Mass. Shifts Plan for Open XML Format
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The state of Massachusetts is reversing course with a proposal to allow state agencies to use software based on Microsofts Open XML format.
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Making good on an earlier promise, Novell has posted an Open XML translator for the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, adding Microsoft Office 2007 file format capability to the open-source application bundle.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft is enlisting Linux distributor TurboLinux to help tailor work being done to translate documents between Open XML and ODF file formats for Japanese and Chinese users.
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Maarten Balliauw points out a new blog post he's made today showing how to take the methods described in this article on the MSDN and convert it to a more PHP way of thinking, parsing the OpenXML info of the patients.    The scenario for the article is quite simple: Contoso provides a central medical records database. Whenever a physician has to register a new patient, he downloads a Word 2007 document from the Contoso server, fills it out, and uploads it back. Contoso then strips out the necessary data and saves it back in their systems.   This Word 2007 document is crafted around embedded custom XML data, which is displayed and edited using Word 2007. In short: to do the above exercise, you just need to strip out the custom XML and you're done.    Don't worry, Maarten includes his code and a demo to show the functionality in action. Check out the original article for more information as well.
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The U.S. government's weather data is now available in a more friendly XML format, so everyone can make use of it. By Daniel Terdiman.
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Maker of the WordPerfect word processor and productivity suite will support Microsoft's Office Open XML, OpenDocument format.
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(InfoWorld) - Standards body Ecma International has formed a technical committee to develop a standard built on Microsoft's XML Paper Specification (XPS), a rival file format to Adobe Systems' Portable Document Format (PDF). According to Ecma's Web site, the goal of the TC46 - XPS Technical Committee is to create "a formal standard for an XML-based electronic paper format and XML-based page description language which is consistent with existing implementations of the format called the XML Paper Specification." XPS is one of many file formats natively supported in Microsoft's Office 2007 productivity suite and was developed internally by the company. Currently, Microsoft has the only implementation of XPS. Microsoft had planned to include PDF -- used widely as a de facto document standard for years but only submitted to a standards body earlier this year by Adobe -- as a native file format as well, but Adobe put the kibosh on that plan. Microsoft does offer PDF as an add-on file format for Office. Microsoft has been criticized by rivals for how it has handled submissions to standards bodies, though the company has instituted a formal interoperability effort across all its product groups in the last 18 months in what is says is an effort to be more effort. Open XML, another Office 2007 file format for documents, already has won Ecma approval and will be put before the ISO toward the end of the year for a final vote as an international technology standard. But critics -- mainly those who support Open Document Format for XML (ODF) as the standard format rather than Open XML -- have complained that Microsoft is too controlling when it comes to ensuring the technology it submits to Ecma as a "standard" looks the way Microsoft wants it to at the end of the approval process. And since the company didn't allow third parties to create implementations of Open XML before it was submitted to Ecma, critics say Microsoft has misused the standards process, which is meant to be more open. Naysayers and rivals are using the creation of TC46 to discourage approval of Open XML -- now known as Ecma 376 in the standards approval process -- as an ISO standard. "If [Open XML], and now Microsoft XML Paper Specification, each sail through Ecma, and are then adopted by ISO/IEC JTC1, then I think that we might as well declare 'game over' for open standards," said Andrew Updegrove, an intellectual property attorney and outspoken open-standards and ODF advocate on his blog. "It's time for the national bodies to draw a line in the sand and reject Ecma 376 -- before it's too late." IBM's vice president of open source and standards Bob Sutor, also a vocal proponent of ODF -- particularly since his company supports it as a default file format in software products -- also criticized Ecma and Microsoft on his blog. He said Ecma will create a "standard" of XPS that goes along with Microsoft's wishes for the technology rather than letting an impartial group develop the standard. "The standard must be compatible with Microsoftâs implementation, which is the only implementation," Sutor said. "How open. How independent. How collaborative." Neither Microsoft nor Adobe could be reached for comment Friday.
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Sleepycat Software this week announced the general availability of Berkeley DB XML 2.0, a major upgrade to its open source database for telecommunication infrastructure and enterprise data centers. This release adds support for XQuery 1.0, an emerging standard for XML data access, as well as improvements in performance and usability. Other enhancements include support for XPath 2.0, which allows the selection of a portion of an XML document, and support for the PHP API, which enables developers using the PHP scripting languages to work with XML documents.  ADVERTISEMENTSolaris 10(TM) OS: Position your business ten moves ahead.Solaris 10 OS has arrived and provides even more reasons for the world's most demanding businesses to operate on this, the leading UNIX platform. Like the fact you can run Linux and Solaris applications side-by-side and run the same OS on SPARC(R), AMD Opteron(TM), and Intel processor-based systems. Discover more reasons and how Solaris 10 OS can move your business ahead today.
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Following through on the company's groundbreaking deal with Microsoft made one month ago, Novell has announced that its version of the OpenOffice.org software suite will support Microsoft's Office Open XML format.
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Separate from Microsoft's efforts to create a translator that supports Office 2007's Open XML formats and OpenDocument, Sun has released the final 1.0 version of its own ODF plug-in for Office. However, Office 2007 is not yet supported due to what Sun calls a bug in Microsoft's newest suite.
