Signs on the Sand: Office

Word 2003 XML Viewer Control v1.0 released

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:38:41 +0200

I was cleaning up my backyard and found this control I never finished. So I did. Here is Word 2003 XML Viewer Control v1.0 just in case somebody needs it. It's is ASP.NET 2.0 Web server control, which allows to display arbitrary Microsoft Word 2003 XML documents (aka WordML aka WordprocessingML) on the Web so people not having Microsoft Office 2003 installed can browse documents using only a browser.

The control renders Word 2003 XML documents by transforming content to HTML preserving styling and extracting images. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox are supported.

Word 2003 XML Viewer Control is Web version of the Microsoft Word 2003 XML Viewer tool and uses the same WordML to HTML transformation stylesheet thus providing the same rendering quality.

The control is free open-source, download it here, find documentation here.

I'm doing interesting trick with images in this control. The problem is that in WordML images are embedded into the document, so they need to be extracted when transforming to HTML. And I wanted to avoid writing images to file system. So the trick is to extract image when generating HTML (via XSLT), assign it guid, put it into session and generate <img> src attribute requesting image by guid. Then when browser renders HTML it requests images by guid and custom HTTP handler gets them from the session.

Having HTTP handler in ASP.NET control posed another problem - how do you register HTTP handler in Web.config automatically? AFAIK there is no out of box solution for the problem, but happily I found a solution that covers major use case. Here is piece of documentation:

When you are adding the first Word 2003 XML Viewer Control in your Web project, you should see the following confirmation dialog: "Do you want to automatically register the HttpHandler needed by this control in the web.config?". You must answer Yes to allow the control to register image handler in the Web.config. If don't answer Yes or if you add the control not in Design mode, you have to add the following definition to the Web.config in the <system.web> section:
<httpHandlers>
<add path="image.ashx" verb="*" type="XMLLab.WordXMLViewer.ImageHandler, XMLLab.WordXMLViewer" />
</httpHandlers>

Yep. the hint is the Design mode. I'll post about this trick tomorrow.

The usage is simple - just drop control and assign "DocumentSource" property (Word 2003 XML file you want to show).

I deliberately named this control "Word 2003 XML Viewer Control" to avoid confusion. But I'll update it to support Word 2007 as soon as there is Word 2007 to HTML transformation problem solution.

Any comments are welcome. Enjoy.

Many people use converting PDF to Word as a way to change to a more easily editable document that only PDF conversion can easily accomplish--if you didn't convert PDF to Word then you'd have to manually transcribe the document, while PDF to Word software does this in a few clicks.

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OpenXmlWriter - open source OpenXml text editor

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 17:39:23 +0200

openxml.biz announced the availability of the OpenXML Writer - open source text editor for creating OpenXML WordprocessingML files (.docx). Supported features include "text formatting options like bold, italic, underline, font color, font name , font size, paragraph justification and text indentation. Basic editing functions like cutting, copying, pasting and spell check are also provided".

OpenXMLWriter is .NET 3.0 application, so you might need to install "Microsoft(TM) .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package (For Win XP/2K users)" in order to run it.

It's not immediatelyt clear for me if this application is just a sample from some microsoftie or free component from one of C# hackers. The site is basically empty and I have no idea who is behind this.

Anyway the idea sounds interesting:

OpenXML Writer is a .Net 3 project that shows how you can create .docx (OpenXML WordProcessingML) documents with the RichTextBox. The RichTextBox exposes a wide range of features that are easily tapped to create a fairly powerful editor. For example, you can turn on the spell check feature in the RichTextBox by simply setting a property.
OpenXML Writer works by transversing the contents of the RichTextBox and converting each of the elements into OpenXML format. It also package the relevant resources into a .docx file based on the OpenPackaging Convention.
OpenXML Writer has the potential to turn into a full fledge editor in the near future by taking advantage of the many features that the RichTextBox itself supports. Already, many features are being planned, such as the support for lists, images and tables in OpenXML Writer.
The source code for OpenXML Writer is available for download. It illustrates the techniques of

Using the RichTextBox as the editor to format text data
Traversing the contents of the RichTextBox and converting them into OpenXML format
Packaging the contents using the OpenPackaging Convention into a .docx file

Web-based OpenXML editor would be even cooler.

