I can't afford the $350 for M$-Office. I use the latest OpenOffice daily. You can use OOo convert .doc to xml formats as well. There are open source .doc conversion libraries and info.
Wikipedia .doc article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.doc
Wikipedia .rtf article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format
SourceForge wvWare: http://wvware.sourceforge.net/
M$ Open Promise(oh really, really!) :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Open_Specification_Promise
XML Copy Editor is well positioned for applications that use xml schemes for health care, legal, and anywhere document preparation is necessary
Cheers