats as "specifications for data file formats that are based on an underlying open standard, developed by an open community, affirmed and maintained by a standards body and are fully documented and publicly available." Three (3) Open Format Technology Specifications are identified in ETRM Version 3.5: [1] OASIS Open Document Format For Office Applications (OpenDocument) v. 1.0; [2] Plain Text Format; [3] Hypertext Document Format v. 4.01. The Sun OpenDocument Patent Statement was published apparently in response to a question about whether users of the OpenDocument standard would need to ask Sun for a [formal, explicit, executable] license, and whether users would have to explicitly give Sun a reciprocal license. Sun updated its vintage-2002 declaration with a clarification that no such license application or license paperwork are necessary. The non-assertion covenant is a public, blanket declaration asserting the freedom of anyone to implement the OpenDocument specification without needing to transact paperwork or otherwise to ask for Sun's permission.

[September 26, 2005]   Massachusetts Supports OASIS OpenDocument in Final Reference Model V3.5.    The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has announced publication of its final version of the Enterprise Technical Reference Model Version 3.5, which became effective on September 21, 2005. Most of the Reference Model remains unchanged from the draft Enterprise Technical Reference Model Version 3.0 released in March 2005. ETRM Final Version 3.5 incorporates a new Discipline for Data Formats within the Information Domain, including Open Formats. The decision of the Commonwealth's Information Technology Division (ITD) has been watched closely in recent weeks, given the expectation that other jurisdictions may follow the lead of Massachusetts in its definition of Open Format and in requiring the use of non-proprietary, open data formats for official documents and archives. The ETRM Open Formats Technology Area "addresses open standards and specifications for the presentation of data as office documents, text, numbers, maps, graphics, video and audio. The selection of format must consider the access channel being used (Web, PDA, cell phone), the nature of the data and structure (legal requirements that address preservation of document structure), and ease of accessibility for users. The open formats identified below do not yet address all data types. Future versions of the ETRM will address open formats for map, graphics, video and audio data." The Commonwealth defines open formats as "specifications for data file formats that are based on an underlying open standard, developed by an open community, affirmed and maintained by a standards body and are fully documented and publicly available. It is the policy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that all official records of the Commonwealth be created and saved in an acceptable format." Three Open Formats are identified in ETRM Version 3.5: [1] OASIS Open Document Format For Office Applications (OpenDocument) v. 1.0; [2] Plain Text Format; [3] Hypertext Document Format v. 4.01. According to the published Guidelines and Description, the XML-based OpenDocument format "must be used for office documents such as text documents (.odt), spreadsheets (.ods), and presentations (.odp).

[June 02, 2005]   Microsoft Announces Adoption of XML for Default File Formats in 'Office 12'.    Microsoft Corporation has announced its plan to use XML schemas in the new "Microsoft Office Open XML Formats" for its next version of Microsoft Office editions, now referenced under the code-name "Office 12." Although binary formats will be supported as well, for example in the ZIP package format and the 'Excel 12 Binary Workbook (.xlsb), Office 12 will use XML in its "default" file formats for Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, which "are expected to be released in the second half of 2006." The new XML file formats are designed as an "extension of the WordprocessingML and SpreadsheetML schemas introduced in previous versions of Office," and are intended to be interoperable with binary formats in Office 2000 and later. Free tools will be made available to "enable users of Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003 to open and save to the new formats. Documents created with the current binary file formats in Office also will be fully compatible with Office 12 applications, so workers can save documents to their current formats and exchange those documents with people using 'Office 12'; when they upgrade to 'Office 12,' they can continue to use their existing binary documents." Similar to the XML-based technology documented in the OASIS Standard Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument), the Microsoft Office Open XML Formats use ZIP to package and compress constituent parts of compound XML documents. A white paper "The Microsoft Office Open XML Format: Preview for Developers" provides details on the XML File Structure. Each file is composed of "a collection of multiple XML parts describing file data, metadata, customer data. Non-XML parts supported as native files" (e.g., images, VBA projects, OLE objects), and XML structures support the encoding relationships that define any specific file structure. ZIP itself provides the wrapper, or container, providing compression and CRC-based integrity checking for individual file components.

"Members Approve OpenDocument as OASIS Standard. IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Others Develop Royalty-Free Standard for Office Applications Document Format." - "OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. OpenDocument provides a royalty-free, XML-based file format that covers features required by text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents. 'XML doesn't always mean open. You can hide a lot in a file format. OpenDocument represents an opportunity to ensure truly open file formats for productivity applications, which is why it will receive the enthusiastic support of public sector steering organizations on a global basis,' commented James Governor, principal analyst at RedMonk. 'The participation of enterprises in vertical industries, such as aerospace, will also ensure adoption in the private sector. One key to success will be the royalty free status of the spec; there are no financial penalties associated with developing to it.' 'Office productivity applications and the documents they create are key to today's knowledge economy. Information critical to the long term functioning of any organization is stored in the spreadsheets, presentations, and text documents its employees create,' said Michael Brauer of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee. 'Today, for the first time in the 25-year history of office applications, such documents can be stored in an open, standardized, and vendor-independent format.' OpenDocument provides a single XML schema for text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents. It makes use of existing standards, such as HTML, SVG, XSL, SMIL, XLink, XForms, MathML, and the Dublin Core, wherever possible. OpenDocument has been designed as a package concept, enabling it to be used as a default file format for office applications with no increase in file size or loss of data integrity. 'OpenDocument is a fine example of an OASIS Standard that originated in and continues to be endorsed by the open source community,' noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. 'The work of OpenOffice.org was submitted to OASIS in 2002 by Sun Microsystems with the approval of the OpenOffice.org community for advancement under royalty-free terms, so that it would be freely available to developers and users of any office software application. Now that OpenDocument has been approved as an OASIS Standard, we look forward to its robust use by the many organizations and governments from around the world that have been calling for an open, safe, standardized schema for office documents.' Gannon referenced OpenDocument implementations in software from Novell, OpenOffice.org, Stellent, and Sun Microsystems, as well as several other open source projects, as evidence of significant support in the marketplace..." See the news story "OASIS Releases OpenDocument 1.0 Committee Draft Specification for Public Review."

