Re: Microsoft XDocs

Hello Microsoft.

What shall I say? Microsoft is coming to town, 
what changes is:

Before:

"So, is MS ever going to implement XForms?"
Me: "No idea, probably not."
(The other person then suddenly thinks XForms 
then has no business value and stops thinking,
because if MS wouldn't do it, and MS knows 
where the money is, then there is no money 
there.)

After:

Me: "MS is now doing the exact same thing with 
XDocs now"
"Why aren't they using XForms?"
(The other person now thinks XForms isn't good 
enough and has "lost its main customer")

I'm anti-polarized by now. Which means, I am 
not a camp guy, because seeing the world just in 
black and white isn't reality, but television, at best.

What is becoming apparent:

- The "problem space" both Office/XDocs and 
XForms are addressing are similar, if not the same.
- MS hopes to boost flagging Office sales with
XDocs.
== XForms is a really, really good idea, has a huge
market, solves big problems.

- Sebastian


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Dennedy" <DDennedy@digitalbang.com>
To: <www-forms@w3.org>
Cc: "DBCincinnati" <DBCincinnati@digitalbang.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 6:28 PM
Subject: Microsoft XDocs


> 
> Microsoft has unveiled new XDocs technology for Office due to be
> released sometime late next year:
> http://www.microsoft.com/office/xdocs/default.asp
> 
> It seems very similar to XForms in goals and scope. In some ways its
> scope seems to go beyond XForms, but it's hard to tell right now. It is
> interesting how it integrates with the other features of Office:
> spell-checking, AutoCorrect, rich formatting, and "picture support."
> 
> Rich formatting (Office XML) could be put into a CDATA sections and
> pictures can be encoded into base64binary nodes. Is there a way with XML
> Schema and XForms to indicate whether a string element can accept a
> CDATA section? Maybe an upload control with a mediatype of, for example,
> text/xhtml could work with a base64binary node. One client processor may
> be able to support in-place rich editing (along with import from file)
> while others could permit uploading externally authored content.
> 
> Another interesting feature is offline support. I could see XForms
> possibly handling this too with a smart enough processor. However, MS
> does not mention XForms at all. For now, I have to assume it is not
> XForms and feel it is a shame they chose not to support it and create
> yet another standard. What are your thoughts?
> 
> +-DRD-+
>

Received on Thursday, 10 October 2002 16:12:04 UTC