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Office Open XML
Office Open XML (also referred to as OOXML or OpenXML) is a file format for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. It is a free and open Ecma International standard, and a proposed ISO/IEC standard. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Microsoft originally developed the specification as a successor to its earlier binary and Office 2003 XML file formats. The specification was later handed over to Ecma International to be developed as the Ecma 376 standard, under the stewardship of Ecma International Technical Committee TC45. Ecma 376 was published in December 2006[8] and can be freely downloaded from Ecma International.[9] An amended version of the format, ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Draft International Standard 29500), received the necessary votes for approval as an ISO/IEC Standard as the result of a JTC 1 fast tracking standardization process that concluded in April 2008.[10] However, formal protests were filed in May and June 2008 by the national bodies of South Africa, Brazil, India, and Venezuela meaning that ISO/IEC 29500 will not be published until these appeals are resolved or dismissed.[11]
BackgroundPrior to the 2007 edition, the core applications of the Microsoft Office software suite (primarily Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) by default stored their data in a format known as a binary file. Historically, these formats were difficult for other applications to natively interoperate with due to a lack of publicly available information and royalty-free access to the format specifications. More recently, Microsoft has offered these binary format specifications under a royalty-free covenant not to sue as part of its Open Specification Promise.[12][13] While a level of support for the binary formats had been achieved by various applications, full interoperability remained elusive. In 2000, Microsoft released an initial version of an XML-based format for Excel, which was incorporated in Office XP. In 2002, a new file format for Microsoft Word followed.[14] The Excel and Word formats ? known as the Office 2003 XML formats ? were later incorporated into the 2003 release of Microsoft Office. In May 2004, governments and the European Union recommended to Microsoft that they publish and standardize their XML Office formats through a standardization organization.[15][14] Microsoft announced in November 2005 that it would standardize the new version of their XML-based formats through Ecma, as "Ecma Office Open XML".[16] File format and structure
Office Open XML main components Document markup languagesAn Office Open XML file may contain several documents encoded in specialized markup languages corresponding to applications within the Microsoft Office product line. Office Open XML defines multiple vocabularies using 27 namespaces and 89 schema modules. The primary markup languages are:
Shared markup language materials include:
In addition to the above markup languages custom XML schemas can be used to extend Office Open XML. The XML Schema of Office Open XML emphasizes reducing load time and improving parsing speed. In a test with applications current in April 2007, XML based office documents were slower to load than binary formats.[17] To enhance performance, Office Open XML uses very short element names for common elements and spreadsheets save dates as index numbers (starting from 1899 or from 1904). In order to be systematic and generic, Office Open XML typically uses separate child elements for data and metadata (element names ending in Pr for properties) rather than using multiple attributes, which allows structured properties. Office Open XML does not use mixed content but uses elements to put a series of text runs (element name r) into paragraphs (element name p). The result is terse and highly nested in contrast to HTML, for example, which is fairly flat, designed for humans to write in text editors and is more congenial for humans to read. Office MathML (OMML)Office Math Markup Language is a mathematical markup language which can be embedded in WordprocessingML, with intrinsic support for including word processing markup like revision markings,[18] footnotes, comments, images and elaborate formatting and styles.[19] The OMML format is different from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) MathML recommendation that does not support those office features, but is partially compatible[20] through relatively simple XSL Transformations. The following Office MathML example defines the fraction: \frac{\pi}{2}
<m:oMathPara>
<m:oMath>
<m:f>
<m:num><m:r>
<m:t>?</m:t>
</m:r></m:num>
<m:den><m:r>
<m:t>2</m:t>
</m:r></m:den>
</m:f>
</m:oMath>
</m:oMathPara>
DrawingML
Example of DrawingML charts The DrawingML table is the third table model in Office Open XML (next to the table models in WordprocessingML and SpreadsheetML) and is optimized for graphical effects and its main use is in presentations created with PresentationML markup. DrawingML contains graphics effects (like shadows and reflection) that can be used on the different graphical elements that are used in DrawingML. In DrawingML you can also create 3d effects, for instance to show the different graphical elements through a flexible camera viewpoint. It is possible to create separate DrawingML theme parts in an Office Open XML package. These themes can then be applied to graphical elements throughout the Office Open XML package.[21] DrawingML is unrelated to the other vector graphics formats such as SVG. These can be converted to DrawingML to include natively in an Office Open XML document. This is a different approach to that of the OpenDocument format, which uses a subset of SVG, and includes vector graphics as separate files. Container structure
Container structure of Part 2 of the Ecma Office Open XML standard, Ecma 376 A basic package contains an XML file called [Content_Types].xml at the root, along with three directories: _rels, docProps, and a directory specific for the document type (for example, in a .docx word processing package, there would be a word directory). The word directory contains the document.xml file which is the core content of the document.
