"As promised last month, the binary documentation (.doc, .xls, .ppt)
is now live. In addition to this, the project to create an open source
translator (binary to Open XML) has now been formed on SourceForge,
and the development roadmap has been published. While the project is
still in its infancy, you can see what the planned project roadmap is,
as well as an early draft of a mapping table between the Word binary
format (.doc) and the Open XML format (.docx). The binary documentation
itself is also available; it's all covered under the Open Specification
Promise. Another great surprise in all of this is that we've made the
documentation for a few other supporting technologies available as it
may be of use to folks implementing the binary formats: (1) Windows
Compound Binary File Format Specification; (2) Windows Metafile Format
(.wmf) Specification; (3) Ink Serialized Format (ISF) Specification..."
From the Overview: "The main goal of the Office Binary (doc, xls, ppt)
Translator to Open XML project is to create software tools, plus
guidance, showing how a document written using the Binary Formats
(doc, xls, ppt) can be translated into the Office Open XML format. As
a result customers can use these tools to migrate from the binary formats
to Office Open XML Format thus enabling them to more easily access their
existing content in the new world of XML. The Translator will be
available under the open source Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)
license, which allows that anyone can use the mapping, submit bugs and
feedback, or contribute to the project. On February 15th 2008, Microsoft
has made it even easier to get access to the binary formats documentation
from [the Microsoft Office Binary File Formats web site], and the binary
formats have also been made available under the Microsoft Open
Specification Promise. The Office Open XML file format has been approved
as an Ecma standard and is available [online]. We have chosen to use an
Open Source development model that allows developers from all around the
world to participate and contribute to the project. More Information See also the SourceForge Project: Click Here
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