Mac Office 12 To Sync On XML

When Office 12 ships in 2006, its default file format will be a version of XML the Redmond, Wash.-based developer is calling "Microsoft Open XML Formats." That change marks a major departure by Microsoft's productivity suite -- composed of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and other applications -- which have always relied on proprietary file formats.

Mac Office 12, which doesn't yet have an announced ship schedule, will implement the same XML formats, wrote Rick Schaut, an engineer with Microsoft's Mac business group, the division responsible for Office. As is the case with Office's Windows development, the Mac unit will be cranking out converters for Office X and Office 2004.

"We expect to ship converters that will provide full round-trip support for the new file formats in Office X and Office 2004," wrote Schaut on his blog.

"This represents an enormous undertaking on two fronts," he added. "Win Office is already well ahead of Mac Office in terms of support for XML, and the state of XML parsing on Panther is, well, less than desirable (among other things, the version of libXML that ships on Panther doesn't support SAX 2.0's namespace changes).

"For the first time in the history of Office, we're attempting to ship a major architectural change that's being simultaneously implemented by both the Windows and Macintosh groups."

All Schaut would reveal as to Mac Office 12's schedule is that it would ship "sometime after" the Windows edition.