the tale of the file formats
TRANSCRIPT
The Tale of the Two File FormatsOnce upon a time Microsoft
created the Office SuiteEveryone loved it and
Microsoft made lots of money
Office File Looked Like This
Proprietary, closed format that can only be opened with appropriate Microsoft office format
It was a good business decisionIf someone wanted to create Office
files they had to buy a copySame for people who just wanted
to read and/or print these files
Compare to TXT files
Some people got nervousVery important people used office
to create very important documentsThey worried:
What if Microsoft goes out of business?
All of a sudden…Bunch of people got together to resolve this
problem (it was a problem!)They created an absolutely free, open document
standard called Open Document Format (ODF)
All competitive office productivity suites such as Open Office, Star Office and etc Switched to ODF
It looked like this:
Human readableVery well documented
VIPS Were ImpressedMany politicians, government officials and
even many business owners were impressedODF documents can be opened by dozens of
different apps made by different companiesThey decided to ditch Microsoft Office
Bill got scared…
So he made new office formatHe called it Office Open XML (OOXML)It looked like this inside
Sort of open…The new format is sort of openAnyone can create an app that reads or
creates .docx and .xlsxProvided they read the documentation…
VIPS Forgot about ODFMicrosoft continues to make
moneyOn the other hand users must
deal with the format confusion for few years now…
DOC and DOCX
Closed, proprietary, old
format
Open, accessible, new format
New formats have new featuresWhen you create a document in
Word 2007 and save it as Word 2003 format you may see this: