Microsoft shares old Office file formats

Last Friday, Microsoft announced that it would release technical information about all of its Office file formats to outside software developers and promised not to sue them for action. registration violation.

Technical details for this binary file format used by Word, Excel and PowerPoint will be provided through Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP) program, which the software giant has used to widely release a wide range of its specifications.

Existing specifications will be provided including all binary file formats used in desktop application suite releases from Office 97 to the newly released Office 2007. Format The original file in Office 2007 is Office Open XML, not binary format. However, Office 2007 can still save binary formats exactly like those used in Office 2003.

According to a spokesman for the company, Microsoft has previously released technical details for Open XML through the OSP program in 2006. Microsoft is now working with Ecma international standards to make Open XML is considered an ISO standard; The second round of the election was scheduled to take place this month, after the standards failed to get enough votes in the first round in late September.

Microsoft shares old Office file formats Picture 1 Releasing binary format specifications can make it easier for developers to write applications that need collaboration with Office - even if open source competitors compete with Microsoft like OpenOffice.org or their near brother, IBM Symphony.

Microsoft has released this binary format information to hundreds of companies for free. But according to an article posted on program director Brian Jones's blog at Microsoft - some of the domestic standards participating in the ISO election process have made it easier for technical information. of previous Office file formats.

As part of the OSP program, Microsoft has promised not to claim any rights to software developers' in creating, using, selling and providing as well as importing plugins to expand. Technical details are available before '. Software developers do not have to sign any license agreement to use these specifications, nor do they have to inform Microsoft about using it within applications.

Although Microsoft offers these formats completely free, it still retains some unique formats. That is the difference to open source that Microsoft will provide through shared source code registrations. At the end of the fall, two of those registrations were certified by the Open Source Institute as valid for an open source.

Microsoft also provides specifications for its other internal technologies through OSP, most notably in the field of Web services. These include electronic wallet verification technology called Identity Selector Interoperability Profile, plus technical details for its virtual hard drive virtualization technology and Sender ID technology for authentication issues. email.

Besides, Microsoft also announced that it will sponsor the open source project on the SourceForge website to help developers develop binary format documents to Open XML.