Science magazine, among others such as
Nature, have announced
they will not accept submissions in the Microsoft Office 2007 MS-OOXML format:
Users of Word 2007 should also be aware that equations created with the default equation editor included in Microsoft Word 2007 will be unacceptable in revision, even if the file is converted to a format compatible with earlier versions of Word; this is because conversion will render equations as graphics and prevent electronic printing of equations, and because the default equation editor packaged with Word 2007 -- for reasons that, quite frankly, utterly baffle us -- was not designed to be compatible with MathML. Regrettably, we will be forced to return any revised manuscript created with the Word 2007 default equation editor to authors for re-editing. To get around this, please use the MathType equation editor or the equation editor included in previous versions of Microsoft Word.Microsoft's choice to invent a new "Open Math Markup Language" rather then use the well-established existing standard,
MathML, is already hurting Office 2007 adoption by the professional class. Science and Nature should consider updating their templates in
ODF. As Rob Wier notes: "Not only does it use MathML for equations, but it is an open standard, an ISO standard, a platform and application-neutral standard that has
many implementations, including several good open source ones."
2007 is a decisive year. You can keep your =<2003.doc files, but you're not going to get 100% compatibility with Office 2007's MS-OOXML. Similarly for ODF — the 2003 .doc conversion is very good, but not perfect. Either way, you'll want to go forward. If you're in academia or government, don't stake your future on MS-OOXML, much less write any new theses or dissertations using it. And
here, Microsoft's Platform Strategy Manager Bill Hilf explains how "was a part of the software and that OOXML and the software (MS Office) are quite inseparable. Ergo, OOXML is an integral and inseparable part of MS Office" (as IE is "part" of Windows?!).
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More reading:
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/higher_costs_due_to_increasedhttp://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/03/day_1_microsoft.html________________________________________________
