It's a watershed moment for Office programmability: We have officially announced that the next version of Office will have a new open XML file format. A lot remains to be said, but I am going to stick closely to the the press release info (I have this aversion to disclosing confidential details, even by accident). We'll be doing a lot more disclosing at Tech Ed in Orlando next week. YEAH!
Read the press release, and pay particular attention to these statements by Sinofsky:
"The Microsoft Office XML Open Format introduces significantly enhanced XML formats for Microsoft Word and Excel, and the first XML format for Microsoft PowerPoint. The formats use consistent, application-specific XML markup and are completely based on XML and use industry-standard ZIP-compression technology.
The new formats improve file and data management, data recovery, and interoperability with line-of-business systems beyond what's possible with Office 2003 binary files. And any program that supports XML -- it doesn't have to be part of Office or even from Microsoft -- can access and work with data in the new file format. Because the information is stored in XML, customers can use standard transformations to extract or repurpose the file data."
This means a whole new world of XML-based development for Office productivity applications. Stay tuned as more info trickles out. As we proceed, I'll be talking about scenarios, architectures, and eventually I'll be putting up some examples. All in due time!
Rock Thought for the Day: Last Friday, I bought the new Billy Corgan solo project tune: Mina Loy (m.o.h) from iTunes (the only place it is available right now). I will be pre-ordering the CD.
Rock On