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A translation tool released by Microsoft will make it easier for users to move and share text files in open formats.
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The votes are in, and Microsoft's Office OpenXML document format fails to achieve international standard status with the ISO. Microsoft's OOXML -- the native office-doc format for Office 2007 -- needed a two-thirds majority approval among the national bodies eligible to vote on the standard. Ballots came in at 53 percent yes, far short of the 67 percent required.
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BREAKING NEWS - Early this morning, Microsoft reported it had been notified that its Office Open XML format received a 74% positive vote in a preliminary ballot that could pave the way for its final ratification as an international standard.
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OpenLink Software are pleased to announce release 2.1 of the OpenLink AJAX Toolkit (OAT).    This release introduces the following new features:     * Enhanced RDF Parser (includes support for RDF/XML and RDF/N3)    * New Faceted RDF Data Browser    * RDF Graph Visualization Control with sidebar for Graph Density manipulation    * New RSS Reader Control    * Visual SPARQL Query Builder added to + Form Designer's Data Source control    * OpenAjaxAlliance conformance    * Inter-control messaging system    * Enhanced Tree and Dock Controls    * Enhanced Anchor tag that facilitates lookups to SQL, XML, and RDF Data Sources via In Page Activation of Data Driven Web Pages    * Updated Animation API  For further information, please see:   Project homepage on sourceforge.net: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oat   File downloads: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oat/files   Live Features Demonstrations: http://demo.openlinksw.com/DAV/JS/demo/index.html
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Microsoft said on Friday that it has added Office binary formats to a list of technologies that are protected against patent-violation claims, answering criticism from some involved in the OOXML (Office Open XML) file-format standards process.The OOXML format is being considered as an international standard by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization), but translation between the original Office binaries and OOXML is necessary for there to be seamless document exchange between older versions of Office and Office 2007. Corporate developers and makers of other office productivity products need access to the formats in order to write converters between Microsoft&#39;s format and the possible standard.Microsoft has listed binary file format specifications for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -- that is, .doc, .xls and .ppt -- under the OSP (Open Specification Promise). These file formats are the defaults in pre-Office 2007 versions of Office; Office 2007 was the first version to use OOXML as its default file format.Microsoft published the OSP in September 2006 as a promise that it would not take any patent-enforcement action against people who want access to the specs for technologies it has developed. Since then, Microsoft has been periodically adding to the list of OSP-protected specs, which can be found on the company&#39;s Web site. In a press statement, Microsoft said that adding the Office binaries to the list is to &quot;promote interoperability between the binaries and Open XML and make Office Open XML accessible to an ever-wider group of users and developers.&quot;The move came out of discussion in the ISO around OOXML as national standards bodies requested more open access to the Office binaries, said Brian Jones, an Office program manager, in a posting on a company blog last month.According to Jones, the specs for the binaries already had been available royalty-free via e-mail to anyone who requested them as outlined in an article in Microsoft&#39;s Knowledge Base. But since the national bodies were concerned with the steps someone had to take to get access to the binary formats, Microsoft -- working with an Ecma International technical committee, Ecma TC45 -- decided to make it easier for people to get them, he said.Microsoft has been working to fast-track OOXML through the ISO approval process through Ecma, another international standards body, since November 2005. Ecma approved OOXML in December 2006, but approval by the ISO has been more problematic. A final vote on ISO is expected in March after an ISO ballot resolution meeting for the OOXML format, scheduled for Feb. 25-29.To help companies build connectors between the binaries and OOXML, Microsoft on Friday also went live with an open-source project on SourceForge to create software tools, guidance and show how a document written using the binary formats can be translated to the current ISO spec for OOXML, ISO/IEC DIS 29500. The resulting translators will be available under the open-source Berkeley Software Distribution license, and members of the community are free to use the translators, submit bugs and feedback, or contribute to the project as they wish, Microsoft said.Translators already exist between the Office binary formats and OOXML&#39;s rival file format, ODF (Open Document Format), which already is an approved ISO standard. For example, the Sun ODF Plug-in for Microsoft Office enables conversion between Microsoft Office documents to and from ODF.
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InfoWorld - Sleepycat Software this week announced the general availability of Berkeley DB XML 2.0, a major upgrade to its open source database for telecommunication infrastructure and enterprise data centers. This release adds support for XQuery 1.0, an emerging standard for XML data access, as well as improvements in performance and usability. Other enhancements include support for XPath 2.0, which allows the selection of a portion of an XML document, and support for the PHP API, which enables developers using the PHP scripting languages to work with XML documents.
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The OpenDocument Format (ODF) just keeps on getting stronger.  It is now an official ISO standard; there are numerous applications that support it, with varying degrees of fidelity, including Google's online word processor and spreadsheet;  there's an official Microsoft-funded plug-in for Microsoft Office that allows it to open and save ODF files, and a program that converts between ODF and the Chinese UOF XML office format; and the ODF community has largely sorted out issues of accessibility that threatened to de-rail its adoption by Massachusetts.