Office Markup Languages

I’ve been at Sun less than a day and this guy gets in touch. Guy: “You’re the XML expert, right?” Tim: “Well, er.” Guy: “Open Office’s XML is better than Microsoft Office XML, right?” Tim: “Uh, I don’t know.”

Guy: “Well, it must be, right?” Tim: “WordML is hairy all right, but then it’s trying to capture all the semantics built up during ten years of development. Word ain’t simple.” Guy: “Well, the Open Office one is nice and clean, right?” Tim: “Never seen it. But I’ll tell you, I’d be worried about that patent license, if what you’re doing is not ‘solely for the purpose of reading and writing’ you’re in violation.” Guy: “I’m interested in the technology not the legalities.”

Well, I’m interested in the technology, too. Has anyone ever done a comparative study on usability, completeness, modularity, all of that stuff? I’ve never seen one. If anyone has, drop me a line (search Google for tbray@) or post and point to this entry and I’ll see it due to the magic of Technorati. I’ll post whatever I get, even if it’s not what The Guy wanted to hear.