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The software giant on Thursday launched the Open XML Translator project on SourceForge.net, a popular site for hosting code-sharing projects. The software will be available under the BSD open-source license.
The software, developed by a France-based Microsoft partner, will allow people to use Microsoft Office to open and save documents in the OpenDocument, or ODF, format.
Although Microsoft Office document formats are the most widely used, OpenDocument has emerged as an alternative with significant vendor backing and with high-profile government customers in Massachusetts and Belgium. OpenDocument is an XML-based format developed under the standards group OASIS, or the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards.
The decision to manage the project is something of a reversal for Microsoft. Until now, it said that it would not natively support OpenDocument in Office, citing lack of demand. Instead, it would rely instead on third parties for format translators.
Microsoft isn't seeing a sharp uptick in demand for OpenDocument, but government customers urged the company to provide interoperability between Microsoft's own forthcoming XML Office formats and OpenDocument, said Tom Robertson, the general manager of interoperability and standards at the software giant.
"We're hearing that (customers) don't want homogeneity--they want diversity; they want translatability," Robertson said. "And some customers are saying they would like us to focus on this to a certain extent, to make sure the product is high quality."
Conversion schedule
On Thursday, the Open XML Translator project intends to release a prototype of software that will change Word documents to OpenDocument, and vice versa. The goal is to have a Word plug-in for Office 2007 by the end of this year and translators for Excel and PowerPoint next year, said Jean Paoli, the general manager of interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft.
The conversions will be based on Microsoft's Open Office XML, the XML-based file formats that will be the default setting in Office 2007, due next year. Microsoft is seeking to make Open Office XML an Ecma International standard by the end of this year, Paoli said.
Because Open Office XML is backward-compatible, the translator will work with older versions of Office, Paoli said. However, he said that because the two standards are significantly different, perfect document translation is not possible.
"We wanted to have this project be really transparent," Paoli said. "No translation is perfect. There are a lot of trade-offs between Open XML, which is actually full-featured and backward-compatible, and ODF, which is more limited."
For example, participants in the project will have to make a technical choice if there is a feature in Office 2007 that is not supported in OpenDocument-based products, he said.
Paoli said that Microsoft is managing the project and providing some resources.
France-based Clever Age is writing the code and will participate in the project. Aztecsoft in India is testing the software, and Dialogika in Germany will test it to meet European Commission customer requirements.
A handful of document format converters are already under development, including an Office plug-in from the OpenDocument Foundation, which is expected to be tested by Massachusetts.
Paoli said Microsoft expects that there will be a number of translators.
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Microsoft Office 2007
MP3 is not completely open and free format like
Ogg Vorbis is.
You obviously missed the patches released this week for Open Office, one of those patches fixes a vulnerability that would have allowed a macro to take over a user's computer (without the user being required to do anything more than open the document). That could've been the basis for a serious virus threat.
The same kind of problem has been found (and fixed via patches) in the macros supported by the Adobe Reader, WordPerfect, Lotus and of course MS Office. Your implications that only MS has such problems is blatently false, in fact it seems that nearly every product that supports macros seems to fall into this particular trap.
http://netscape.com.com/IBM,+Sun+to+create+OpenDocument+Foundation/2100-1013_3-5926010.html
It's not just Massachusetts, the EU government may be moving to ODF in the near future and I'm sure that Microsoft wouldn't want to take themselves out of that market.
"We wanted to have this project be really transparent," Paoli said. "No translation is perfect. There are a lot of trade-offs between Open XML, which is actually full-featured and backward-compatible, and ODF, which is more limited."
For example, participants in the project will have to make a technical choice if there is a feature in Office 2007 that is not supported in OpenDocument-based products...,"; here is (the same thing) what was discussed since 1998 in an Lotus Development Corporation Communication which reads as follows: "Concerning the issues with 1-2-3 that are talked about in the documentation you gave me, most of the issues are related to converting files between older and newer versions of product and converting documents between Lotus and Microsoft. Anytime a file is saved backwards or saved with an older file format than the format the file was created under, such as saving a 1-2-3, 97 file for Windows 95 into a WK1 format for DOS, then naturally we are expected to loose certain features due to technology and features that are present now that were not present 8 - 10 years ago. Similarly, if we try to convert a file from Lotus into Excel or Excel into Lotus, due to differences in the products not every feature will be converted perfectly with the file filters that are available. Both Lotus and Microsoft create similar spreadsheet programs; however, there are several differences in both programs and these differences will remain to distinguish the products apart. We do try to design conversion filters that will allow as much of the file formats as possible to be exchanged and converted without disrupting the actual file design and format.
In one of your letters you made mention of the @IRR and @ERR functions in the 1-2-3 product. By design the @IRR (notably "absent" in Open Office) will calculate the Internal Rate of Return; where the @ERR is used in conjunction with other formulas, posted was an "ERR" showing an error was received in the calculations. As far as I can see in the program I cannot find an @ERR function that will allow us to calculate an Economic Rate of Return".
Now, the bigger issues will/can be, which companies/organizations will contend for controlling interests in this obvious renewal of development activities with regards to providing "interoperability between Microsoft's own forthcoming XML Office formats and OpenDocument"!
All one needs to open a document is to know which program created it, right click your mouse, select "Open with" and the Corel Draw Suites "extension" to open it with. So what's the big news here from M.S. ?
All one needs to open a document is to know which program created it, right click your mouse, select "Open with" and the Corel Draw Suites "extension" to open it with. So what's the big news here from M.S. ?
"...but the reality is people need to exchange files, and today nobody is exchanging files using ODF... the day that a real market materializes for ODF, we will consider it..." [http://www.betanews.com/article/Interview_Corel_on_Sun_Open_Standards/1129672161]
OASIS legal counsel Andy Updegrove issued some "not-so-positive" comments regarding Corel: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/newsblog/blog.php?ID=1663
For those that went with the real standard, interoperability with IBM was a no no, which I can see is the aim here.
Also, documents saved in the later IBM formats, could not be opened with previous versions forcing users who needed to interoperate, to spend more money upgrading to the latest version.
Although IBM thought this was an effective marketing strategy and did give them a short term gain, users wanted real interoperability with any version of any software on any system, and this was probably one of the major reasons they eventually deserted the IBM monopoly, by migrating to UNIX and desktop MS.
Unfortunately for MS, pages 100+ of the marketing manual were written after they had their falling out with IBM, so they don't have a clue how to play the standards game for long term survival.
Maybe now that Bill Gates has joined the Humanitarian Club, he will meet the enlightened members of the Open Source community and learn a thing or two about interoperability in the real world.
but OO will read the M$ dot DOC crap and throw out the harmful things that allows viruses in your computer