I got a demonstraton of Office 11 (Word and XDocs) last week at XML 2002
in Baltimore. I have to admit I was impressed with what I saw. I have
developed XML authoring applications in XMetal, Arbortext Epic,
WordPerfect and Frame.
I was skeptical about Office 11. I have a beta copy of Office 11 and
hopefully can relay my experience first hand. These are my reactions
from the demonstrations that I was given:
1. User defined schemas can be used natively within XDocs. I am
disappointed that they don't support DTDs and RelaxNG but it
is a big step forward that user-defined schemas can be used.
2. XSLT is used for style within Word 11. You have two options
for saving the XML.
a. Save as Word XML. This saves the user-defined XML with
Word Stylesheet information. I think it would be better
if they separated the style from the XML using XSL-FO.
WordPerfect does this nicely (with a proprietary stylesheet)
and the XML is 'pure'.
b. Save as generic XML. This decouples the style and the XML
document and is the way you want to transport the document.
I got impression that once you exported the XML file you
couldn't get the style information back, even with XSLT.
This doesn't sound right to me but I asked the question
twice.
3. It is possible to create invalid XML - this is the biggest
problem that I can see. A user can put text anywhere, even
outside a tag.
4. It looked like there was some 'heavy-duty' application
development required to make the user-defined XML really
usable by an end-user. This is good news for XML consultants
but bad news for the XML population at large.
5. XDocs was pretty cool. It looked easy to use. They demonstrated
XDocs with a BizTalk back-end. It was really impressive for
application development.
For XML authoring, I would still prefer a native XML editor because it
is easier for the end-user. However, for organizations that have
Microsoft upgrade licensing agreements it will be a hard sell.
I am hoping over the holidays to install Office 11 (on a computer I
am not worried about it interfering with real work) and looking more
closely at it.
Hope this helps.
Betty
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Betty Harvey | Phone: 410-787-9200 FAX: 9830
Electronic Commerce Connection, Inc. |
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Washington,DC SGML/XML Users Grp
URL: http://www.eccnet.com | http://www.eccnet.com/xmlug/
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On Fri, 20 Dec 2002, Jon Eaves wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> There was a discussion a few months back about XML, it's openness
> and the new Office 11.
>
> I was maintaining that XML is just a delivery mechanism and the
> openness comes in the documentation of the schema. It appears
> that the news services have now noticed that as well.
>
> I'll say it again. Just because product 'Z' uses XML that does
> not make it open, interoperable or even a smart thing to do.
>
> XML is being used as a buzz-word for vendors to push products
> to unsuspecting customers. XML is _not_ the answer to all
> questions.
>
> Here's an interesting article on the not-so-open-Office 11.
>
> http://news.com.com/2100-1001-977880.html?tag=lh
>
> Cheers,
> -- jon
>
>
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