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

Please recommend compliance validation tools

[statusbar]

One of the things that bugs me are these 'enormous specifications' that are inconsistent. What we need is not just a document, but the tools necessary to verify a generated file. Not just for valid XML, but for all the little microsofty-bits hidden inside.

--jeffk++

Deja Vu Docvert

[ei4anb]

Way back before the web I worked in a Unix shop that was a development lab for a big multinational. Head office kept sending us e-mail with large MS Word attachments. We got tierd of having to go down to the library, where we kept the only PeeCee in the department, just to see what was in the attachment.

I solved the issue by writing a program that ran on a Windows PC (an old one that had been discarded and was gathering dust in the closet) that received SMTP mail, detached the Word attachment, started up Microsoft's Word Viewer to read the attachment, then "printed" it to a file in PDF format and finaly SMTP mailed it back to the sender.

From then on all we had to do was forward the email to the robot and wait for a readable version to bounce back. As I used Microsoft's own Word Viewer there were no problems whenever a new version of Word came out, I just downloaded the latest viewer :-)

Re:Deja Vu Docvert

[multipartmixed]

UNIX shop... before the web... only one PC... rendering to -- PDF?!

I think I smell a tiny fib.

I would have believed you if you had told me that you used Windows' (native since 3.1) Apple Laserwriter printer driver set up to print to a file, then mailed the resulting (PostScript) file to yourself to print or view with GhostScript/gv.

Well, except that I didn't think the Word viewer was released until either '95 (or as late as '97?), and it was released because MS broke the Word 6.0 (Office 4.3) document format, which was in fairly widespread use at the time (putting Wordperfect 5.1 out of business).

Re:It promises to be an interesting battle

[CastrTroy]

What are the implications if it does get adopted as a standard? Can anybody implement for free? Can MS get fined for saying they support the standard when in fact their software actually does not (ala, Java, CSS, HTML, Kerberos, and others). If we could just get MS to follow some standard and actually implement it as the standard as written, then I think we could get long way to interoperability with MS word. If it's an open standard, and MS can't just go ahead and change it whenever, and they have to actually follow it, then what does it matter who made up the standard?

Re:Open XML is a transliteration

[cnettel]

Well, the XML notation for Office 2003 was even more so. They broke that one now, and some changes are to the better. The requirement to be able to represent just about anything that was possible in the previous versions, faithfully, is still a great contaminant, as you say.

Now We'll Now...

[segedunum]

...whether ISO has simply become a dumping ground for people simply wanting to market their stuff as standards (ECMA), or a real standards body.

As it is, there is not a snowball in hell's chance that OpenXML can become an ISO standard. It is simply a dump of the existing awful doc format into a nice incomprehensible 6000 page document, and it doesn't even use existing ISO standards. There's even a set group of banners and bullet points defined in there which can by no stretch of the imagination be called international.

I know Microsoft has managed to butter the ECMA up as their usual standards dumping ground, but I simply cannot see how they can get past the shortcomings in that article. To do so would be a huge amount of work (and Office 2007 is already using this format) and it would threaten their Office monopoly - which is what this obfuscation was about in the first place.

Re:I originally read OOXML ...

[MoxFulder]

But let's assume that this OOXML thing get through the approval process... with an open standard anyone can make import/export functionality for MS Office documents in non-MS applications. From iWork to KOffice to OpenOffice and whatever else is out there, will there be any need to have MS Office in order to read, edit, and forward on "MS Office documents?" To me, it seems like MS is creating a way for everyone else to erode their market share.

Indeed... that would be nice. Try reading the article to find out all the obstacles Microsoft has thrown down to actually prevent this interoperability from ever happening :-)