Flutterby™! : Office 11 XML

Mark alerted me to his entry pointing to XMLHack: Microsoft Office embraces XML. As I've commented in at least one recent thread (and probably a gazillion others), I agree with Shawn McGrath's opinions on XML in Microsoft Office (via Dave):

I want to believe, I really do but I'm not falling for the "It's in XML so its completely open ya know" mullarky and neither should you. Office is as open as my ability to round-trip office XML through my own XML systems losslessly having modified them in some way. To do that I need full disclosore of the semantics of the markup. I get that from a combination of machine readable schemata and narrative text. A bag'o'tags don't mean diddly squat on their own.