[January 14, 2005] "Microsoft, Massachusetts Reach Terms On 'Open' Office 2003 Formats." By Paula Rooney. From CRN (January 14, 2005). "Microsoft will change the licensing restrictions on Office 2003 formats to keep its business flowing in the Boston area, a Massachusetts state official said Friday. As part of a compromise between Microsoft and the state of Massachusetts, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant will ease licensing restrictions on its Word and Excel ML formats in Office 2003. The state, in turn, will adopt a revised 'open format' policy for the future, rather than an 'open standards' policy proposed one year ago. Eric Kriss, secretary of administration and finance of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, informally announced the agreement Friday at the Massachusetts Software Council meeting in Cambridge, Mass. 'We have been in a conversation with Microsoft for several months with respect to the patent they have and their use of XML to specify document files in Office 2003; they're planning to modify that license, and if they're to do so, it is our expectation that when we issue the next iteration of standards, then Microsoft's proprietary formats will deemed to be open formats because there are no longer restrictions on use.' Initially, the state will support TXT, RTF, PDF and open formats and will confer with international standards bodies, including OASIS and OpenOffice.org, when deciding what is deemed an 'open format,' Kriss said. Microsoft's word processing and spreadsheet XML wrappers, templates and schemas will likely be considered open formats, he said. The announcement may come as a disappointment to some in the open-source world as well as Linux commercial companies that hoped to benefit from Massachusetts' open-standard policy in 2003..."

[November 23, 2004]   IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Respond to TAC Recommendation on Open Document Exchange Format.    The Telematics Between Administrations Committee (TAC) reports that it has received positive responses from Sun, Microsoft, and IBM relative to the IDA Expert Group recommendations on adoption of an Open Document Exchange Format. In May 2004 the Telematics Between Administrations Committee of the EC's IDA Community Programme announced its approval of the Expert Group's conclusions and recommendations on open document formats, with special focus upon XML formats in OpenOffice.Org and WordML. IDA (Interchange of Data between Administrations) is "a Community Programme managed by the European Commission's Enterprise Directorate General. IDA supports the implementation of EU legislation, from internal market regulations to consumer and health policies, by facilitating the exchange of information between public administrations across Europe through the use of information technology." IDA said the positive responses from the three companies "represent a significant step on the way to establishing fully interoperable and seamlessly connected public administrations throughout Europe and enable seamless and transparent transactions between EU public administrations, citizens and businesses." A White Paper from OpenForum Europe on "Open Document Formats for Public Administrations across Europe" has also been published on the IDA web site. The OFE recommends in this document that "the European Commission and member states move towards the use of open document formats as a matter of principle; that support should be required in the tendering process for such open formats in software procured by public administrations; that software vendors should define the open format as a user default in software used by public administrations; and that administrations should ensure that vendors implement ODF as defaults in their applications sold to government." The document further recommends that "public administrations across Europe evaluate the OASIS OpenOffice XML formats as a standard", and that Microsoft should be "encouraged to consider the donation of schemas to OASIS."

"European Commission's IDA TAC Publishes Recommendations on Open Document Formats." - The TAC (Telematics Between Administrations Committee) of the EC's IDA Community Programme has announced approval of an expert group's conclusions and recommendations on open document formats, with special focus upon XML formats in OpenOffice.Org and WordML. IDA (Interchange of Data between Administrations) is "a Community Programme managed by the European Commission's Enterprise Directorate General. IDA supports the implementation of EU legislation, from internal market regulations to consumer and health policies, by facilitating the exchange of information between public administrations across Europe through the use of information technology." The TAC, which guides the Community programme for the Interchange of Data between Administrations (IDA), "gave its support to recommendations that were prepared by a group of experts from EU Member States, based on an IDA report on the current market situation for document formats. While suggesting that the public sector should make use of XML-based document formats, the recommendations place particular importance on standardisation to ensure market access to industry actors. The TAC endorsed the IDA Expert Group's recommendations at a May 25, 2004 meeting, recognizing "the special responsibility of the European public sector to ensure the accessibility of its information, with a view to rationalising and improving the interactions with citizens and enterprises, and taking into account the importance of the public sector as buyer of IT services and products." The Expert Group stated that standardization initiatives "will ensure not only a fair and competitive market but will also help safeguard the interoperability of implementing solutions whilst preserving competition and innovation. Therefore, the submission of the OpenOffice.Org format to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) in order to adopt it as the OASIS Open Office Standard should be welcomed."

