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MS Office 12 To Utilize ODF?

Posted by Zonk on from the humble-pie dept.

J. Random Luser writes "Groklaw is carrying a story about Microsoft quietly engaging a French company to develop Open Document filters for Office 12, due out mid-2006. The SourceForge project claims to be an import filter for MS Office, and that is how the developer describes it. But ZDNet quotes Ray Ozzie as talking about an export filter from MS Office, and this french blog takes Ozzie at his word. Ostensibly the tarball unpacks as OpenOfficePlugin, and SourceForge has the WindowsInstaller.msi listed as 'platform independent'." From the ZDNet article: "Ozzie told me that supporting ODF in Office isn't a matter of principle. Microsoft isn't opposed to supporting other formats. The company just announced support for PDF, and he added that the Open Office XML format has an 'extremely liberal' license."

7 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. It's irrelevant by Bloke+down+the+pub · · Score: 2, Funny
    The article says they've hired a French company. With their 23 hour week, 14 weeks annual holiday (and never mind cheese breaks and strikes), it'll never be finished.

    And even if it is, it won't work.

    --
    It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
    1. Re:It's irrelevant by m4dm4n · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yes it will, it'll just automatically translate the document into badly done, babelfish style, French.

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      No France
  2. PDF Support? by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 3, Funny

    The company just announced support for PDF

    I imagine that this will add extra features to PDFs which Adobe's (or anyone elses) Reader won't be able to handle.

    Except Microsoft's Reader, obviously.

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    Summation 2
  3. Re:Support by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2, Funny
    OpenOffice has support for Word documents so it comes as no suprise that MS would do the same.

    Indeed it would be a big surprise if MS didn't include support for Word documents even if OOo wouldn't :-)
    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  4. Microsoft playing catch-up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    They've heard that Open Office is beating them in bloat, and are scrambling to get back on top.

  5. Quiet by squoozer · · Score: 3, Funny
    ...quietly engaging a French company...

    Not very quietly it would seem.

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    I used to have a better sig but it broke.
  6. Re:Platform what? by HawkingMattress · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yep, it's totally platform independant as it will run on 9x and NT !