OpenXML Developer : SpreadsheetML

ECMA-376 and ODF1.1 Implementer notes for Office 2007 SP2 released

jenw — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:23:00 GMT

You may have seen that the implementer notes for Office 2007 SP2 for ECMA-376 and ODF1.1 are now available.

ECMA-376 Implementer Notes for Office 2007 SP2

On the ECMA-376 Implementer Notes Site you will find detailed information about Office’s support for the ECMA-376 specification. These notes will help ECMA-376 implementers interoperate with Office by explaining, among other things, Office’s support for optional features, range restrictions for attribute values, and how Office’s functionality maps to Open XML constructs.

ODF 1.1 Implementer Notes for Office 2007 SP2

On the Open Document Format (ODF) implementer notes site you will find detailed information about Office’s support for each section of the OASIS ODF 1.1 specification. These notes will help promote interoperability by providing details that others can use as reference points for their own applications. For example, they include information about which attributes and elements are supported, as well as details about how Office functionality maps to specific constructs in the ODF specification. For a higher-level overview of Microsoft’s general approach to ODF implementation, see Guiding Principles for Office’s ODF Implementation.

Open XML SDK V2 CTP available

ecullins — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:27:00 GMT

Open XML SDK V2. The first CTP of V2 of the Open XML SDK is now available for download.

This release includes a high-level DOM (document object model) for Open XML development, as well as several tools to streamline Open XML development:

The OpenXmlDiff utility identifies differences in the markup in two Open XML documents.
The Open XML Class Explorer helps you determine which strongly typed class to use for a specific task, and includes the text of the relevant section of the ECMA-376 spec for each class.
The Open XML Document Reflector takes a target document as input, and with a few clicks it shows you the C# code needed to generate that document (or a section of it) with the Open XML SDK.

See Eric White's blog post for more details.

Microsoft announces Open XML SDK roadmap

dmahugh — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:08:00 GMT

Microsoft unveiled today the roadmap for the Open XML SDK that was released last June as a CTP (Community Technology Preview) version. After collecting developer feedback through the CTP release, they've put together a two-phased release plan to get developers a released version of the API quickly (May of this year) and then build on that with additional functionality for a final version in the Office 14 timeframe.

Links to resources for this article:

The Open XML API will be released in two versions. Version 1.0 will include an updated version of the CTP that was released in June 2007, to be released in April 2008 with a final release of Version 1.0 in May 2008. Version 2.0 will be available as a CTP version this summer, and the final release will be part of the Office 14 wave of products and technologies. (Office "14" is the next major release of Microsoft Office.)

Both versions will be free downloads on MSDN, available at the Open XML SDK page. Version 1.0 will include the following functionality:

Strongly typed access to parts within Open XML documents (a few typical examples: classes for the main body part or style part of a word-processing document, the workbook and worksheet parts in a spreadsheet document, or the presentation and slide parts in a presentation document)
Simple access to the parts within an Open XML document, relative to other existing APIs (example: one line of code to retrieve or replace a part)
“Linq-friendly” annotation capabilities, to allow developers to use the SDK with emerging Linq to XML technology (Eric White's blog has a code sample demonstrating this capability)
Consistency and naming changes per feedback from the developer community since the June 2007 CTP version, including adherence to .NET naming conventions
The May 2008 RTW (released to web) version will be ready to go live, and developers can build shipping products on it

Version 2.0 will add the following capabilities:

Content object model including additional classes and methods for simplifying developer work within parts (example: methods for retrieving or modifying a specific paragraph, style, cell, or shape within a part)
Search functionality, for simple searching of content in all document types
Validation functionality, to verify that modified or created documents are compliant with the Open XML standard
High-level “scenario-based” functionality (examples: creating a document from a template, accepting all revisions in a document)
Shared ML functionality (example: classes for DrawingML chart parts and other parts that can appear in multiple document types)

The functionality in this roadmap was driven by feedback received from developers since the CTP release last June. A recurring theme was that developers want more tools to help edit and manipulate the underlying XML within the parts, and this is reflected in new methods that will be included in the content object model, as well as Linq-related changes as mentioned above.

For more detailed information about what's coming in the Open XML SDK, see Jean-Christophe Cimetiere's video interview with Zeyad Rajabi and Eric White where they discuss the changes in the SDK and show some of the details of how it will work.

To download the latest version of the SDK or for links to more information, see the Open XML SDK page on MSDN.

Developer workshop videos

dmahugh — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:04:00 GMT

MSDN has published a comprehensive set of videos of a 2-day Open XML developer workshop. These videos cover the content that was posted on OpenXMLDeveloper recently here.

The instructors for this workshop were Doug Mahugh of Microsoft and Chris Predeek of the Ted Pattison Group, and the workshop was sponsored by Mindjet and took place at their office in San Francisco on June 18-19, 2007.

UPDATED: Accessibility of Open XML

Gray_Knowlton — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:37:00 GMT

Open XML Formats support accessibility in a number of ways. In explaining this support to its customers, partners and assistive technology vendors, Microsoft has created a preliminary draft report describing how Open XML compares to W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and W3C XML Accessibility guidelines....(read more)

MSDN Articles on Open XML and Related Topics

dmahugh — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:32:00 GMT

The 2007 Microsoft Office system will use the Open XML file formats as their default format, and Microsoft has started to publish white papers, code samples, and other Open XML content for developers.

The following is an overview of some of the Open XML information that is currently available on MSDN, including general XML resources, information about Open XML development, and documentation of Microsoft schemas that can be used with Open XML due to its flexible support for custom schemas. Watch for more of this type of content in the months ahead.

Walkthrough: Word 2007 XML Format. This article by Erika Ehrli covers the basics of the packaging convention and then gets into the details of how Word uses Open XML: which parts are included and how they're related, how the custom XML data store works, and an example of how to create a typical WordprocessingML document.

2007 Office System: XML Schema Reference. Documentation in CHM and HTML format for the schemas used in the 2007 Microsoft Office system, including schemas that are not part of the Open XML specification (as used in Outlook 2007, OneNote 2007, and Visio 2007).

2007 Office System Sample: Open XML File Format Code Snippets for Visual Studio 2005. These are the snippets that were covered on OpenXmlDeveloper.org here.

Microsoft XML Team's WebLog. Microsoft's XML team covers a variety of XML topics.

Introducing the Office (2007) Open XML File Formats. Frank Rice reviews some of the most common Open XML development scenarios, and describes the benefits of Open XML in plain English. He also covers the various file formats supported by Office, how to implement Office's CustomUI functionality, and related topics.

Microsoft Office Open XML Formats Frequently Asked Questions. Answers to dozens of questions about Open XML and how it has been implemented in the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

XML in Office Developer Portal. A portal that aggregates many online resources for developers working with XML in Office, including both Open XML resources and other types of XML resources.

Office 2007 Beta 2: now available

dmahugh — Fri, 26 May 2006 22:31:00 GMT

Beta 2 of the 2007 Microsoft Office System was released on May 23. This is a public beta, meaning anyone can download a copy. Now any developer can get their hands on software that generates and consumes Office Open XML documents.

You can sign up to download the beta at the 2007 Microsoft Office system preview site. If you're writing code that uses the WinFX packaging API to read and write Office Open XML documents, you'll also want to download the WinFX February CTP. For more developer info regarding Beta 2, Jensen Harris has posted a great list of Some of the Best Beta 2 Resources.

Ecma Office Open XML File Formats Standard: Intermediate Draft 1.3

dmahugh — Thu, 18 May 2006 22:05:00 GMT

Ecma has published an updated draft of the spec for the Office Open XML Formats Standard. Here's a link to it:

http://www.ecma-international.org/news/TC45_current_work/TC45-2006-50.htm

This is great news for Open XML developers. The updated draft has a lot of great new documentation, covering things in much more depth than the previous draft. And there is a mechanism for providing public feedback, so you can participate in the evolution and definition of the standard even if you're not part of an Ecma member organization.

Brian Jones has an overview of the draft on his blog, and he also went into more detail in this post. Doug Mahugh has posted an overview of the document here as well.

Check out the spec, give Ecma your feedback, and post your questions, comments and observations right here at OpenXmlDeveloper.org.

BioIT Alliance looks to Office Open XML

dmahugh — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:53:00 GMT

Today at the Bio-IT World Magazine World Life Sciences Conference + Expo, Microsoft announced the formation of the BioIT Alliance, a cross-industry group working to further integrate science and technology as a first step toward making personalized medicine a reality.

This builds on some work Don Rule has been doing around the new Office Open XML file formats and how custom schemas could be used to promote better collaboration amongst scientists and researchers. As Catherine M. Burzik, president of Applied Biosystems, says "This format [Office Open XML] enables life science companies to access data using the familiar Microsoft Office Excel® interface, providing them with the insight they need to make decisions more quickly."

Here's the announcement on BioTT World's web site, and here's an article on Yahoo.

Office Devcon and Open XML Formats

dmahugh — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 22:33:00 GMT

The Microsoft Office Systems Developer Conference 2007 is wrapping up in the next hour, and it's been a great event for developers working with the Open XML Formats, with lots of learning and networking opportunities for the attendees.

At the file formats track on Tuesday, Brian Jones spoke to a full house about the history of the formats and some of the key benefits, followed by Tristan Davis covering the schemas and then Kevin Boske on using the WinFX System.IO.Packaging APIs to build solutions around the new formats. One of the interesting moments in Kevin's presentation was when he asked how many of the 400 people in the room had automated the Office clients on a server. Half the hands in the room went up, which was a great testament to the need for a more scalable approach to building server-side solutions that generate well-formed Office documents.

Other events of interest to Open XML Formats developers included the sessions demonstrating Sharepoint's support for the new Office file formats, and a series of presentations Wednesday afternoon from ISVs who already have running code that supports the new formats and new capabilities of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007. Stephen Peront, a regular contributor here at OpenXmlDeveloper.org, demonstrated a new version of XiDocs that created a Powerpoint PPTX file from dynamic content he entered through web forms, including arbitrarily selected content from a slide library, all running in a browser with no other client-side software installed.

We're working on getting content from Office Devcon for the site, so sign up for the RSS feeds and watch for new code snippets and utilities in the weeks ahead.