Hey, is there any OOXML validator for the Mac? Or is there any on line validation service that can tell me where the problem is in my machine generated file?

I'm working on a webapp that needs to generate Open XML files and Office 2008 for Mac really isn't enough to debug those files because it doesn't tell me where the problem is in case there is some....

Well, I found out a very interesting thing. OOXML files created by zipping files and folders in OS X's Finder are treated by Office 2007 and 2008 for Mac as corrupted -- not because their XML sources, but because of bad archive format, probably.

I zipped the very same content in Vista and both versions of Office did not have any problems with opening it.

Zipped in muCommander -- the same problem.

Anyone with the same problem? (or similar?)

I think I found out where is the problem. Office (and OpenOffice.org 3.0 too, I think) chokes on a OOXML file, that has been zipped with ".DS_Files" and other files starting with ".", that are not visible in standard mode on a Mac...

I tried zipping a file on Windows, including these files, and the same error occured.

Anyone to confirm this...?

I am having the same problem. Did you have any progress?

Or do you at least know why exactly those files starting with . cause problems?

Developing software which generates OOXML is very hard without a validator. There are online validator for OpenDocument.

I don't know what causes the dot files problem -- for now its enough for me to know that they should not be there.

What troubles me more is the ultimate ignorance Microsoft shows towards people who want to produce OOXML using something different than .NET and MS tools... Lack of on-line platform independent validator is unbelievable...

I wonder whether MS really thinks it's position in document formats in unshakeable. Well, it is not. The next Office should support ODF so if MS continues to behave like this, I will just stop supporting OOXML export in my products... why should I?

I can create a small validator-tool for you (using the Open XML SDK's excellent validation logic), but it will be a .net assembly, so you need to be able to run Windows programs (perhaps in a VM-box?). If you know someone who can host .NET websites, I could create a validator-website as well.

Let me know if you're interested. (all 4 free ofcoz)

I created a .NET console application which can validate all types of OOXML-packages. It requires the .NET Framework 3.5 and the Open XML Format SDK to be installed.

You can find it here: http://ooxmlvalidator.codeplex.com/

I updated the validator: it now uses the new SDK (August '09 CTP) which comes with even richer validation logic!