Microsoft Office 2007 to Support ODF - But Not OOXML

Andy Updegrove writes "About two hours ago, Microsoft announced that it will update Office 2007 to natively support ODF 1.1, but not to implement its own OOXML format. Not until Office 14 is released (no date given so far for that) will anyone be able to buy an OOXML ISO-compliant version. Why will Microsoft do this after so many years of refusal? Perhaps because the only way it can deliver a product to government customers that meets an ISO/IEC document format standard is by finally taking the plunge, and supporting 'that other format.' Still, many questions remain, such as when this upgrade will actually be released, how good a job it will do, and whether the API Microsoft has said it will make available to permit developers to supply 'save to ODF' default plugins will be supported by a patent non-assertion promise allowing implementations under the GPL (the upgrade supplied by Microsoft will not allow ODF as the default setting)."

Comments

OOXML is not an ISO standard

[lkcl]

well - only if microsoft is able to buy their way through the standards process will anyone be able to buy an OOXML ISO-compliant version.

UKUUG is currently waiting on the UK judicial system to decide whether to do a judicial review of the British Standards Institute's recent decision to ratify OOXML.

clonking "comments" together in blocks of 100 for vote "yes no", towards the end of the (only) 5 day process, smells a bit fishy. especially as the comments weren't actually reviewed as having been actioned / corrected (in the 6,000 page document).

the BSI came up with something ridiculous like 900 comments on the 6,000 page document.

it's all incredibly fishy - long story. far too much to fit into one silly slashdot comment, so i'll stop.

Re:Victory

[peragrin]

Well they won't be able to call it ODF, but unless someone complains MSFt will anyways.

Sort of like how SCO still claims to own UNIX when the Open group owns the trademark, and Novell owns the copyrights.

Correction on "save to" capability

[Andy Updegrove]

Kevin J. O'Brien, reporting in the International Herald Tribune, reports that the ODF update will in fact permit users to "adjust Office 2007 settings to automatically save documents in the rival format." A knowledgeable source tells me that this report is likely to be accurate.

Andy

Re:Not embrace and extend, but embrace and squeeze

[CastrTroy]

Well, I guess the answer to that is, if you want a format that maintains your formatting perfectly down to the pixel across all implementations of the standard, then you had better go with PDF (or TIFF). But if you want a format you can easily edit and pass between colleagues, without worrying too much about how the formatting is going to be a little off, then go with ODF, DOC, or some other word processing format. No word processing format looks the same across all platforms. Even something as simple as using a different printer can cause problems with the same version of MS Word opening it's own doc files. If formatting is so important that you can' have things be moved around a little bit, then use PDF.

Re:They walk on ice.

[truthsearch]

"Retail sales of Office products from January through June [2007] were roughly double those of Office 2003 during its first six months on the market and up 59.6 percent from Office sales for the first six months of [2006]" - Source

Not exactly the failure you describe.

Re:Victory

[prockcore]

Nonsense, ODF has it written in the spec to allow proprietary extensions. MS can add whatever they want and still call it ODF.

A bit misleading

[harlows_monkeys]

The summary is a bit misleading. Current Office 2007 documents fail to validate as transitional OOXML because of some very minor differences. For example, the final standard changed an attribute value from "yes/no" to "true/false".

All major ODF implementations, including OpenOffice, fail to validate against ISO ODF 1.0 for similar reasons.

Thus, to make some big deal of Microsoft not immediately slipstreaming in an update to Office to 100% conform to OOXML, while ignoring the fact that OpenOffice still doesn't fully conform to ODF so long after ODF 1.0 was ratified is a bit hypocritical.

Will be in Office 2007 SP2, link to press release

[quazee]

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/may08/05-21ExpandedFormatsPR.mspx

Also, ODF will be allowed to be configured as the default format for documents.
SP2 will also include support for PDF and XPS export.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Victory

[shentino]

Actually, no matter what extensions they write, they must remain compatible with the base standard.

If you break the standard in the process of adding an extension, then you are in violation of the standard.

I almost thought Micro$oft went good

[jopsen]

"About two hours ago, Microsoft announced that it will update Office 2007 to natively support ODF 1.1, but not to implement its own OOXML format.

I almost thought Microsoft went good... but then it came:

Not until Office 14 is released (no date given so far for that) will anyone be able to buy an OOXML ISO-compliant version.

But they had me there for a moment... Just for 2 secound I actually thought they were going to do something good - without a ulterior motive... But they're still implementing OOXML in the future...

Re:Victory

[_Sprocket_]

Microsoft Bob.

Re:Sinking Ship.

[fosterNutrition]

You missed the ~ at the end of the sentence. In case you haven't seen the sigs and small discussions about it, the tilde (~) has been repurposed to indicate sarcasm.

Re:An Empire in Rapid Decline, said Time Magazine.

[holloway]

All we really need, then, is an ACID test for ODF, in which we can show that OpenOffice, KOffice, Google Docs, and even isolated projects like AbiWord and Gnumeric do better than Office, thus shaming Microsoft into doing it right. That assumes they don't get it right the first time, although that does seem unlikely.

This is what Rob Weir has proposed (he's an ODF chair).

Re:Victory

[holloway]

The ODF spec says that,

"An implementation shall be accompanied by a document that defines all implementation-defined and locale-specific characteristics and all extensions."

(emphasis mine)

So there's what you ask from MS Office.