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Sun Releases ODF plugin for Microsoft Office
Verunks writes "Microsoft Word users now can easily import and export to the OpenDocument Format. The StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology Preview, a plug-in for Microsoft Word 2003 that allows users of Microsoft Word 2003 to read, edit and save to the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is now available"
for Office 2007 to come out. I wonder if MS will let this plugin be compatible with 2007 or if they will let Sun work it out for themselves.
je suis parce que j'aime
With the release of this plugin, Sun delivers a real punch to Microsoft's testes.
Hopefully corporate executives and managers take a careful look at this situation. They need to realize what Sun and Microsoft are actually bringing to the table. Sun is bringing openness, compatibility, and portability. On the other hand, Microsoft is bringing proprietaries, incompatibility, and importability. Sun is for what benefits their customers. Microsoft is for what benefits themselves. And I'd rather deal with the vendor who at least partially has my interests in mind. That vendor is thusly not Microsoft.
Erm...
:)
Isn't this HUGE?
Doesn't this allow ms office and openoffice users to share files in perfect fidelity and slow migrate away from dependency and lockin of office?
Why isn't this on the front page? Or is this another misleading headline?
For better or worse, at least -someone- is trying to make inroads towards interopability/convenience with ODF. As usual with probably-the-best-way-to-go-but-unpopular-since-it -isnt-microsoft technologies lately, that someone just happens to be Sun. Again...
is it possible to import ods (Oo,kspread) based spreadsheets into MS Excel as well?
i hate having to fire up O.o just to convert the ods spreadsheet i created in kspread, sorry Sun
guys kspread is just more responsive and faster to load, to xls files for others to view.
My experience with Sun products - Star Office before being open sourced to Open Office, Java, Solaris, have all left a bad taste in my mouth for stability/reliability reasons.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Why does it want me to register?
That was really unpleasantly painful. Put "new york, ny, 10002" for city and zip because it will bitch if it thinks city, state and zip don't "match". Just unbelievable. It didn't seem to need my real email address either, because I was able to progress to the download (after a few more clickthrough loops) without being mailed anything.
Wow. Care to dash your credibility any further? By admitting that you weren't even the admin means that you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
... you are critical of a company for software/hardware that someone else was administering, so who knows how it might have been installed or configured. Additionally, you don't even know the architecture that was being used with a vague statement about a server sometime between 2000-2004. Do you have any idea of how many dozens of different styles of servers that Sun released in that time? Was it even a server that was released in that frame or was it an older box that was still hanging around? You might as well say, "I had reliability problems with a car made by [insert company here] sometime between 2000 and 2004, but I was just a passenger."
So, let me get this straight
And you expect us to take your statements about Solaris/Java/OO with any seriousness? You accuse me of inaccuracy when you yourself have no credible knowledge of the environment that you were criticizing?
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Learn to use the right tool for the right job, people!
Wasting a gmail account for that will only end up making all semi-decent accounts unavailable, just like hotmail.
Mailinator is the right tool for that, remember it.
(and don't forget to leave a copy of the account details on bugmenot, too)
GPG 0x1B479C78
I know that Google's word processing and spreadsheet offerings are hardly as feature-rich(?) as Microsoft's, but isn't it only a matter of time before most business software goes online? We used to balk at the idea of putting our data "in the cloud" and using online solutions for these applications, but with the growth in webmail usage greatly outpacing the use of desktop clients and the many many cost benefits of using online services rather than desktop-enabled sotware, isn't it really a matter of time before document formats become a problem of the past?
Next time I want to send a coworker a copy of that great new budget spreadsheet I just finished working on, I'll just give him a link to it on Google. No more software compatibility issues as long as he's using a fairly recent web browser. If I'm using software features that weren't available in last year's release, it doesn't matter, because all users of the software upgrade simultaneously, so I know he'll see my graphs exactly the way I want them to appear.
I don't expect all user applications to go online, but surely the office suite is perfectly suited for it. Sun's efforts to get ODF supported in Office are admirable, but I'd rather people worry about open access and formats for the online applications in this market since that seems to be the real future (and the real threat to MS). Let's push for multi-browser support in Google (already pretty good really) and the ability to download documents in ODF format if necessary or the ability to encrypt them on the server and have some assurance of privacy. Taking on MS Office with another desktop suite or a document standard seems kind of old-fashioned at this point in time.
Now I can send documents in OpenDocument format to everyone and when they say "hey, I don't know how to open this thing you sent me", I can tell them "well, you can either use OpenOffice or get the converter". ;)
The rest of the conversation would be something like this:
- Hey, but the converter is only available for Office 2003 and 2007, I only have XP and I don't want to spend $100+ on a new version of MS Office!
- Well, you can either buy it or switch to the another Office software, if you want to read the documents I sent you.
- I will not! Why should someone be forced to buy or use something against his will, just to open someone else's documents??
- Exactly...
OK, has anyone tried it yet? Does it fix the glaring flaw in the Microsoft-sponsored plugin which doesn't add ODF as a format in the "Save As..." menu? In other words, does the Sun plugin work properly as a file format among others, and can it be set as the default file format?
... http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/ ?? It's already out there for a while now!!
Shame it's not supported - governments won't use it.
.doc formats again for another term (not sure how long the term is though).
I'm pretty sure Australian governments are just about to declare they are standardising on
Business software isn't the be-all and end-all. As long as there are home/private users there'll be a market for standalone software. Not everyone has internet access; of those who do, most are still on dial-up; and of those who are on broadband, a non-negligible number have bandwidth caps. Standalone software isn't going anywhere.