Open XML links for 06-22-2008

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Here are some interesting blog posts from the last week, as well as a few items I had missed while I was at TechEd but discovered while catching up on my RSS feeds today ...

Wouter Van Vugt has an excellent post on "Embedding repeating elements in a schema-mapped document" that shows how to use the <customXml> element with repeating data structures in WordprocessingML tables.

Eric White has two posts last week of interest to users of the Open XML Power Tools, including "PowerTools Script that Generates a Table in an Open XML Document" and "Much Improved Approach for Automatic Document Generation using PowerTools." The latter introduces the work of Doug Finke, a new contributor to the Power Tools project on Codeplex.

Peter O'Kelly and Guy Creese have updated the Burton Group whitepaper "What’s Up, .DOC? ODF, Open XML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications" to include information and perspective on recent events that have taken place since the approval of IS29500. The paper will be presented at Burton's Catalyst Conference in San Diego next week.

Rick Jelliffe's "A new test for objectivity" prompted an interesting exchange with Alex Brown on the matter of Britian's High Court's rejection of an application for judicial review of BSI's position on IS29500, and Alex's post "OOXML Hit into the Long Grass" adds more details on the matter.

Another recent Rick Jelliffe post worth reading is "the era of closed formats is dead," which includes some interesting perspective from South African standards activist Bob Jolliffe and prolific XML/Java author Elliotte Rusty Harold. (By the way, if you're responsible for maintaining lots of HTML content — and who isn't these days? — check out out ERH's handy new book "Refactoring HTML," which he's serializing on his The Cafes blog.)

Alex Brown has information about XML UK's XML in the Office conference, scheduled for this Thursday at Reading Town Hall. The event will include a full day of hands-on presentations from Alex, Inigo Surguy, and many others, including my UK colleague Matt Deacon.