RelationshipsRelationship files in Office Open XMLAn example relationship file (word/_rels/document.xml.rels), is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<Relationships
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/package/2005/06/relationships">
<Relationship Id="rId1"
Type="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/relationships/image"
Target="http://en.wikipedia.org/images/wiki-en.png"
TargetMode="External" />
<Relationship Id="rId2"
Type="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/relationships/hyperlink"
Target="http://www.wikipedia.org"
TargetMode="External" />
</Relationships>
As such, images referenced in the document can be found in the relationship file by looking for all relationships that are of type Hyperlink relationsThe following code shows an example of inline markup for a hyperlink: <w:hyperlink r:id="rId2" w:history="1" xmlns:r="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships" xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main"> In this example, the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is represented by "rId2". The actual URL is in the accompanying relationships file, located by the corresponding "rId2" item. Linked images, templates, and other items are referenced in the same way. Embedded or linked media file relationsPictures can be embedded or linked using a tag: <v:imagedata w:rel="rId1" o:title="example" /> This is the reference to the image file. All references are managed via relationships. For example, a document.xml has a relationship to the image. There is a _rels directory in the same directory as document.xml, inside _rels is a file called document.xml.rels. In this file there will be a relationship definition that contains type, ID and location. The ID is the referenced ID used in the XML document. The type will be a reference schema definition for the media type and the location will be an internal location within the ZIP package or an external location defined with a URL. Document propertiesOffice Open XML uses the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and DCMI Metadata Terms to store document properties. Dublin Core is a standard for cross-domain information resource description and is defined in ISO 15836:2003. Core propertiesAn example document properties file (docProps/core.xml) that uses Dublin Core metadata, is: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> <cp:coreProperties xmlns:cp="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/package/2006/metadata/core-properties" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:dcmitype="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <dc:title>Office Open XML</dc:title> <dc:subject>File format and structure</dc:subject> <dc:creator>Wikipedia</dc:creator> <cp:keywords>Office Open XML, Metadata, Dublin Core</cp:keywords> <dc:description>Office Open XML uses ISO 15836:2003</dc:description> <cp:lastModifiedBy>Wikipedia</cp:lastModifiedBy> <cp:revision>1</cp:revision> <dcterms:created xsi:type="dcterms:W3CDTF">2008-06-19T20:00:00Z</dcterms:created> <dcterms:modified xsi:type="dcterms:W3CDTF">2008-06-19T20:42:00Z</dcterms:modified> <cp:category>Document file format</cp:category> <cp:contentStatus>Final</cp:contentStatus> </cp:coreProperties> Structure of the standardTo aid the reader's understanding, the Office Open XML specification contains both normative material and informative material. It is structured in five parts to meet the needs of different audiences.[9]
LicensingReasonable and Non DiscriminatoryEcma International provides specifications that "can be freely copied by all interested parties without restrictions".[23] Under the Ecma code of conduct in patent matters, participating and approving member organisations are required to make available their patent rights on a Reasonable and Non Discriminatory (RAND) basis. While making patent rights available on a RAND basis is considered a common minimum patent condition for a standard, international standardization has a clear preference for royalty-free patent licensing. That is why Microsoft, a main contributor to the standard, provided a Covenant Not to Sue[24] for its patent licensing. The covenant received a mixed reception, with some (like the Groklaw blog) identifying problems[25] and others (such as Lawrence Rosen, an attorney and lecturer at Stanford Law School) endorsing it.[26] Open Specification PromiseMicrosoft also added the format to their Open Specification Promise[27] in which "Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification [?]" subject to certain restrictions. Office Open XML can therefore be used under the Covenant Not to Sue or the Open Specification Promise. The Open Specification Promise was included in documents submitted to ISO in support of the Ecma 376 fast track submission.[28] Ecma International asserted that, "The OSP enables both open source and commercial software to implement [the specification]."[29] In support of the licensing arrangements Microsoft commissioned an analysis from the London legal firm Baker & McKenzie.[30] Several standards and OSS licensing experts expressed support in 2006 of the OSP. A 2006 article in Cover Pages quotes Lawrence Rosen, an attorney and lecturer at Stanford Law School, as saying, "I'm pleased that this OSP is compatible with free and open source licenses."[31]In 2006[32], Mark Webbink; a lawyer and member of the board of the Software Freedom Law Center, and former employee of Linux vendor Red Hat; has said, "Red Hat believes that the text of the OSP gives sufficient flexibility to implement the listed specifications in software licensed under free and open source licenses. We commend Microsoft?s efforts to reach out to representatives from the open source community and solicit their feedback on this text, and Microsoft's willingness to make modifications in response to our comments."[33] Standards lawyer Andy Updegrove said in 2006 the Open Specification Promise was "[?] what I consider to be a highly desirable tool for facilitating the implementation of open standards, in particular where those standards are of interest to the open source community."[34] On March 12, 2008 the Software Freedom Law Center, which provides services to protect and advance free software and open source software, has warned of problems with the Open Specification Promise as it relates to Office Open XML and the GNU General Public License (GPL).[35] In a published analysis of the promise it states that[36]