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PDF to be ISO standard too

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 13:20:19 +0200

Today's news from Adobe:

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jan. 29, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it intends to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Looks like everybody nowadays wants to be open and ISO standardized. ODF is already ISO standard, OOXML on the way and now PDF joins the club.

Btw, Wikipedia article on PDF is definitely wrong (or written by Adobe) - how on earth this fully proprietary document format is called "an open file format created and controlled by Adobe Systems"?

Provided the fact that Adobe forced Microsoft to remove "Save as PDF" feature from Office 2007 - because they wanted to charge a fee for it, PDF format clearly cannot be called "open format" - it's proprietary format controlled by Adobe and they wanted a fee from at least one vendor trying to implement it. I don't think that is open format.

I'm going to try to change Wikipedia article on PDF to see how it works. I'll report my progress.

And at the end one more curious comparison showing how heavily biased Wikipedia is: PDF vs RTF. Both proprietary document formats, published and widely implemented by both commercial and open tools. But guess what:

Portable Document Format (PDF) is an open file format created and controlled by Adobe Systems, for representing two-dimensional documents in a device independent and resolution independent fixed-layout document format.

and

The Rich Text Format (often abbreviated to RTF) is a proprietary document file format developed by Microsoft since 1987 for cross-platform document interchange. Most word processors are able to read and write RTF documents.

With a piece of PDF conversion software, whether it's an individual license or a larger PDF server package, you may find that various PDF conversion options are more useful than you realized and that a PDF converter can help speed things up around the office.

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Meanwhile Microsoft publishes Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification, version 1.9

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:30:51 +0200

While OOXML/ODF war starts to heat up, Microsoft published new version of their another document format "Word 2007: Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification, version 1.9":

The Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification provides a format for text and graphics interchange that can be used with different output devices, operating environments, and operating systems. Version 1.9 of the specification contains the latest updates introduced by Microsoft Office Word 2007.

If somebody forgot, RTF is proprietary but widely supported non-XML document markup format, which looks like this:

{\rtf1\ansi{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss Helvetica;}\f0
Hello!\par
This is some {\b bold} text.\par
}

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foActive <X>Styler

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 17:07:36 +0200

And going on with Word as XSL-FO editor theme - take a look at a brand new tool called foActive <X>Styler:

foActive <X>Styler is a plug-in for Microsoft Word 2003 Professional which allows a user to design and test dynamic document templates right from within the Word authoring environment.

<X>Styler is used to create XSL templates for server-based transformation for high-volume dynamic document print applications such as direct mail, correspondence, invoicing, statements, contracts, and legal forms.

And more:

Writing XSL templates that generate XSL FO output can be a difficult task, one suited for an engineer and not a marketing person. What the industry needed was an easy-to-use tool for designing templates to convert XML to XSL FO using XSL. There are applications that have recently emerged to do just this, however these are standalone applications designed from the ground-up for just this purpose. As such, they can be unnecessarily complex and require specific custom training to master. They expose all the functionality and complexities of XSL to the end-user.

And so foActive designed <X>Styler, merging the most common desktop application in use -- Microsoft Word -- with the difficult to master XSL design. We coupled the whole system to the industry's best XSL FO engine -- RenderX -- to deliver a complete solution for a wide variety of XSL design tasks.

That's what I was talking about all the way.

The price is set at $199, beta program is open. Sounds really cool.

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Draft 1.3 of the Ecma Office Open XML formats standard

Sun, 21 May 2006 12:35:39 +0200

Via Brian Jones we learn that the Ecma International Technical Committee (TC45) has published draft version 1.3 of the Ecma Office Open XML File Formats Standard. This is 4000 pages document specifying new (alternative to Oasis OpenOffice/OpenDocument XML format) Office XML format to be used by Microsoft starting with Office 2007.

