MS Office 12 To Utilize ODF?

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."

Comments

Re:How to get the State of MA to upgrade

[ThogScully]

This doesn't mean that MA can't switch to OpenOffice if they think it's the better solution for them. This does mean that they can use ODF files and *expect* everyone else to be able to open them. If someone can't because they're running Office, then they can just upgrade. This puts the expense of using Office and upgrading Office on the people who are forcing it down everyone else's throats. I don't use Office, but I do recognize a problem with exchanging documents with those who do. I generally save as Doc files for them and try to verify on another person's machine that it will open correctly. It's good to know that I may be able to just send them ODF files from now on.
-Neil

Looks Like Conversion Is One Way

[canfirman]

By looking at the SourceForge project description it says, "This project aims at providing a plugin for Microsoft Word 2003 XML to open OpenOffice XML documents." It doesn't say that it converts Word XML format to OpenOffice XML format. So it's really not a true converter, because it won't allow you to save back into OpenOffice format.

I find it interesting that Microsoft will support other document formats (such as WordPerfect - is anybody using that anymore?) but not OpenDocument.

Not "Open Office XML format"

[John Hasler]

It isn't the "Open Office XML format". It's the OASIS Open Document Format. Microsoft is attempting to confuse the issue by deliberately confounding "Open Office" and Open Document".

Denial

[debilo]

Apparently, Microsoft has already denied this.
I got that on OSNews.com yesterday.

Re:Have you opened ODF in a text editor?

[shis-ka-bob]

Unzip the odf. (rename it filename.zip and doubleclick). Now, look at the XML file named content.xml

Well that's MS's own damn fault

[BobPaul]

* OpenDocument Format is a legal mine-field. As stated previously OpenDocument is a subset of MsOffice format,

Microsoft is ALSO an Open Document committee member (and has been for many years). They've had ample opportunity to ensure that the OpenDocument format supports everything that they need it to.

Since OpenDocument has been painstakenly crafted as Extensionable XML, there should be no problem with Microsoft Extending the standard to add support for anything that is not currently included, provided they do so using Pure XML without any of the binary nuggets they've included in their own XML format. If they extend the format properly through the OpenDocument committee, then their updates can become part of the standard rather than being a fork (which definately would give Microsoft a lot of flak.)

Licensing on the ODF is actually very liberal and Sun, the only IP owner for anything related to the ODF, has already released an IP claims relating to the use of ODF. This is something they can't sue Microsoft over anymore.

--
Bob/Paul