Docvert 3.0 Lessens Reliance On Microsoft Office

An anonymous reader writes "After 10 months of development Docvert 3.0 was released today. This open source web service converts DOC files to Oasis OpenDocument 1.0, and then to HTML, RSS, or any XML format. Try the ODF demo or download the source and install it on your own box. Version 3.0 comes with an MS Word Plugin, FTP/WebDAV upload, and an in-browser document editor."

Comments

Re:It promises to be an interesting battle

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

All true, but if it does get adopted as a standard, then MS can use this to ensure the continued use of MS Office by government agencies around the globe. If it doesn't get adopted, MS will be under pressure to provide a supported, native, OOD format.

And the sad thing is...

[Durkheim]

...Some people think its fine that way. A friend of mine, quite pro-ms, told me that all those little strange things in the specification where normal to have backwards compatibility, and that reading the specification was a waste of time. Instead, he directed me towards a preview of Ms office 2007. Because for him, as for many more, what's important is the final product, the cuteness of the buttons, the way it works and displays its own format. Why bother using a free program that displays word documents badly, when Office is already perfect huh? I feel so misunderstood sometimes. What makes me sad is that they don't see the use of a clear straight-to-the-point format. Maybe only geeks can be horrified by this one.

Re:Open XML is a transliteration

[TheRaven64]

The design requirement of Microsoft's XML format was (obviously) that it be possible to convert existing Word documents to it without any loss. In order to do this, there must be a one-to-one mapping between the .DOC semantics and the OpenXML semantics.

The second design requirement was that the spec be developed and released quickly, before ODF had time to gain much traction. Between these two objectives, it's hardly surprising that it ended up the way it did...