Custom Data
Brian Jones from MS blogs about the ability to embed custom XML files in their forthcoming new proprietary-ODF-clone file formats:
In Office 12, we’ve introduced a new feature to the formats that we’re currently calling the XML data store, and the way it works is really simple. As you should all know by now, the new format consists of a ZIP file with a bunch of XML parts (files) inside. Up until now we’ve talked about all the parts that we in Office have defined to create our documents. You as a developer also have the ability to add your own parts though. You can take any XML file and put it inside the ZIP package. Then all you need to do is create a relationship from the main document part to your XML part, and the Office applications will roundtrip your XML with the file …
Seems sensible, and just what we at the OpenOffice bibliographic project want to do with ODF and OOo. One area where I think ODF can trump MS here is with the current discussion around using RDF for metadata, providing a consistent model for custom metadata content.
