Plugins for Microsoft Office for OpenOffice Documents?

DeBaas asks: "We are all in favour of getting Open Standards in place so that we can happily use Open/Star/K Office or whatever without the nagging problem: The Microsoft Office users cannot read our files correctly. Much of the focus is on providing filters to be able to make and read Microsoft Office files. However, should it not be the other way around, as well? Would it be feasible to make an open source project providing a plugin to MS office so that it can read and write in our preferred open format. Sort of a 'save as open document standard'. Is there a legal problem?, a technical problem? (is it already possible?) I would love it if I could send documents in OpenOffice knowing the other site can actually use and see it the way I meant to, even with MicroSoft Office."

Comments

Re:Not worth it.

[fogof]

- Even though, these 2 formats will save layout, you will still lose alot of it.

- HTML sucks for printers. (Especially when it comes to page seperation )

- RTF files have a tendency to be oversised when you embed images in your files. Try this: Type a document in word, put 7 large images, save as .doc and as .rtf now compare the file sizes.

Native formats are the best thing for making shure that you keep the intended formating.

RTF/HTML doesn't cut it

[OldMiner]

I'm afraid your solution seemed promising to me at one time as well, but it doesn't work. HTML is not a WYSIWYG language, it shouldn't be, and that's what is frequently needed in papers professional enough to hand in at work/college. And RTF doesn't render many things reliable from one application to another.

Most notably, I've found very serious table issues using when saving something as RTF from Word. Different versions of Word and Wordpad rendered it differently. Ultimately, the only solution for a reliable RTF that I've found is to stick with Wordpad entirely. Afraid that doesn't cut it when I need features found in Word simultaneously such as a self-generating table of contents/index/footnotes, complex page numbering, and so on. Further, RTF doesn't appear to have the capability to generate complicated table structures I need. (This is anectdotal -- I've never saved something complicated in RTF and had it preserved. I do not know for sure whether the format supports it, but the tools I use for it do not.)

Myself, I've only recently discovered OpenOffice.org due to the large amount of talk about it on Slashdot. I haven't used it much. Almost all of the writing I've needed to do lately has been hand, plain-text, or HTML.

But my girlfriend is a chemical engineer minoring in computer science. She didn't have the least bit of trouble with data structures. But she had never heard of OpenOffice.Org until I mentioned it to her recently. Her computer came with Microsoft Works which has interesting problems dealing with Microsoft Office. As such, she was restricted to doing most of her reports at school because her spreadsheets and reports didn't transfer well enough to justify the time of reformating. She hadn't heard of OpenOffice.Org until I mentioned it to her. At present, its ability to convert Microsoft Office documents has made her life easier.

Now here we have a relatively young person who is very technically proficient who could have benefited greatly from a product, but didn't for a long time because she didn't know. Do we see an advantage in increasing the visibility of this product in any fashion possible?

Re:That seems like a good idea at first, but...

[Bastian]

Something like this can easily be avoided by all office programs being able to easily comply with AT LEAST one open format.

But they all already comply to at least one open format that I know of - namely, rich text format.

To avoid the problem, you'd have to either have all office software agree on a common native format, or have all office software able to read/write the data for all other office software.

HTML will stop sucking for printers

[yerricde]

HTML sucks for printers. (Especially when it comes to page seperation )

HTML sucks, but the forthcoming CSS Paged Media won't.

Type a document in word, put 7 large images, save as .doc and as .rtf now compare the file sizes.

Now zip both files. If they're about the same size, you've found a solution to the problem.