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Microsoft to Support ODF via Plug-In

Posted by timothy on Thu Jul 06, 2006 09:10 AM
from the that's-nice-news dept.
Apache4857 writes "It appears that Microsoft has finally caved. BetaNews is reporting that Microsoft is sponsoring an open source project to enable conversion between Open XML in Office 2007 and OpenDocument formats. The project, hosted on Sourceforge.net, made its initial release today. The Word 2007 conversion utility is expected to ship ship by the end of 2006, and similarly conversion utilities for Excel and PowerPoint are expected early next year." See the announcement in Brian Jones' blog (Jones is the Microsoft program manager responsible for Office file formats).
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[+] Microsoft's Open XML Project A Short-Term Fix 94 comments
TechPro writes "In an interview with eWeek the managing director of the ODF Alliance (Marino Marcich) was pretty dismissive of Microsoft's Open XML Translator project. While the move was a recognition of the ODF Format's acceptance by government's around the world, the installable software plug-ins that would be created under the project were really 'only a bridge, a stopgap measure that will probably not be acceptable to government's around the world over the long term. Plug-ins simply don't give the benefits of open file formats and standards,' he said."
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  • Embrace and Extend (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Vo0k (760020) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:12AM (#15666372) Journal
    I bet it will be just as useful as PNG alpha channel in MSIE.
    • by Tribbin (565963) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:15AM (#15666395) Homepage
      Microsoft is _sponsoring_ the development in open source.

      Not exactly the same.

      I for once have faith in what they are gonna do.

      They might just hear people and governments saying 'we don't take it anymore'.
      • by Vo0k (760020) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:34AM (#15666507) Journal
        They can just create enough caveats and special properties in the -internal- Office document structure that export to ODF will simply break the documents, or require painstakingly cautious convertion to some primitives. PNG IS supported in MSIE 6.0 fully, including alpha channel, but the implementation is so much pain in the neck for developers to implement in webpages, that they simply don't bother. (you need to create a style sheet including MSIE's 'filter' CSS extensions, and apply an 'alpha' filter to the image.)

        Same can happen here - want to save ODF? Here's the microsoft way:

        Pick "plugins" menu.
        Open "plugin manager".
        Open "active plugins tab".
        Check checkbox by "ODF exporter plugin".
        Click OK.
        pick "export" menu.
        click "export to plugin".
        Are you sure you want to export the document to a plugin? Some document properties may be lost in the process." Click yes.
        "Plugin export wizard".
        "List of available plugins". Click ODF exporter.
        Click next.
        "What would you like to do with the file after export? Save to file, Send by Mail, Copy to Clipboard, Paste as new document" Pick "Save to file". Click Next.
        "Where would you like to have the file saved?" - file selector. Pick file destination.
        "Warning! Plugins contain 3rd party software which may append viruses and malware to your documents! Are you sure to proceed?" Click yes.
        "The chosen plugin is covered by the following license:" (textarea - GNU). Do you agree? Pick "yes", click Next.
        "MS Office is ready to export your document to a plugin. Click Finish to begin the export process." Click Finish.
        A progressbar appears while the open source plugin actually processes the file. A moment later a requester "You have successfuly exported the document to a plugin. Click OK to return to MS Office."

        Loading ODF document could look very similar.
        • by Tribbin (565963) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:49AM (#15666589) Homepage
          Installation

          Double click the MSI file to install the Add-in for Word 2007.

          If installation is successful, you should see a new "ODF" entry in the "File" menu in Word 2007. It allows you to either import an ODF text file or export your current working document as an ODF text file (note that during development process, those functionalities might be temporary unavailable).

          Important note: The ODF file opened by the add-in is converted into Office OpenXML (Office 2007 new file format) and imported into Word as a read-only file. If you want to save it as ODF, you have to use the "Export as ODF" button and provide a new file name (that can be the same as the current file name).
            • by zootm (850416) on Thursday July 06 2006, @10:10AM (#15666719)

              As much fun as comparing chalk to cheese is, some people prefer an equation editor where one does not have to learn a text syntax to use it, and some people prefer the efficiency of writing out in that text format. Parading one as "superior" to the other is an exercise in futility.

              If you can do both in OOo (although I have OOo, I've never used the equation editor, preferring LaTeX, so I've no idea), that's a pretty neat feature. It's not a particularly huge one though, and not one which is particularly good for comparing the packages in general.

          • Your average Government worker will be trained in this and follow the procedure in a totally mindless fashion.

            Or it will be like the POSIX fiasco. At a certain point in history, government purchased opererating systems were required to support POSIX, which is an actual independent standard that various Unixes created after Unix fragmented. The theory was, you could write to POSIX, and your stuff would compile on any Unix, which generally works in practice. So MS tacked some POSIX support onto Windows NT.

            Of course, no one actually wrote any programs that used POSIX. The government would purchase NT boxes and write Win32 programs, not POSIX ones. They were just required to purchase POSIX operating systems, not actually use POSIX.

            Likewise, I'm imagine the government require programs that support ODF, but everyone uses the Word format to save and transport files, thus completely defeating the purpose.

    • Use the Source (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:41AM (#15666541)
      This is bollocks. The translator is BSD licensed, you just go there and fix it if necessary.
  • Corrected URL (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rosyna (80334) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:13AM (#15666380) Homepage
    The correct url is http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/07/ 05/657510.aspx [msdn.com] the link in the summary was missing the trailing x.
  • Excellent news (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Saunalainen (627977) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:14AM (#15666385)
    Now governments can mandate all documents be in ODF format without being accused of abandoning their disabled constituency, and Microsoft will have to compete on its features and performance rather than vendor lock-in.
  • by khasim (1285) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:17AM (#15666403)
    Microsoft notes that OpenDocument still has gaps that are being worked out by OASIS, such as spreadsheet formulas, macro support and support for accessibility options. Citing Open XML's accessibility features for disabled workers, file performance and support for integrating external XML data, Microsoft says ODF "focuses on more limited requirements."
    "Accessibility options" and "disabled workers".

