ECMA Open XML File Formats and the Evolution of Open File Formats Mark Lange Senior Policy Counsel Microsoft EMEA

The XML Vision XML - Celebrating 10 years ( ) The XML Dream Changing the world of Information, Interoperability Databases, Connectivity, Services, Workflow A New Era for Documents Productivity Suites using Standardized XML formats Business Documents using Custom XML Schemas

Waves of Innovation Time Productivity Typewriter IBM ball-head typewriter Text handling, spreadsheet Graphical user interface Filesharing/collaboration Automation and smart documents Now PC Network/Internet XML, SOA

XML for document management Capability and Interoperability XML structure Data and presentation Document Archival Archived & consumed long into the future without vendor-specific clients or applications Improved Data Access Web service formatting intelligent receipt Customer details, Costs Business requirements Company standards Business Process Efficiency Efficient capture Validated information Searching & RepurposingContent Query & extract Text Document Fragment Image Auto-creating a polished document data Document Assembly formatting

Office Open XML File Formats Start Microsoft Office 2000 – Start of XML work Microsoft Office 2003 MS Office XML formats published on Danish Government site EU (May, 2004) bc/en/document/2592/ bc/en/document/2592/5588 Microsoft should consider the merits of submitting XML formats to an international standards body of their choice EU explicit requests: to put the evolution of the formats in the control of a standards body to build translators to/from ODF Governments asked Microsoft to submit Open XML to ISO Now Dec PEGSCO Report Microsoft has adopted a pure XML format The Open XML (ECMA) specifications are freely available Both the ODF and the OpenXML document format specifications are XML based, promising great opportunities The Open Specification Promise enables any business/licensing model to implement Open XML

Open XML addresses multiple needs Open fully documented and freely available for anyone to use controlled by standards body, not a single company Interoperable, platform independent Interoperable, platform independent Major advance in technology enables new range of applications supports Custom XML Schemas Internationalization, Accessibility features Enables quality migration of older documents Satisfies long-term archive requirements Can co-exist with other standards

ECMA-376 Adoption Multiple implementations – Multiple Platforms Microsoft Office Default Save Format is Open XML (+ free updates for Office 2000, XP, 2003) – Dec 2006/Jan 2007 OpenOffice – Novell supports Open XML in OpenOffice – Novell edition – Feb 2007 Corel – announcement of support of Open XML - Availability mid 2007 Gnumeric – open source Spreadsheet supports OpenXML Sun – working on OpenXML import filter for spreadsheets OpenXMLDeveloper.org (hundred of developers, multiple platforms)

ODF Plug-in Translator for Word finalized on Feb 1, 2007 Open, Save ODF in Word - Office 2007, Office 2003, Office XP Available on SourceForge, Microsoft Download Center and Office Online Over 50,000 downloads – one of the top 25 SourceForge projects Comprehensive EU compliance tests ODF test suite ( /) Translator incorporated by Novell to enable OpenOffice to Open and Save OpenXML documents May beta ODF-OpenXML Translator for Excel & PPT UOF-Open XML translator project – May 2007 DIN Working Group preparing Technical Report detailing ODF- Open XML translation Co-existence of Document Standards

Save as ODF

Goals of ECMA High Fidelity Migration to Open Formats Faithfully represent in XML the pre-existing body of word-processing, presentation and spreadsheet documents 2. 2.Interoperability, Platform independence, Internationalization, Accessibility Extensive review and modifications during the standardization process 3. 3.Enable new range of applications - Integration with business data Support Custom XML Schemas 4. 4.Long-term preservation More secure, clear path for migration, future evolution/maintenance in Ecma & ISO

Thank You!