Open XML timeline

posted by  varson (7)  15 months ago (blogs.msdn.com)

I posted on this earlier in the year, but I thought it was worth repeating, as I've seen a number of threads lately that question why Microsoft originally created Open XML rather than going with ODF. As you'll see from the timeline below, both formats were actually developed in parallel, and had very different design goals.

1998

• September - Beta version of Office 2000 released with HTML support in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. XML was used for vector markup (VML); metadata; thicket manifest; and presentation information.