Legal experts and academics have confirmed that the licensing is similar to the licensing terms officed by IBM, and to a lesser extent Sun and Adobe on their Office formats but warned that ambiguous legal jargon contained in Microsoft's Open Specification Promise, although understood in the terminology of the specialist patent and intellectual property law community, makes it hard for small developers to determine with certainty that Microsoft will not be entitled to sue them for using OOXML. They criticize Microsoft for not explicitly defining which parts of its 6000 page OOXML specification contains intellectual property. The OSP has never been tested in a court of law regarding intellectual property rights, and the OSP does not name which court or jurisdiction a dispute will be heard in. David Vaile, executive director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of New South Wales, acknowledges that the Microsoft approach to its Open Specification Promise is similar although not identical to other approaches used by IBM, and to a lesser extent Adobe and Sun, and that these represent a substantial advance on the past practice of negotiating long case-by-case agreements.[38] StandardizationMicrosoft's Office Open XML is currently an Ecma standard (Ecma-376, approved on 7 December 2006). Ecma 376 was created using as a basis a new version of the Microsoft Office 2003 XML file format, donated by Microsoft, which was being created for Microsoft Office 12. The specification entered fast-track standardization within ISO/IEC as DIS 29500 (Draft International Standard 29500).[39] In a September 2007 vote by ISO/IEC member bodies, the draft text was not approved as an international standard. A ballot resolution process in March 2008 amended the text. On April 2 2008, ISO and IEC officially stated that the DIS 29500 had been approved for acceptance as an ISO/IEC Standard, pending any appeals.[10] In accordance with the JTC 1 directives the Project Editor created a new version with the final text within a month after the BRM, to be published as ISO/IEC 29500. This text has yet to be released in line with JTC 1 procedure (although unofficial copies exist).[40] The current stage of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 is "Full report circulated: DIS approved for registration as FDIS" (Final draft International Standard).[41] Four ISO members filed appeals by the deadline: the bodies of South Africa,[42][43] Brazil, India[44] and Venezuela.[45] The standard will not be published until these appeals are resolved although the work shall be continued, up to and including submission of the final text to the ITTF. The IEC stated: This is the first such appeal after a BRM process in ISO/IEC JTC 1, although appeals occur regularly in other technical committees.[44] Since the appeals system is designed to find a solution by consensus, it is unlikely that the process will result in ISO/IEC abandoning progress of DIS 29500.[45]. The CEOs of ISO and IEC advised the management board that these appeals should no longer be processed any further, saying that the standardization process was correctly done.[46] On May 21st, 2008, Microsoft announced that it will be an active participant in the future evolution of the Open XML standard.[47] Application support
Ecma 376 implementationsThe current Ecma 376 specification of Office Open XML is the default format in Microsoft Office 2007. For older versions of Office (2000, XP and 2003) a compatibility pack is provided.[48] It is available for Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 and newer operating systems. The compatibility pack does not require Microsoft Office, but does require Microsoft Windows. It can be used as a standalone converter with products that read Office's older binary formats, such as OpenOffice.org.[49]
Filters and converters
Other products
Planned and beta software
Pending ISO/IEC 29500 implementationsMicrosoft has stated that Microsoft Office 14 will be the first version of Microsoft Office to support ISO/IEC 29500, though no release date has been announced.[47] No plans for support of ISO/IEC 29500 in Microsoft Office 2007 have been announced.[98] Microsoft, whose products currently only support the Ecma 376 standard version of Office Open XML, has committed to using the ISO/IEC 29500 standard in their products[99] and has also committed to participate in the maintenance of this standard. In a Zdnet article Alex Brown, leader of the ISO/IEC group in charge of deciding maintenance processes for any ISO/IEC 29500 Standard, stated "I am hoping that Microsoft Office will shortly be brought into line with the [ISO/IEC] 29500 specification, and will stay that way".[100] On March 13, 2008 Doug Mahugh, a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft specializing in Office client interoperability and the Open XML file formats confirmed that version 1.0 of the Open XML Formats SDK "will definitely be 100% compliant with the final ISO/IEC 29500 spec, including the changes accepted at the BRM".[101] In a ComputerWorld interview from 2008, Doug Mahugh said that "Microsoft would continue to update the SDK to make sure that applications built with it remained compliant with an Open XML standard as changes were made in the future".[102] Implementations
CriticismThe ODF Alliance UK Action Group says that with OpenDocument there exists already an ISO-standard for Office files and that two competing standards are against the very concept of a standard.[110] Further, they argue that the Office Open XML file-format is heavily based on Microsoft's own Office applications and is thus not vendor-neutral, and that it has inconsistencies with existing ISO standards such as time and date formats and color codes.[110] Specific criticism
See also
ReferencesExternal links
ca:Office Open XML cs:Office Open XML da:Office Open XML de:Office Open XML es:Microsoft Office Open XML eu:OOXML fr:Open XML ko:??? ?? XML is:Office Open XML it:Office Open XML nl:Office Open XML ja:Office Open XML no:Office Open XML pl:Office Open XML ru:Microsoft Office Open XML sv:Office Open XML th:Office Open XML vi:Office Open XML uk:OOXML zh:OOXML Source: Wikipedia | The above article is available under the GNU FDL. | Edit this article
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