    That's not the responsibility of the file format.

    That's the responsibility of the app used to read/write that file format.

    And with an Open standard for file formats, there's no reason that anyone could not write an app that did direct file-to-speech with no need for a visual display (as is currently the case).
    • by cnettel (836611) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:40AM (#15666534)
      Not necessarily. For example, PostScript is a very bad format for distributing documents that are to be consumed in any other way than as a graphical document. A naively created PDF can be quite bad, a properly annotated one not so bad. HOW you represent the data is relevant. I would imagine that most formats that are suitable for further editing in a structured manner should be quite good from an accessibility standpoint as well, but you can certainly choose to code things like text flow in a manner that makes a good UI, but where the semantics are lost. The app can only present and persist what's allowed in the format.

      DISCLAIMER: This is general obvious facts. I don't recommend the current or future MS Office XML formats as any example of how things should be done.

  • by moochfish (822730) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:17AM (#15666405)
    Well, at least the project is open source so other developers can take it and run with it. This version is not what the PR people would like you to believe. Check out this doozy of a quote from the sourceforge forum:

    "With the first release (0.1 - prototype), you can only convert documents from ODF to OpenXML. This can be done either with the Word Add-in (which requires both .NET Framewok 2.0 and Word 2007) or through the command line tool, which only requires .NET framework 2.0. "

    ( http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1 531122&forum_id=579283 [sourceforge.net] )
  • by elrous0 (869638) * on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:20AM (#15666420)
    A spokesperson for Microsoft was quoted as saying "Well...we weren't going to do it at first. But then the gang over at /. asked us too, and we just can't say no to those guys after all the love they've shown us in the past."

    -Eric

  • by Burz (138833) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:22AM (#15666438) Journal
    ...SoftMaker's Dr. Martin Sommer states [slashdot.org] that an ODF plugin for MS Office would hinder acceptance of alternative office suites. Then all of a sudden, MS is throwing in their support for an independant project that had started a few weeks earlier.
  • by DesertWolf0132 (718296) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:26AM (#15666464) Homepage
    So when does the conversion utility for versions of Office people actually have come out? I have yet to find anyone who already owns a version of Office that is looking to upgrade. There are no features in the newest versions worth the pricetag. They claim OpenXML is THE reason to upgrade but with Open Document being availible without the insane pricetag there has been no real reason to upgrade. I still run 2003 on my work systems (only because the retards here already had it when I was hired and no one wants to try OpenOffice.org) and I would LOVE to convert all of our documents so when I finally make the switch on everyone to OO it will be that much easier. Once more governments move to Open Document standards getting OO adopted here will be a snap.
  • This add-in is certainly a step in the right direction. But opening and saving files with this add-in is not as convenient as if the format was supported natively.

    Here is an example of the problems that the users will face when using it (from the project home page [sourceforge.net]):

    Important note: The ODF file opened by the add-in is converted into Office OpenXML (Office 2007 new file format) and imported into Word as a read-only file. If you want to save it as ODF, you have to use the "Export as ODF" button and provide a new file name (that can be the same as the current file name).

    Basically, this add-in will encourage you to convert your ODF documents to OpenXML, but if you really insist and if you really want to save (sorry, export) as ODF, then it will let you do that as well. You will just have to re-type or re-select the file name.

  • Caved? Hardly! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by andrewman327 (635952) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:28AM (#15666473) Homepage Journal
    Microsoft has not caved as TFA says. Now they can compete in new markets where they were being gradually squeezed out. Now organizations can say that they support open standards while still using Microsoft Office. I am sure that they will do a half-hearted job of supporting ODF, and people will grow frustrated with how "limited" it is compared to the native XML file type. They will not realize that only Microsoft's implementation is limited. As a result they might start using the latter for things that are saved locally, undermining ODF efforts.
  • by gnarlin (696263) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:32AM (#15666497) Homepage Journal
    In Soviet Russia Microsoft suppor.... Oh, wait!?
  • Taking bets... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dbarclay10 (70443) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:41AM (#15666538)
    Okay, I'm taking bets on them doing this as part of a typical "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, Extort" cycle. I give 2:1 odds on Microsoft producing ODF documents that just don't work right, or are horribly buggy. The import will lose all sorts of formatting and similar such things.

    Anybody? :)
  • by Noryungi (70322) on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:43AM (#15666555) Homepage Journal
    Several reasons:
    1. Microsoft has finally realized it cannot fight against the Linux trend. Even if Linux is not ready for the desktop -- which is debatable -- free [beer|speech] software is now good enough to replace at least part of Windows and/or Office on the desktop.
    2. Microsoft now openly acknowledges -- through this decision -- that they don't control the market, but that they are forced to bow to the pressure of their clients. This is pretty much unprecedented, as Microsoft, through FUD and VaporWare, used to control its clients, and not the other way around.

    All in all, this is very good news for Open Source, and a chink in the mighty Microsoft FUD machine...
  • Clarifications (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The MAZZTer (911996) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <tzzagem>> on Thursday July 06 2006, @09:44AM (#15666567) Homepage

    It's a plugin for Word, it's not a separate conversion utility as the article implies.

    It can't handle manual page breaks it seems. Once I get OpenOffice.org on here to verify, I'm submitting their first bug report. :)

    The default install directory seems to indicate this is a third-party tool, not an MS tool.

    It doesn't add file types to the default Open/Save dialogs (the ideal solution). Instead, you import and export the files with their own dialogs. This also means hitting File/Save when you have an ODF file open will open up a save as dialog fro DOCX only.