[nailer]

As someone who writes an Open Source OpenXML decoder I find it way easier than COM. The OpenXML specification docs are comprehensive, when there's a problem - usually detected by OpenOffice's parser as Word is very forgiving - the specs have a specific answer.

There's good development tools including a Firebox style Xpath app for Word too.

The main issue is MS Office 2007 and 2010 generating the legacy OpenXML formats by default, which include a world of possible features including quite a few from Lotus 123. There's too many edge cases to handle, and this isn't the right format for docs made this year.

[blasdel]

'decode' was probably the wrong word to use there — how about 'consume'?