As a matter of interest:

The draft is available in PDF, which was created by Word 2007
The draft also available in Open XML format itself, which one will be use once Office 2007 Beta 2 is out
The document is huge and specifies everything down to the "Maple Muffins" border style kinda details
These guys help MIcrosoft in creating Ecma Office Open XML format: Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, and Toshiba

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Rendering WordML documents in ASP.NET

Mon, 01 May 2006 18:02:42 +0200

Here is one easy way:

Go to xmllab.net, get free eXml Web server control and modified Microsoft's WordML2HTML XSLT stylesheet, version 1.3.
Drop eXml control onto a Web form, assign DocumentSource property (WordML document you want to render), TransformSource property(wordml2html-.NET-script.xslt):
Create new folder to store external images

In code behind allow XSLT scripting and pass couple XSLT parameters - real path to above image directory and its virtual name:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  EXml1.XsltSettings = System.Xml.Xsl.XsltSettings.TrustedXslt;
  EXml1.TransformArgumentList = 
    new System.Xml.Xsl.XsltArgumentList();
  EXml1.TransformArgumentList.AddParam(
    "base-dir-for-images", "", MapPathSecure("~/images"));
  EXml1.TransformArgumentList.AddParam(
    "base-virtual-dir-for-images", "", "images");        
}

Done.

I had to add these two parameters so the WordML2HTML stylesheet could export images there and then refer to exported images in HTML. If you don't pass these parameters images will be exported into current directory - while that's ok when running WordML2HTML transformation in a command line, that's bad idea for ASP.NET environment.

Enjoy!

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WordML2HTML with support for images stylesheet updated

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 18:43:06 +0200

Almost 2 years ago I published a post "Transforming WordML to HTML: Support for Images" showing how to hack Microsoft WordML2HTML stylesheet to support images. People kept telling me it doesn't support some weird image formats or header images. Moreover I realized it has a bug and didn't work with .NET 2.0. So finally I updated that damn stylesheet. Now I took another Microsoft WordML2HTML stylesheet as a base - that one that comes with Word 2003 XML Viewer tool. I think it's a better one. Anyway, I added to it a couple of templates so images now get decoded and saved externally and headers and footers are processed too (only header/footer for odd pages per section to be precise). Note: this stylesheet uses embedded C# script to decode images and so only works with .NET XSLT processors, such as XslTransform (.NET 1.1) or XslCompiledTransform (.NET 2.0). You can also run it with nxslt/nxslt2 command line tool. Here is a small demo.

Starting Word 2003 document with images in body and header:

Magic XSLT transformation:

nxslt2 test.xml wordml2html-.NET-script.xslt -o test.html

produces test.html and a directory containing decoded images:

Download the stylesheet at the XML Lab downloads page. Any comments are welcome.

Higher quality PDF to Word software will do more than just allow you to convert PDF to Word; you'll be able to do PDF conversion between Excel, Powerpoint, and other formats, such that converting PDF to Word is just the tip of the iceberg.

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So you like XML in Office?

Thu, 02 Jun 2005 17:32:18 +0200

The big news today is of course announced next Office's full deep XML-ization. I've read a dozen of enthusiastic postings already and decided not to bother my readers with another whoohoo-like post from another XML nerd. But what amazed me more than the announce itself (which was predictable) is the overall excitement about the news. Ranging from Scoble to Tim Bray - everybody seems to value ultimate XMLization of the next Office as "big cool news". Not a single critical post - what's the matter with you people? And even more:

I think another version or two after the upcoming Office, binary files will become completely obsolete and forgotten and won't be able to round-trip the latest features.

says Wesner Moise (former Excel developer at Microsoft and overall smart guy).

Now that's amazing...

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Altsoft released Xml2PDF formatting engine version 2.3, now supporting WordML

Thu, 26 May 2005 13:03:26 +0200

Altsoft N.V. has announced a relase of the Xml2PDF formatting engine version 2.3, now supporting WordML. Altsoft Xml2PDF is a .NET based formatting engine for converting various XML-based formats to PDF. It supports XSL-FO, SVG, XHTML, WordML and XML+XSLT as an input and generates PDF as an output. The prices are from $49 for the Workstation version to $1599 for the API version. Free evaluation versions are available.

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Generating Word documents using Java

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 17:57:42 +0200

Dino Chiesa of Microsoft shows how to generate dynamically WordML documents using Java and XSLT. Yep, that's not a typo, Microsoft, WordML and Java. XML serves as peacemaker again. And he even provides a working JSP demo. Cool.