[July 14, 2003]   OpenGroupware.org Announces Open Source Project for Groupware Server Software.    The OpenGroupware.org Project has announced an initial release of open source server software and the formation of an international development community supporting open-protocol groupware server software. The goal is to create "the leading open source groupware server to integrate with the leading open source office suite products and all the leading groupware clients running across all major platforms, and to provide access to all functionality and data through open XML-based interfaces and APIs. The OpenGroupware.org source code initially includes the technology SKYRiX Software AG has been developing for future versions of the SKYRiX groupware server; the source is written in Objective-C and delivers language-neutral and scriptable functionality, including XML interfaces. OGo software will enable users to share calendar, address book and e-mail information; they can communicate via instant messaging, share folders, exchange documents, track changes, share a whiteboard, and browse the Web all at the same time -- all upon open Internet standards and without paying or managing cumbersome licensing fees. OGo offers users a free solution for collaboration and document management that, despite being free of charge, will far surpass the quality and level of collaboration found on Windows (through integration of MS Office, Exchange Server and SharePoint). The OGo project is a fully independent open source project, but will interoperate with the OpenOffice.org software and other similarly open clients via open standards."

[March 25, 2003] "Sun Attacks Microsoft XML Strategy Shift." By David Worthington. From BetaNews (March 24, 2003). "Sun Microsystems fired its first salvo at Microsoft's upcoming Office 2003 by calling into question the aim of Redmond's overall XML strategy, and touting StarOffice 6.1 as a low cost alternative for cost conscious enterprises. During a telephone interview, Sun's Iyer Venkatefen, product manager for StarOffice, told BetaNews that Microsoft was not abiding by the OASIS standards. With more than 600 members in 100 countries, OASIS, or Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, is a global consortium that establishes standards to ensure interoperability. While Microsoft embraced openness and follows base-level XML standards, it is taking a different approach towards defining office formats by letting developers decide what schema, or data structure, suits them best. For instance, a document type dubbed XBRL is intended for use in business reporting and would be an industry wide standard written with XSD. XSD, often referred to as a schema, is an XML-based W3C standard language for describing the rules that the structure and the contents of a particular type of XML document are required to follow. Competitors such as Sun and Corel are working with an OASIS technical committee to arrive at a common consensus for these office document schemas. Microsoft is accepting any schema so long as it is XSD compliant, allowing customers to tailor their own... Company spokesperson Jason Carson told BetaNews that customers have the freedom to use any W3C compliant schema that is XSD based. The general idea was simply not to stick with OASIS. Office 2003 will instead support a slew of standardized and proprietary schemas. Carson claimed that Sun was trying to standardize under a single schema, and went on to say that XML implementation in Office was never meant to create a standard format, but a method to freely share information regardless of the platform. Indeed, XML is not the default data format for Office 2003 applications, just an option. Adding fuel to the fire, Microsoft recently quit the W3C Web services standards body, which has prompted some naysayers to call into questions its commitment to standardization. Microsoft refutes such claims and says its XML technologies are fully compliant..." Related references in: (1) "XML File Formats for Office Documents"; (2) "XML Schemas"; (3) "Microsoft Office 11 and InfoPath [XDocs]."

[January 21, 2003] "Thinking XML: The Open Office File Format. An XML Format for Front Office Documents." By Uche Ogbuji (Principal Consultant, Fourthought, Inc). From IBM developerWorks, XML zone. January 2003. ['OpenOffice.org is a mature, open source, front office applications suite with the advantage of a saved file format based on an open XML DTD. This gives users and developers an extraordinary amount of flexibility and power in dealing with work produced in OpenOffice.org. In this article, Uche Ogbuji introduces the OpenOffice file format and explains its advantages.'] "The OpenOffice.org project, which produces a complete, open-source office suite derived from StarOffice, uses XML for its core file formats, rather than as a separate export option. OpenOffice includes a word processor, spreadsheet, a presentation tool, and a graphics/diagramming tool... The stake-holders in OpenOffice.org -- the contributors and users on the OpenOffice.org Web site -- have all committed to making its file format as open and general as possible, in the hopes of fostering greater interoperability and flexibility among office file formats. To further this goal, they have contributed the file formats to a new technical committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)... In this article, I introduce the OpenOffice file formats. This is an interesting time for the intersection of XML and office software. There has been a lot of discussion of the recent Microsoft XDocs technology and how it may or may not compete with or complement XForms, the OpenOffice formats, and other such projects. I shall not cover any such connections here -- in part because of lack of space, and in part because details of XDocs are just emerging... I provide a sketch of the OpenOffice text file format, but the project does not just toss out a text format and leave it at that. OpenOffice provides a rich toolkit for integrating XML tools, and there is a growing body of third-party tools as well. These include SAX filters, XSLT plug-ins, and even low-level Java APIs. Developers from the community have already used these facilities to augment OpenOffice with the ability to load and save Docbook, HTML, TeX, plain text, and the document formats used by PalmOS and PocketPC. XMerge is a project for working with OpenOffice content on small devices such as PDAs and cell phones. Work on XMerge is proceeding at a remarkable pace, and vendors such as Nokia have seen fit to chip into the project. This underlines another huge benefit of the openness embraced by OpenOffice. It encourages contributions from a wide variety of sources, even commercial interests, who understand that this openness brings about a level playing field, as opposed to the use of a proprietary format. XMerge uses XSLT plug-ins for document conversion, which also ensures cross-platform support. In the OASIS Open Office XML Format TC we will continue to improve these file formats, with a sharp eye on enhancing interoperability even further. This is an open process with an open mailing list, and any OASIS member can join formally. I encourage all who are interested in managing front-office documents to participate..."

