Hi:
Perhaps that's a typo in the paper or perhaps Microsoft issued a plug-in to make Office 2000 read Spreadsheet ML. I don't know which one applies. I know that when I tried (on a different computer) to open Spreadsheet ML files in Excel 2000, I only saw the unrendered XML. Now that I have Office 2007 on that computer, I can no longer do a test. You might want to check with Tech Support for sure.
At this Microsoft web site, however, they are fairly clear that Spreadsheet Markup Language goes with Excel 2003:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb226687(office.11).aspx
...and then, this page refers to Excel 2002 and Spreadsheet ML:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa140062.aspx
But I could not find any references to Excel 2000 being used with Spreadsheet Markup Language XML on the Microsoft site. In this blog, by Brian Jones (of Microsoft), I did find this Intro to Spreadsheet ML:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2006.01.blogtales.aspx
in which he says:
"To get you started, I’ll build a sample in XML that will illustrate how it all works. As you follow along, you can use Office XP or Office 2003 for this example since both support SpreadsheetML in their versions of Excel." (He doesn't refer to Office 2000. I thought Office XP was Office 2002.)
cynthia