Why Microsoft Word is _still_ bad for your health

I’ve pointed many people to this article I wrote entitled “Why Microsoft Word May Be Bad For Your Health”. I wrote it five years ago (2002) and much of what I said is still relevant. However, I am planning to write an updated version soon, to take on board a number of interesting changes which have taken place in that time.

In particular, I plan to cover the following issues:

• Open Document Format (ODF): in my original article I made a reference to some future “XML-based” document format. This now exists and is in use by some applications; it was really only a vague idea in 2002. See this description for some details. ODF is now a real, bona fide, ISO standard. It is the default document storage format for OpenOffice too and has the potential to become a widely-used document format, which can be used without fear of lock-in to Microsoft’s DOC format;
• OpenOffice: in 2002, OpenOffice was very new and was pre-version-1.0 when I wrote my original article. OpenOffice is now well established and is the Office suite of choice for pretty-much every non-Windows PC system in existence. It uses ODF and, if needs must, can read/write DOC files too.
• Microsoft’s “OpenXML”: Microsoft clearly see ODF as a very real threat to their business model, precisely because it is so good for consumers. ODF will allow people to avoid lock-in to an office suite which is proprietary and expensive. So, in response to the arrival of ODF (which was backed by basically every large software organisation except Microsoft), Microsoft decided to release their own “open document format”, called OpenXML. Clearly this was for selfish business reasons, because from a common-sense point of view, you can very easily argue that Microsoft are completely missing the point. “Erm, we already have ODF, why on earth would we want another, new format; specifically, one steered by Microsoft?” Clearly, Microsoft recognise the threat that ODF poses and wish to derail it. They applied for a ‘fast-track’ to make OpenXML an ISO standard, which fortunately several countries (including the UK) had the sense to block. This is ongoing, however. The real ‘evil’ about OpenXML is that it includes many references to the behaviour of various Microsoft applications (including MS Word) indicating that that application’s behaviour determines how the document should be stored or presented: that’s not the job (or indeed the point) of an open document format. In order to reinforce their position of pushing OpenXML while attempting to sideline ODF, Microsoft has made it the default document storage format for their newest version of Office. I guess no-one is surprised;

If anyone can suggest any further points which should be included in this updated article, please make them as a comment to this post: thanks.