Microsoft calls on UK public to raise the Office standard

[Shagbag]

Link.

"Microsoft's interest in fast tracking co-insides with the growing mandate from national and local governments that their software confirms to standards, and are no longer proprietary. Microsoft, of course, got a very high-profile pants dusting in the US commonwealth of Massachusetts on this issue."

Not to mention their dirty tricks which eventually forced out CIO Louis Gutierrez.

"Document formats have played a critical role in helping Microsoft to secure and maintain its dominance of the office-productivity applications market, with more than 400 million users of its Office software worldwide"

But then... some of us will just bury our heads in the sand and accuse others of being paranoid.

[Connor]

This is a problem I'm having to struggle with just now. Though in my case its with the Older HTML Office Format (for Pre-XML Office compatibility). The App I've written uses HTML as a document output format for reports, which is fine printing and saving as a word document. However I became aware of a need for users to add their own report templates and keeping with Office Compatability am trying to use office HTML documents which are full of useless and badly interpreted CSS statements that are surplus to all requirements.

If it wasn't for the fact it complicates life for the users, it would be easier to make them write their templates in Dreamweaver or something.

If their XML format is equally convolouted then its not surprising their having to push to have it made standard.