[December 04, 2002] "Inertia May Delay Standard." By Jim Rapoza. In eWEEK (November 25, 2002). "Last week, the XML consortium OASIS announced the formation of a working group with the goal of creating an XML-based standard for office application formats... none of this matters without Microsoft's backing. As far as most businesses are concerned, if it doesn't work with Microsoft Office, it doesn't work with office applications. Microsoft will point to its excellent XML support in Office XP and in the forthcoming Office 11, which will be able to import and export content as XML files. This is good but not as interchangeable as a common document format would be. However, the biggest stumbling block to this standard is simple inertia. Even if Microsoft gets on board for this standard, a version of Office that supports it would be at least two years away. Given that most businesses don't jump to upgrade Office (many still run Office 97), it could be many years before any standard format has enough penetration to be truly standard. So, even though it makes sense, don't expect to see a true standard for office documents any time soon..."

[November 27, 2002] "XML Content Standard Could Challenge Microsoft." By [Analytical Source] Rita Knox. Gartner FirstTake Report. Reference: FT-18-9097. 25 November 2002. ['The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) seeks to advance open XML-based file specifications for office applications. If OASIS succeeds, Microsoft will face greater competition.'] "Although the outcome of the OASIS initiative may be interesting and useful, it will be incomplete, because Microsoft is not a participant. Microsoft has a virtual monopoly in the office application market. The OASIS committee's aim is to establish standards for data interoperability among applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, charts and graphs, while retaining high-level information for editing. If it achieves this aim, content (regardless of form) will be created in any application, opened from within any other application and edited as needed. The eventual goal is to enable interchange among any type of application, including databases, search engines and Web services. Vendors are backing the initiative because they have a vested interest in loosening Microsoft's stranglehold on the market -- particularly in the face of Microsoft's XML-based Office 11, which is scheduled to be launched in mid-2003. Microsoft's absence also may be due to OASIS's intellectual property policy for participation (royalty-free, and reasonable and nondiscriminatory licensing), which may make Microsoft reluctant to participate when it is about to release its XML-aware product suite. The involvement of Boeing is significant because it provides user endorsement and strong user input to the committee's work. Gartner will closely monitor progress on this standard's activity..."

[November 26, 2002] "Sun Plans Developer Tools Against Microsoft's Office." By Gavin Clarke. In Computer Business Review Online (November 26, 2002). "Santa Clara, California-based Sun told ComputerWire it is working on developer tools that simplify construction of both enhancements to StarOffice and entirely new applications for the suite. Sun said it is also looking at tools that can convert Office macros written in Visual Basic (VB) into StarOffice macros that use Java APIs. Macros offer functionality for specific actions or are tailored to customers in vertical sectors, and tools that automate conversion could simplify migration from Office to StarOffice... Vice president of engineering for desktop solutions Curtis Sasaki told ComputerWire Sun has 'a couple of years' to seize the initiative and build a community of users and developers around StarOffice. 'The window is open now... a lot of governments and enterprises are looking for something else, that lets them take back control of their destiny,' he said. Sun last week took steps to help persuade customers to adopt StarOffice, by addressing potential fears that formatting of data held in existing Office documents would be lost when exporting data to Office. Sun submitted a set of XML-based file formats used in StarOffice 6.0 to the Organization of the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for ratification as standards. Sun is backed by desktop software vendor Ottawa, Ontario-based Corel Corp among others but Microsoft -- invited to joint the effort -- is thought unlikely to participate. Sun will use the tool kit to play on customers' ongoing concerns over the security of Office and associated products like Internet Explorer and Outlook. VB macros converted to StarOffice will be more secure, Sasaki claimed, because of Java's sand box approach, which he said would help cut-down on spread of viruses. He added, though, 'the hard part' faced by Sun is trying to convert macros from VB into Java APIs. As such, no date is set for the developer kit's launch, but a next version of StarOffice is due in October 2003. The next StarOffice will also be promoted as a 'slim' alternative to Microsoft's up-coming Office 11, which will be packed with a host of new features. Organizations will be able to turn-off a greater number of StarOffice features, tailoring the suite to needs of specific groups of users within an organizaiton, such as call center staff..."

