Where to go for WordML questions

[David Thielen]

Hi;

I posted my WordML questions in microsoft.public.office.xml and have found
that that NG gets so little action it doesn't even have spam postings. As
near as I can tell, there are two people that post in it and both are having
to guess as to what is not documented as they are not from Microsoft.

Are the incomplete parts of WordML and SpreadsheetML going to be documented
by Microsoft? Or are they going to let everyone guess which will cause every
program to write slightly incompatible xml files? (This is what made the rtf
spec such a mess.)

Could you please get an official answer from the Word group at Microsoft. If
the answer is just guess for undocumented stuff, at least we know where we
stand and can give up on trying to create "correct" xml.

--
thanks - dave

[Kevin Yu [MSFT]]

Hi Dave,

Since WordML and SpreadSheetML are newly introduced in Office 2003, there
are still many things undocumented. Currently, the documentations are being
prepared. If you have some suggestions on WordML and SpreadSheetML, you can
send emails directly to msw...@microsoft.com. Your suggestions will be
highly appreciated. Thanks!

Kevin Yu
=======
"This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights."

[David Thielen]

Hi;

Could you please ask the Word group if there is a way to get questions
answered now. If it goes through mswish by the time answers come out there
will be 40 different programs writing WordML 40 different ways and the spec
will be as confused as the rtf spec is.

I know you can send requests back to the development groups. Many company
companies are writing code today creating WordML and SpreadsheetML files.
This code will ship within weeks (in our case at least).

We would like to match the spec. But if we have to guess, we will guess if
that is our only option. But I think it's worth asking the Word group if they
will clarify things now.

thanks - dave

ps - And if the official answer is go ahead and guess - that's fine. But I
suspect that the Word group would not be in favor of that as they will then
have to parse all of those different interpretations in the next version of
Word.

[Kevin Yu [MSFT]]

Hi Dave,

As the Word group said, besides posting your questions in the newsgroup and
send mails to mswish, you can also try to contact microsoft PSS for
professional support. You can get your local phone number from the
following link

http://support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx?rdpath=gp;en-us;offer
prophone

[David Thielen]

Using PSS for this would get too expensive. At $75.00/question we would be
paying $1,350.00 just for the questions so far. It would probably hit
$10,000.00 by the time we were done. And all for things MS should have
documented.

As for mswish, that is of no use for stuff being shipped now. Besides, I am
sure others have asked mswish for complete documentation before.

And as for microsoft.public.office.xml, there are no replies from MS people
there for anything.

I assume this is your final answer. I hope you don't mind but I will include
this answer in an email I am sending to Steve Sinofsky (I know hime from when
I worked at MS) as I think not providing complete documentation for WordML is
a bad idea.

thanks - dave

[Kevin Yu [MSFT]]

Hi Dave,

Thank you very much for your suggestion. I wouldn't mind if you include my
replies. HTH.

[David Thielen]

I did.

thanks - dave