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Open XML Translator for Microsoft Word Available

Posted by Zonk on from the translate-the-night-away dept.

narramissic writes "The first phase of a Microsoft-funded project to create software that can convert Microsoft Word documents between Open XML and Open Document Format (ODF) has been completed. As a result, the Open XML Translator is now available for download in version 1.0 from SourceForge.net. A ComputerWorld article details the history of the project, discussing the work of companies like CleverAge and AztecSoft, as well as community efforts to bring this project to realization."

4 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Relation to Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And how's this related to Linux? It is just a ODF - OpenXML convertor for Windows.

  2. Re:Why is this such a big thing? by Kadin2048 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The idea is that it would let Microsoft Word users do the conversion, and save their documents in ODF, rather than leaving them in DOC and requiring OpenOffice users to do the conversion.

    The big difference is which format the documents get stored in. If they're being stored in DOC, then you're still mostly at the mercy of Microsoft; it's easy for someone to open the document in some new version of Word, save it, and silently move it into some new MS-created "binary blob" format, breaking backwards compatibility.

    So basically, a converter would let states like Massachusetts start to move away from DOC as the de facto standard format for electronic documents. They'd probably still use it as an editing format, because I don't see them tossing Word for OO.org anytime soon, but it would help get rid of the huge "silos" of DOC stuff that's sitting around, getting silent migrated from one version of Microsoft's formats to the next.

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  3. Excel and Power Point promised by Nov. 07 by schwaang · · Score: 2, Insightful
    From the Microsoft press release:

    The second phase of the translator project, including translators for Spreadsheet (Microsoft Office Excel®) and Presentation (Microsoft Office PowerPoint®), will begin in February. Regular customer technology previews will be posted to SourceForge.net beginning in May 2007, and the final versions are scheduled to be available for customers in November 2007.
    One thing I'm wondering is how to automatically keep the OpenXML translator up to date on windows. If you install it from the MS Office Downloads site, will WindowsUpdate just keep it updated for you?
  4. What's the point? by protactin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's the point if the add-in doesn't allow ODF to be set as the default file type, or even used via the Save As menu?

    Hopefully the Word "interop" API actually allows for this sort of thing to be properly integrated.