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Free WordML chapter of the "Office 2003 XML" book

Tue, 04 May 2004 13:55:48 +0200

As Evan Lenz pointed out, O'Reilly put Chapter 2 ("The WordprocessingML Vocabulary") of the "Office 2003 XML" book online. Here it is (88 pages pdf). Excellent introduction to WordML. Those who want to learn WordML - go read it (or buy the book).

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New Microsoft Office XML schemas and documentation pack

Sun, 18 Apr 2004 14:18:51 +0200

Well, I'm probably the last one on this, but anyway: Microsoft released new pack of Office XML schemas and related documentation. What's included? WordprocessingML (Word), SpreadsheetML (Excel), FormTemplate XML (InfoPath) and (new!) DataDiagramingML (Visio) XSD schemas, overviews and other reference docs. Good one. Installed.

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Visio goes XML

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 16:24:58 +0200

Hey, look at this cool stuff:

On to something more pleasant: Microsoft is continuing to advance on the openness front. There are all those weblogs that I've mentioned a time or six, there's the open-source release of the WiX installer tools (http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/) and now (as of today, in fact) there's another addition to the Microsoft Open and Royalty-Free Office 2003 XML reference schema program (say THAT fast three times!), because Microsoft just announced the release of DataDiagramML.

DataDiagramML, as you might guess from the name, is the XML schema that's used when you save a Visio document as XML. Having this documented has the same great interoperability benefits as WordProcessingML offers for Word or SpreadsheetML offers for Excel. Knowing the complete structure of the document, it's easy to modify it - for example, you can grab information from a database and use it to modify an existing Visio document, all through standard XML tools. The other half of the equation is that you don't even need Visio to build a DataDiagramML document; you can use whatever XML tool you like to output a document that conforms to the schema, and it should open fine in Visio.

For many years, we complained that Microsoft insisted on using all-proprietary formats for its Office documents. Now that Word, Excel, InfoPath, and Visio all have the capability of saving into open, documented formats, this criticism is losing some of its sting. (Though not all of it...*cough* Access *cough*). The next step, I think, would be a world where the XML formats are the default, and Microsoft commits to open up every file format they create, from Outlook Express to Project. Then we'd have a world where your data was yours, and you could move it to any tool you liked. I'll bet Microsoft would compete pretty hard to keep our business on a features and benefits basis in that world, instead of depending on format lock-in.
Anyhow, today's release is a big step forward. More details at http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx and http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/apr04/04-15XMLSchemaPR.asp

Mike Gunderloy, ADT Mag's Developer Central Newsletter.

Well, nothing to add, Mike said enough.

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New Office XML book

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 15:22:06 +0200

I've been told privately this book is going to be totally a killer:

"Office 2003 XML: Integrating Office with the Rest of the World"
by Evan Lenz, Mary McRae, and Simon St. Laurent

This book explores the relationship between XML and Office 2003, examining how the various products in the Office suite both produce and consume XML. Beginning with an overview of the XML features included in the various Office 2003 components, Office XML 2003 provides quick and clear guidance to anyone who needs to import or export information from Office documents into other systems.

Authors are real XML and Office experts. The book is not published yet (expected in June), but worth to preorder. AFAIK should be some links to my blog in this book, must to buy it only to see it :)

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WordML to HTML story continues - now with Microsoft Word 2003 XML Viewer

Tue, 06 Apr 2004 17:23:44 +0200

Microsoft has released another WordML to HTML transfromer - Word 2003 XML Viewer (thanks to Sal for pointing that). As I expected due to images issue it won't be single XSLT stylesheet such one as was released for Word 2003 Beta 2. This time it's complete viewer application, not just XSLT stylesheet you can use in your stuff. How it's implemented? It's kinda plugin for Internet Explorer, which transforms WordML to HTML using word2html.xsl stylesheet and handles images (wordml:// URL schema) somehow. It also substitutes standard context menu in Internet Explorer when vieweing WordML docs. Basically I like it, good stuff.

