We have two new articles on the site today, both from Sanjay Kumar Madhva. Each covers a slightly different task related to Open XML programming, and each is implemented on a different development platform.

"Open XML Document Image Conversion" is the 3rd article in Sanjay's series on working with Open XML Formats in Java. It shows how to extract a large BMP image from a word processing document, convert it to a smaller PNG, and replace the larger image with the smaller one.

The original intent of this article was to demonstrate a technique for compressing a large document that is bloated with embedded BMPs, but to Sanjay's surprise he found that the ZIP compression of a typical BMP screen shot in an Open XML package is so good that there's not really any room for improvement via this technique. Nonetheless, this article is a good example of how to replace embedded media in an Open XML document for those working in Java environments.

The second article, "Creating an Open XML Document in .NET," takes a look at how to write user-entered text into a newly created Open XML document. It's a very simple starting point for such applications, showing the basics of how to generate an Open XML document from scratch using the new WinFX packaging API. Logical future extensions to this application would include using an RTF control and capturing more complex formatting, and implementing the same concepts in a web application.