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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. Utilize isn't the same as support by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's one thing to read/write a document format through a filter.

    It's another to utilize the format, i.e., as the underlying default storage format.

  2. How to get the State of MA to upgrade by lseltzer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, it's kind of clever: Support it, but only in the new version.

  3. Support by TechJones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MS Office also had support for WordPerfect files. If you want to have the leading Office software you must have support for your competition. OpenOffice has support for Word documents so it comes as no suprise that MS would do the same.

  4. ODF Is Sweeping Through Governments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft has no choice. Either they will support the format, in a usable form, or be increasingly left out of government, city/state/country level, contracts.

    I am surprised at how quickly ODF is becoming a must have feature. It makes perfect sense of course, but I think so many people have gotten so use to the "Microsoft is always the winner" mentality that they are having a hard time imagining that anyone would mandate an open format for documents.

  5. 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.

  6. Not "Open Office XML format" by John+Hasler · · Score: 5, Informative

    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".

    --
    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  7. Denial by debilo · · Score: 5, Informative

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