So whenever you want to browse a WordML document without Word 2003 installed you can just open it in Internet Explorer (provided Word 2003 XML Viewer is installed) an let it do the job. You can also include Word 2003 XML Viewer along with your document to let users install it. Sounds not bad, but not without some deficiencies. First of all your users must have viewer installed. Second - they must use IE, third - be on Windows platform. So the question is should I proceed with my WordML to HTML stylesheet or should it be abandoned? Basically my stylesheet produces pure HTML, thus placing no prerequisites on client side. But it's XSLT processor-dependent due to image processing (.NET version is only available yet, MSXML and Saxon versions were expected). Basically I believe it's still highly useful in custom WordML processing scenarios(e.g. for Word-based blog editors). I'd like to hear your comments though.

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Transforming WordML to HTML: Support for Images

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 20:55:20 +0200

Update: this post is outdated, see "WordML2HTML with support for images stylesheet updated" for updates.

Here is a new version of WordML2HTML XSLT stylesheet, developed by Microsoft for Word 2003 Beta2 and adapted by me to Word 2003 RTM. I called this version "1.1-.NET-script". Here is why. Along with some bug fixes (typo with w:rStyle, empty <title> in generated HTML etc) I implemented basic support for images. That required XSLT extension function, which I implemented with .NET and <msxsl:script>. MHT and MSXML/Jscript versions are coming soon.

Word 2003 allows to save document as "Single File Web Page" (*.mht aka Web Archive file) or as usual HTML document. In the latter case all images embedded into Word document are saved into documentName_files directory. Here is a challenge - how to implement it with XSLT. Obviously we need extension function to decode (Base64) embedded image and to write to a directory. That's not a big deal, but the problem is it makes XSLT stylesheet not portable, that's why I need different versions for .NET, MSXML etc. Second problem - WordML document doesn't store name of file, so the question is how to name a directory where to save decoded images. I introduced a global stylesheet parameter called docName to facilitate the issue. If docName parameter isn't provided, it's defaulted to first 10 characters of the document title.

To run the transformation I used nxslt.exe command line utility. Download it for free if you don't have it yet.

So I created test Word 2003 document with a couple of images:

Saved it as XML to test.xml file and run transformation to HTML by the following command line:

nxslt.exe test.xml d:\xsl\Word2HTML-.NET-script.xsl -o test.html docName=test

As the result, XSLT transformation created test.html document and test_files directory, containing two decoded images, here is how it looks like in a browser:
.

The implementation is very simple one. Here it is:

<msxsl:script language="c#" implements-prefix="ext">
  public string decodePicture(XPathNodeIterator bindata, string dirname, string filename) {
    if (bindata.MoveNext()) {
      System.IO.DirectoryInfo di = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(dirname);
      if (!di.Exists)
        di.Create();
      using (System.IO.FileStream fs = 
        System.IO.File.Create(System.IO.Path.Combine(di.FullName, filename))) {
        byte[] data = Convert.FromBase64String(bindata.Current.Value);
        fs.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
      }
      return dirname + "/" + filename;
    }
    else 
        return "";
}
</msxsl:script>
<xsl:template match="w:pict">
  <xsl:variable name="dir">
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="$docName != ''">
        <xsl:value-of select="$docName"/>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
        <!-- We need something unique instead of document name -->
        <!-- Let's take first 10 characters of title -->
        <xsl:value-of select="translate(substring($p.docInfo/o:Title, 1, 10), ' ', '')"/>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
    <xsl:text>_files</xsl:text>		
  </xsl:variable>
  <img 
  src="{ext:decodePicture(w:binData, $dir, substring-after(w:binData/@w:name, 'wordml://'))}" 
  alt="{v:shape/v:imagedata/@o:title}" style="{v:shape/@style}" 
  title="{v:shape/v:imagedata/@o:title}"/>
</xsl:template>

Not a rocket engineering indeed. Yes, Sal, WMZ images are not supported, I have no idea how to convert them to GIF.

Download the stylesheet here and give it a shot. Again - this stylesheet requires .NET XSLT engine. Any comments/requests/bug reports are welcome.

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On transforming WordML to HTML again

Tue, 03 Feb 2004 11:06:17 +0200

One of consequences of the revolutionary XML support in Microsoft Office 2003 is a possibility to unlock information in the Microsoft Office System using XML. Most likely that was deliberate decision to open Office doors for XML technology and I'm sure that's winning strategy.