[November 21, 2002] "Sun Presents XML Office Challenge." By [ComputerWire Staff]. In The Register (November 21, 2002). "Sun Microsystems Corp has floated a series of XML-based specifications designed to crack-open Microsoft Corp's Office monopoly and improve interoperability with StarOffice. Sun has lined-up partners to form a technical committee at the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) that will drive the proposed formats. Joining Sun are Corel Corp, XML publishing specialist Arbortext Inc, standards specialist Drake Certivo Inc and aircraft giant Boeing Corp among others... Sun said the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee's work would enable exchange of data in XML-based formats while retaining a 'high-level' of formatting between text, spreadsheets, charts and graphs... [Microsoft] Office's market share could come under pressure as customers, who are unhappy with Microsoft's latest licensing program, switch to low-cost offerings from rivals such as Sun and Corel. Microsoft, an OASIS member, said it sees 'no benefits' to joining as its customers will have 'great' XML support in its planned Office 11 product. Microsoft said the company supports XML Schema Datatypes (XSD) 1.0, and anything that the technical committee develops will work with Office 11. That version of the suite will use XSD 1.0. However, Joerg Heilig, Sun director of software engineering, said Sun's proposed formats do not use XSD 1.0. Heilig said they use 'standard' XML and existing standards such as Mathematical Mark-up Language (MathML) and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)..."

[November 21, 2002] "OASIS Calls for OpenOffice XML Specification." By Margaret Kane. In ZDNet News.com (November 21, 2002). ['An array of companies working on Web services specifications is calling for a new open-source standard to handle desktop application documents.'] "... The working group is trying to develop a standard data format for the creation of content such as text, spreadsheets and charts. The goal is to develop an interface between the office software and other applications using XML (Extensible Markup Language). 'Our goal is to achieve consensus on an open standard that will protect content -- whether it is an 800-page airplane specification or a legal contract -- from being locked into a proprietary file format,' Michael Brauer, a Sun employee and chair of the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee, said in a statement. Microsoft, which controls more than 90 percent of the desktop application software market through its Office products, has decided to take a 'wait and see' approach with the working group, said Simon Marks, product manager for Office. Microsoft is an OASIS member, and can join the working group at a future date, he said. 'If this turns out to be something that we feel (is necessary) for customers we can join, but currently we'll just wait and see,' he said..."

[November 20, 2002] "OASIS Aims to Create Office Document Standard." By Matt Berger. In InfoWorld (November 20, 2002). "A standards body known for creating key technologies around XML (Extensible Markup Language) said Wednesday that it has launched an effort to develop a standard file format that would allow office documents such as spreadsheets and word processing files to be opened by applications from different vendors... One of the goals of the group, called the Open Office XML Format Technical Committee, is to free corporate data from proprietary file formats so they can be accessed for years to come no matter what office software a company is using. Proponents contend that companies are currently saving data in proprietary file formats, such as those written in Microsoft's Word software, and locking themselves into using that software indefinitely. 'This solves a number of problems for enterprises,' said Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist at Sun Microsystems, which is an initial member of the technical committee. 'It means that their data becomes machine readable without having to commit to a single vendor.' Corel Corp., which makes the word processing software Word Perfect, is also an initial member of the technical committee, and said it could benefit from such a standard. Other members include content management software maker Arbortext Inc. and The Boeing Co. Boeing has a stake in office document standards as it is bound by government regulations to create and archive an immense amount of data such as manuals. OpenOffice.org, the open source project that developed the office suite of the same name, has contributed its published list of XML-based office file formats to the group, with hopes that it will help provide the foundation for a standard. OpenOffice.org's software is sold by Sun as StarOffice... Creating an open office file format suggests that documents created in an application that supports that file format could be opened in other applications that support it as well. A document written using Corel Corp.'s Word Perfect, for example, could be opened in StarOffice without affecting the layout or formatting... Microsoft, which dominates the office software market with its Office suite, is a member of OASIS. Microsoft is aware of the technical committee but will not initially take part, a spokesman from a Microsoft outside public relations firm said in an e-mail message Wednesday. The company has announced recently that the next version of its Office suite, Office 11, will be heavily reliant on XML..."

[November 20, 2002] "OASIS at Work on Standard for Office Apps." By Peter Galli. In eWEEK (November 20, 2002). "The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, or OASIS, has established a working group to create a standard data format for office applications that will improve data interoperability across those applications. OASIS, a not-for-profit consortium that drives the development and adoption of e-business standards, will announce on Wednesday the formation of the working group, known as the OASIS Open Office XML-Format Technical Committee. Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Michael Brauer will chair the committee, which includes representatives from Boeing, Corel Corp., Drake Certivo and Arbortext. Not on the initial list of initial technical committee members, however, is Microsoft Corp., although it is an OASIS member. Microsoft Office and Microsoft's other desktop office productivity applications account for more than 90 percent of that market. Simon Marks, a Microsoft office product manager, told eWEEK that the Redmond, Wash., company is not going to participate in the committee at this time... The technical committee will initially focus on standardizing data for content creation and then go on to simplifying data exchange between any XML application and office productivity applications. That will include business process automation, Web services, databases, search engines and other applications. Sun is also going to donate the XML file format specification utilized in the OpenOffice.org 1.0 project to the new OASIS technical committee as an input. 'The way these standards committees work is they take an initial input, which is then evolved. This file format is a suitable starting point as it's pure XML and fully specified by an open-source group,' Phipps said. An increasing number of companies are using proprietary formats and can only use a single-vendor platform for data. Accessing this often also uses brittle macro-languages built into the Web processing or Office tools themselves. 'They wanted a guarantee that their data would still be readable at an indefinite time in the future. So, with those three objectives in mind, the technical committee's intent is to create a standard data format that uses XML and which is fully specified so there are no surprises about what does what in the format,' Phipps said... While participation in the technical committee remains open to all organizations and individuals, OASIS said contributions will only be accepted if they are granted under perpetual, royalty-free, non-discriminatory terms. OASIS will also host an open mail-list for public comment, and completed work will be freely available to the public without licensing or other fees, the organization said..."

