On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, der.hans wrote:

> Am 09. Jul, 2002 schwätzte Robert Bushman so:
>
> > I haven't actually seen them, but I'd lay heavy odds
> > Microsoft's XML formats are not open, they are just
> > as hard to interpret as .doc. Many organizations use
> > XML to allow human readability. Microsoft is using
> > it to for interop with other Microsoft products.
>
> Let's check into this. Presumably the government could setup their own
> schema and save using that, right?

My copy of Word 2000 for Win 2000 does not have
Save As >> File Type >> XML, or anything like it.
Help >> Index >> Keyword "XML" does nothing.
The MS Word .doc format is binary from byte zero.

> How well do programs that work under GNU/Linux handle this? The LDP HOWTO
> HOWTO might cover that.
>
> What are the default formats for the various FS/OSS programs? Can they
> read/write each other's native formats? Is there a push to standardize on a
> particular format for specific functionality, e.g. word processor XML
> schema, spreadsheet schema, SQL schema, etc.

OpenOffice uses it's own fully published, XML
based format, which I assume is Free. I don't think
there is even a defacto standard for wp, spreadsheet,
or presentation. There are a variety of defacto
standards for editable vector drawing formats,
which have various levels of support in various
packages (WMF and SVG come to mind, though I don't
know their license terms offhand). PNG and JPEG
are about the only highly usable public document
formats with general acceptance that I can think
of.