Talking about transforming WordprocessingML (WordML) to HTML, what's the state of the art nowadays?
There are two related activities I'm aware of, both Microsoft rooted. First, it's "WordML to HTML XSL Transformation" XSLT stylesheet available for download at Microsoft Download Center. It's huge while well documented while unsupported beta XSLT stylesheet, which transforms Word 2003 Beta 2 XML documents to HTML. Its final release, which will also support images is expected, but who knows when?
Second, Don Box is experimenting with Wordml2XHTML+CSS transformation, mostly for the sake of his blogging workflow. He said his stylesheet is better (less global variables etc.). Apparently Don didn't finish it yet, so the stylesheet isn't available.

So one stylesheet is only for Word 2003 Beta 2 documents, second isn't ready yet, sounds bad, huh? Here is my temporary solution - original "WordML Beta 2 to HTML XSL Transformation" stylesheet fixed by me to support Word 2003 RTM XML documents. As usually with Microsoft stuff, "beta" most likely is 99% RTM version. So I fixed Beta 2 stylesheet a bit and it just works. In fact that's only namespaces that I fixed yet. I'm currently testing the stylesheet with big real documents, so chances are I'll need to modify it further.

Download version 1.0 of the stylesheet here - Word2HTML-1.0.zip. Credits due to Microsoft and personally to whoever developed the stylesheet. Any bug reports or comments are appreciated. Just post comment to this text.

Another idea is to implement support for images. Basically the idea is to decode images and save them as external files in XSLT external function and I don't see how to make it in portable way, so most likely I'll end up soon with two stylesheet versions - for MSXML and .NET. Stay tuned.

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On including external text into Word 2003 document

Mon, 26 Jan 2004 16:55:49 +0200

Looks like everyone but I knows it. I stumbled at Mike Gunderloy's "Working with Microsoft Office 2003 Documents and Web Services" article at OfficeZealot.com illustrating how to use INCLUDETEXT field in Word 2003. Very nice feature! Here is how it looks like for XML nerd, newbie in Word.

INCLUDETEXT field allows to have updatable field in Word 2003 document, which content is included from another document. It's actually implementation of Insert/File feature. Word 2003 Pro edition even allows partial inclusion (via XPath selection) and XSL transformation before the inclusion. Cool. It's a pity looks like it works only in Pro edition.

Here is how it looks line in WordML:

<w:p>
  <w:fldSimple w:instr="INCLUDETEXT  
&quot;D:\\Temp\\books.xml&quot; \c XML 
\x /catalog/book[1]/title  \* MERGEFORMAT">
  <w:r>
    <w:t>Included content</w:t>
  </w:r>
  </w:fldSimple>
</w:p>

Well, not really XMLish, but anyway. w:instr contains field's instruction text. Above instruction means "include value of /catalog/book[1]/title element from D:\\Temp\\books.xml document". Nested w:r (or other run-level elements) holds included content. Word doesn't update fields authomatically, even during document loading. Updating should be done by user from the context menu (or it can be done in code). w:fldLock attribute can be used to prevent updating of the field.

It's text inclusion, not transclusion (when context info such as style is preserved). Inclusion of WordML elements actually works, but looks like styles and other metainformation isn't preserved, so basically you can for instance include first paragraph from another WordML doc, but without the style etc. Anyway, that's good idea to include code samples into a Word document this way, then you can modify code and onlly update fields in Word. Here is how XML samples could be included:

<w:fldSimple w:instr="INCLUDETEXT 
&quot;D:\\Temp\\books.xml&quot; \c PCText">

Without \c PCText XML will be included as XML and shown with graphical tags.

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"XML in Office 2003" book published

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 16:24:06 +0200

Priscilla Walmsley, author of great "Definitive XML Schema" announced a new book, now about XML in Office 2003:

I'm pleased to announce the release of XML in Office 2003: Information Sharing with Desktop XML, a book that I co-authored with Charles Goldfarb. It can be found on Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/013142193X/priscillawalm-20

The book was designed to help the "power user" take advantage of the new XML-related features of the Office suite (including InfoPath). It does this by breaking down the functionality into tasks, like "Rendering and presenting XML documents" and "Using Web services with spreadsheets", etc. It also has a section of tutorials that cover XML-related technologies like XSLT, XML Schema and Web services.

I'd be very interested in feedback.

Looks really tempting...

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