[November 14, 2002] "Web Services Development: Jean Paoli on XML in Office 11." By Jon Udell. In InfoWorld (November 14, 2002). ['Next week's issue of InfoWorld includes an article on the new XML capabilities of Office 11. While researching the story, I interviewed the architect of XML in Office 11, Microsoft's Jean Paoli, one of the primary co-creators of XML. Here are some of his remarks == excerpts from Paoli'] "... The goal is to unleash the Excel functionality on generic schema, on customer-defined schema. Who knows how to create a data model better than the financial or health care company who uses the data? Until now, it was very difficult to find a tool which lets you pour the data belonging to any arbitrary schema, and then, for example, chart that data... All our tools are XML editors now: Word, Excel, XDocs. But we shouldn't think about XML editors, we should think about the task at hand. If I want to create documents with a lot of text, that's Word. With XDocs, the task is to gather information in structured form. And with Excel, it's to analyze information. We have this great toolbox which enables you to analyze data. We can do pie charts, pivot tables, I don't know how many years of development of functionality for analyzing data. So we said, now we are going to feed Excel all the XML files that you can find in nature... To create the schema for your spreadsheet, first look at the information which is captured in that spreadsheet. Give names to the data. The data is about the user's name and e-mail address, for example. I don't want to call it cell 1, cell 2, or F1 or F11. The whole thing about XML is to give names to things which are in general not named... The goal is to unleash the Excel functionality on generic schema, on customer-defined schema. Who knows how to create a data model better than the financial or health care company who uses the data? Until now, it was very difficult to find a tool which lets you pour the data belonging to any arbitrary schema, and then, for example, chart that data..." Udell says: "Modeling XML data using DTD (Document Type Description) or, more recently, XML Schema, has been a fairly arcane discipline. Practitioners have included publishers seeking to repurpose content and Web services developers writing WSDL files for which XML Schema serves as the type definition language. But enterprise data managers have not, in general, seen much reason to model lots of data using XML Schema. With Office 11, Microsoft aims to rewrite the rules in a dramatic way. If every enterprise desktop can consume, process, and emit schema-valid XML data, the modeling of that data becomes a huge strategic opportunity. And the people who can do that modeling effectively become very valuable..." See "Microsoft 'XDocs' Office Product Supports Custom-Defined XML Schemas"; general references in "XML Schemas."

[October 24, 2002] "Microsoft Promises Arbitrary XML in Office 11." By [Seybold Staff.] In The Bulletin: Seybold News and Views On Electronic Publishing Volume 8, Number 4 (October 23, 2002). "Microsoft has begun delivering advance test copies of the next version of Microsoft Office, code-named Office 11, and revealed that it includes XML-enabled versions of Microsoft Word and Excel. We expect the new version, which is due out in mid-2003, to have a profound impact on the authoring-technology aspects of the publishing community... The XML support is built into the base product, with color-coded tag markup and a pane for viewing the structure of the XML element tree. Users can turn tags on or off, and can trim the list of available elements to only those that are valid... Office 11 is separate from Xdocs, Microsoft's forthcoming XML-based forms application. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the company has not decided whether Xdocs will be included as part of Office 11 or sold as a separate product, like Visio or MapPoint... for most of the professional publishing community, Office 11 will be a must-evaluate product in 2003. Ever since the demise of SGML Author (Microsoft's SGML add-in that fizzled in the mid-1990s), the publishing community has wished for native SGML, and subsequently XML, support within Word. Although other new collaborative features of Office 11 look compelling, native XML support is the one feature that, by itself, could make the upgrade worthwhile..." See: (1) the announcement: "Microsoft Releases First Beta of 'Office 11'. Next Version of Office to Connect People, Information and Business Processes."; (2) general references in "Microsoft 'XDocs' Office Product Supports Custom-Defined XML Schemas."

