Excursus

Rob Weir over at An Antic Disposition has a good discussion of Microsoft’s Office Open XML—its new document format—and the Open Document Format developed by Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards which was based on the XML format originally implemented by OpenOffice.org office suite.

Some of the problems with storing data in proprietary binaries that motivated the development of ODF are familiar to readers of this blog:

• I want to own my data.
• I do not want access to my data controlled by a single commercial entity.
• I do not want to require that people go out and purchase a particular application in order to read my documents.
• I want my documents to be in a format that has long-term stability and understandability
• I want my documents to be in a format that lends itself to processing by a range of tools, both commercial and free.
• I want my documents to be a format that everyone can understand.
• I want to break out of the cycle of having to constantly upgrade my software every time my vendor decides to change formats on me.

Amen, brother, amen.

While I no longer word-process, if I did ODF would be the way to go. Almost every major word-processor now supports this open standard, and many that don’t are planning to implement it.

One of the advantages touted by Microsoft of their new XML standard is its compatibility with legacy binary formats. Rob shrewdly observes the irony of this:

So now, today, Microsoft is pushing their Office Open XML standard, “old wine in new wine skins”, not so much a new format as a new ploy. What should enrage every thoughtful person is that they are using compatibility with the legacy binary formats as the main selling point of the OOXML format. Think about it. Compatibility with the binary format that they withdrew from the public seven years ago when they cemented their monopoly, is now being touted as their unique advantage. Said differently, Microsoft is selling OOXML as the solution to an interoperability problem that they themselves created and carefully orchestrated.

…

So what prevents Microsoft from doing the same thing again?

Indeed.

Check out Rob’s post. And geeks who are writers (or at least, writers who are geeks abut the technology of writing) will enjoy An Antic Disposition’s informative and insightful discussion of document formats.