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This is the third and final post on the topic of the artificial complexity of the OOXML format. This complexity is the result of careful design aimed at preventing interoperability. Developers have to deal with a veritable “maze” of tags, even for the simplest content. This binds users to the Microsoft ecosystem, providing the first example of standard-based lock-in. The PPTX case To demonstrate the difference in complexity between Impress and PowerPoint XML schemas in ODF and OOXML formats, I created a simple eight-slide presentation summarising the most common types: title and subtitle, centred text, bulleted list, table, vector image, photo, colour graphics and video. I created the same file using both software programmes, starting from a basic template without a background to prevent interference with the slide format and, consequently, the XML schema. This is the PDF file of the presentation (the first seven slides are identical, while the video on the last slide is replaced by a static image): To perform the analysis, I duplicated and renamed the two files, replacing the original extension with ‘ZIP’, and then unzipped them to create two folders containing all the files from their respective XML schemas. The LibreOffice folder is very

The complexity of the OOXML format is linked to its design and was deliberately created to make the format more difficult for non-Microsoft software developers to implement. Compatibility issues are caused by a veritable “maze” of tags used even for the simplest content, which binds users to the Microsoft ecosystem in the first example of standard-based lock-in. The DOCX case To demonstrate the difference in complexity between the XML schemas of Writer and Word text documents in the ODF and OOXML formats, I used two classic English theatre plays: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. I downloaded the text versions of these works from Project Gutenberg — a library of classic texts for which US copyright has expired — and deleted the introductions and conclusions added by Project Gutenberg, without making any other changes. I then repeated this process for both documents. I copied all the text and pasted it, without any formatting, into two newly created blank documents. For Writer, I used the template that I usually use for unstructured documents; for Word, I did not use a template. This means that, in Writer, the XML schema contains information about the template (margins, paragraph