> Why should the file saved by Word not be readable by A or B?  A and B will 
> just ignore the parts they don't need.

Because you are choosing a situation that fits a best case for
the standard. Let us say that A and B are both word processors,
to the end user of A it makes sense to load up a document that
has the same extention as documents produced by A, even if
they came from B. Now lets say that A uses VML and B
uses DrawingML, the document from B probably will not
look right in A, even though both programs will claim to be
ISO compliant (but are only partially). At the same time MS
will be able to load documents from A and B and save them
using special MS markup that neither A or B understand.

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