Microsoft Chooses Native XML File Format as Default in Office 12

ednesday evening, Microsoft announced that the default file format for the next version of its Office Suite would be XML. That's default as in, by default, Office will save files in its Office Open XML format, not in the ubiquitous binary—and proprietary—form that's been the hallmark of Office up till now. While you may find it hard to get excited over a change in, of all things, file format, this is important; it's is the beginning of the end for proprietary, closed Office file formats.

The Office Open XML format is public and royalty-free, and the XML-formatted documents can be read and processed with any XML-processing language or tool. Even better, Microsoft has compressed Office output by zipping the XML, which Microsoft claims can make Office files up to 75 percent smaller (they had to do that or the new files wouldn't be smaller, they'd be larger than the older binary format).