[October 24, 2002] "MS Office XML." By Tim Bray. Posting to XML-DEV. October 24, 2002. "I got an extended (hours-long) demo of ['Office 11'] Word & Excel & XDocs from JeanPa [Jean Paoli] and a product manager whose name I don't have handy, two or three months ago, so things may have changed but here's what I saw: Both Word and this new XDocs thing can edit arbitrary XML docs per the constraints of any old XSD schema. No DTD supprt. There are some of the usual XML editor goodies such as suggesting what elements can go here and picking attributes. They have pretty cool facilities for GUIfied schema customization. Neither of them can help much with mixed content, which has always separated the men from the boys in the *ML editing sweepstakes. I'm not sure that either of them are really being positioned as general-purpose XML content creation facilities up against Arbortext, Altova, and Corel. I'm not sure that market is big enough to interest MS anyhow. XDocs is (strictly my opinion) an attempt to build a desktop application constructor at a level that is a bit more declarative and open than VB, but richer and more interactive than a Web browser. I'm not really convinced yet - I think MS would agree there's still quite a bit of product management to do - but it does seem to be a pretty clever piece of software. I'm pretty sure it's safe to interpret the advent of XDocs as MSFT's declaration that they're not going to do anything with XForms. What actually turns my crank is that you can save word docs as XML and they have their own 'WordML' tag set that gets generated. I took a close look at this and it's pretty interesting. Very verbose - every word on the page gets its own markup. Suppose you have the word 'foo' in bold with single-underline, the WordML looks something like [...] When you get something like a Word table or floating text box the markup gets really severely dense and ugly, but I didn't see anything that seemed egregiously wrong, it's not pretending to do anything more than capture all the semantics that Word carries around inside, which are correspondingly severely dense and ugly. And HTML tables get pretty hideous too. Why did I like this? I didn't see anything that I couldn't pick apart straightforwardly with Perl, and if someone asked me to write a script to pull all the paragraphs out of a Word doc that contain the word 'foo' in bold, well you could do that. Which seems pretty important to me. The idea is that you can have a Word document with all that formatting and then you can mix that up pretty freely with your own schema stuff, and have validation, then you can save it as Word (your markup plus Word's) or as pure XML (discards Word's markup, leaving just yours). The old Corel WPerfect SGML editor used to be able to do this too. WordML and VML (for graphics) and your own schemas all get namespaces and they seem to use them sensibly. JeanPa even talked to me about using real HTTP URIs pointing at schemas.microsoft.com and having RDDL or equivalent there. This gave me an opportunity for sarcastic remarks about 'Imagine that, a URL on microsoft.com that stays stable for more than a week...' ... Anyhow, if they really do something like what they showed me, I'd call it a positive step..." See the Microsoft announcement and "Microsoft 'XDocs' Office Product Supports Custom-Defined XML Schemas."

[October 24, 2002] "Co-Inventor of XML Says Office 11 is 'A Huge Step Forward for Microsoft'." By Tim Bray and XML-J Industry Newsletter. In XML Journal (October 24, 2002). ['Now that the newly XML-enabled version of Microsoft Office, code-named "Office 11," is in its first official beta release, XML-J Industry Newsletter went straight to Tim Bray, co-inventor of eXtensible Markup Language, and asked for his exclusive views on this improvement... Bray did receive extended hands-on demos of the alpha and beta software, he says, which gave him the opportunity to test-drive and evaluate the suite.'] "When asked how XML-enabling will make a difference in MS Office, Bray quickly zeroes in on what in his view is the key differentiator in an XML-enabled Office suite vs the current one. 'The important thing,' he explains, 'is that Word and Excel (and of course the new XDocs thing) can export their data as XML without information loss. It seems Word can also edit arbitrary XML languages under the control of an XML Schema, but I'm actually more excited by the notion of Word files also being XML files.' So it's a breakthrough? Bray has no doubts whatsoever: 'The XML-enabling of Office was obviously a major investment and is a major achievement,' he declares, without hesitation. 'Built around an open, internationalized file format,' he continues, warming to his theme, 'Office 11 is going to be a huge step forward for management, independent software developers, and Microsoft'..." See also the announcement: "Microsoft Releases First Beta of 'Office 11'. Next Version of Office to Connect People, Information and Business Processes."

[October 22, 2002] "XML-Packed Office 11 Goes Into Beta." By Matt Berger. From ITworld.com (October 22, 2002). "The next version of Microsoft Corp. Office, intended as a more corporate-focused version of its productivity application suite, has been delivered to a few thousand early beta testers, the company said Tuesday. Code-named Office 11, the software is being designed to include wide support for the industry standard data format XML (Extensible Markup Language), said David Jaffe, lead product manager for Office. For one, users will be able to save Word or Excel files in XML, which will allow the data inside those files to be shared with any other software that also supports the standard file format. Word and Excel also will be able to retrieve XML data from any number of sources, including the Web and a company's internal data resources, Jaffe said. One new feature being added to Office 11 that makes use of XML is called Smart Documents. It is a programmable task pane that can be customized to display information that is stored on the Web or on a company's internal network. Similar to the Smart Tags feature included in Office XP, Smart Documents is context sensitive, in that it will display data that is relevant to specific information inside a document... The move toward XML is part of a broader effort at Microsoft, embodied in its .Net initiative, to allow customers to access data, services and applications from disparate computer systems on a variety of computing devices. Microsoft recently detailed a new application that will join the Office family called XDocs, which relies solely on the XML file format. That software is being designed for corporate users to build forms that collect and distribute data in XML. For example, it could act as a user-facing interface for inputting data into a customer relationship management database or other back-end computer systems..." See further: (1) the announcement: "Microsoft Releases First Beta of 'Office 11'. Next Version of Office to Connect People, Information and Business Processes."; (2) "Microsoft 'XDocs' Office Product Supports Custom-Defined XML Schemas."

[October 17, 2002] "Weekly Review: Microsoft Faces Web Services Threat." By Phil Wainewright. In ASPnews.com (October 14, 2002). ['In securing its position within the enterprise, Microsoft has all but surrendered the one territory that really matters -- the hosted server.'] "XDocs is being billed as a forms-creation tool, but a more accurate description would be to call it an application development tool for information workers. What XDocs does is much more revolutionary than merely creating electronic versions of paper-based forms to be filled in on-screen. The important technology of XDocs isn't on the screen, it's what happens behind it. Building a form in XDocs automatically creates an XML-based query and database structure. Users can build forms that read in data from remote databases, or which collect data that can be saved to a database or passed on to other forms and applications for further processing. When I saw XDocs, I immediately thought of two other technologies that have impressed me recently. One is Macromedia's MX architecture, which makes it easy for developers to create user-friendly complex forms that connect to remote data sources. The other is the connectable modules developed by U.K.-based ASP Xara Online, which allows nontechnical users to construct complex forms, reports and applications using a completely visual interface. But while MX has the back-end connectivity and Xara has the ease-of-use, neither has the promised end-to-end elegance of XDocs, which of course will come conveniently packaged in the familiar Office user interface. Jupiter is notable for unifying the backend servers into which the Office 11 suite of applications -- XDocs included -- will link. Microsoft is very astute in bringing together three separate products to form this single platform. Whereas previously the activities of e-commerce, content management and B2B integration were treated as separate technology propositions, Web services architectures allow all these components to become part of a single business automation infrastructure, co-ordinated by emerging business process technologies such as the joint Microsoft-IBM specification BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services)..." XDocs references: see the news item of 2002-10-09, "Microsoft 'XDocs' Office Product Supports Custom-Defined XML Schemas."

[October 09, 2002] "ITxpo: Ballmer Unveils Plans For New Office App." By Ed Scannell. In InfoWorld (October 09, 2002). "During his keynote address on Wednesday at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo conference here, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled plans for developing a new desktop application, code-named XDocs, that promises to streamline the cumbersome process of gathering and distributing data from multiple sources. Scheduled for delivery in mid-2003 and expected to be a member of the Office family, XDocs can be integrated with a large number of business processes because it can support user-defined XML schemas that can be integrated with XML Web services. By so doing, Microsoft hopes to provide users with another way to reuse corporate data and improve information flow. 'The big breakthrough for Office lies in XML,' Ballmer said, adding that XML enables a slew of new features and capabilities, such as collaboration, better management, the ability for users to find the information that they want, and new Office application categories. With users stockpiling enormous amounts of new data that is strung out over a number of islands from desktops to large back-end servers and several places in between, it is getting more difficult for users to even locate -- never mind more effectively use -- that data competitively, Microsoft officials contend..." See references in the news item "Microsoft 'XDocs' Office Product Supports Custom-Defined XML Schemas."

[October 09, 2002] "Microsoft Adds XDocs to Office Family." By Peter Galli and Mary Jo Foley. In eWEEK (October 09, 2002). "Microsoft officials are promoting XDocs as a smart client like Office. 'Think of it as a hybrid information gathering tool for organizations that blends the benefits and richness of a traditional word processing program with the data capturing ability and rigor of a forms package into the XDocs templates,' Scott Bishop, an Office product manager, told eWEEK. There are two components to XDocs: the designer, which allows users to create templates and schemas; and the editor, which allows information to be inputted and viewed. The idea is to provide users with a set of 25 templates based on industry-standard XML. That will enable developers, third parties, corporate IT programmers and technical users to create additional templates, based on the XML schema they define, specific to their business or industry. Information will then be entered onto these templates. 'That allows customers to decide, through their own schema, what that data should look like. And because it's XML, we can then parse that data out of the document and send it to any XML-enabled back-end system from where it can also then be retrieved. It thus complements customers' existing infrastructures,' Bishop said. However, he declined to say how XDocs would fit with the existing suite of Office products or the next-version Office 11. He also would not confirm whether it will debut as a stand-alone product, as part of the Office suite or simply as a technological component of Office 11... The XDocs team is headed up by Peter Pathe, a corporate vice president who reports directly to Raikes, who is spearheading Microsoft's 'Structured Document Services' work. Microsoft has declined to comment on exactly what the Structured Document Services is. But according to the Microsoft corporate Web site, the SDS team 'is responsible for developing new products for knowledge workers that build on the foundations of the industry standard Extensible Markup Language (XML)'..." See references in the news item "Microsoft 'XDocs' Office Product Supports Custom-Defined XML Schemas."

"Office Productivity Suite Competitive Analysis." By Martijn W.H. Dekkers. January 2002. 23 pages. "A 'competitive analysis' that discusses this and other issues related to data formats last year, for those interested (it has helped many people to kick off OOo pilot projects in their businesses)..." Available from OOoDocs Project. "This document discusses the different major Office Automation suites available today. It delivers a methodology for selection of one of those suites, using a generic set of architectural selection criteria that are applicable to almost any business environment. These selection criteria have been drafted from a customer/consumer perspective, as opposed to a software vendors perspective, and will at all times protect the customer's best businiess interests..."