Microsoft to Support ODF via Plug-In

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).

Embrace and Extend

I bet it will be just as useful as PNG alpha channel in MSIE.

Re:Embrace and Extend

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'.

Re:Embrace and Extend

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.

Re:Embrace and Extend

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).

Re:Why the crazy UI?

Because Microsoft won't ship it with Office. That's the whole point: In order to obtain ODF compatibility, you'll have to do something extra in order to get it to work.

People are lazy, and Microsoft knows that; 90% of people will just request that documents be sent in .doc so they won't have to bother.

Re:Embrace and Extend

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.

Re:Embrace and Extend

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.

Use the Source

This is bollocks. The translator is BSD licensed, you just go there and fix it if necessary.

...but who is actually extending this time?

It is interesting that Jones accuses OO.o for extending the ODF spec. From his blog:

“OpenOffice has actually made the decision to extend the spec in ways that don't actually appear to be allowed (like with numbering formats), and I'm not sure if that's the right way to go. I've seen a lot of problems when moving documents from OpenOffice to KOffice for example, and I'm sure these divergences from the spec don't help out. Is the right thing to extend in the same ways OpenOffice did, or is it best to wait for OASIS to release the next version of the spec and hope that it specifies some of those missing features? Nobody wants a format that's constantly changing, so if you do decide to extend the format like OpenOffice did, what happens when ODF 2.0 comes out and it specifies that feature differently from how OpenOffice did it? What about features that aren't in ODF or in OpenOffice? Should we create new extensions ourselves or just lose that information? It's going to be fun working with everyone to figure this stuff out.”

I'm not capable to judge whether this is true or just FUD, but it is interesting nevertheless.

Corrected URL

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

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.

Re:Excellent news

Another good question is will we have to buy Office-07 to support ODF? It seems to me like the plugin will only work with Office-07. What about all the users of Office 97 onwards? Will they be stuck with not being able to read ODF documents, or not being able to convert their .doc files to ODF?

Give them a break.

MSOffice97 was good enough for you when you bought it.
If your needs have changed it's only ok that you get a new version.

Of course, you could use OpenOffice 2.0, that works great indeed with MSOffice97 documents, and writes ODF natively.

Doing pretty good until the end.

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).

Re:Doing pretty good until the end.

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.

Or so they SAY it'll do that... some day.

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] )

Re:Or so they SAY it'll do that... some day.

The strangest aspect to me is the Open Document Foundation says they have a similar plug-in, but are very secretive about it and won't really give any details. Then MS just tosses on up on SourceForge for all to see. A bit of a role-reversal, but good for MS!

And they also have a time machine!

From the project home page [sourceforge.net]:

In September 2006, Clever Age released an Open Source project that allowed to open OpenOffice.org documents (SXW files) in Word 2003.

September 2006, sure...

It was out love that did it!

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

Just one day after...

...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.

Isn't their XML format open anyway?

Great! Now we can see conversions from open document format to XML as well. I think this is of more interest to governments that individuals - although I'd be using this myself and pushing ODF where I work.

When the cat's away ...

The mice will play. Mysteriously, the blog link is a 404. I'm sure it was just a typo :) Kind of interesting timing, as Bill goes off to spend billions of someone else's dollars and now has to deal with packing as much as possible into PC's that will ship to developing countries .. all of a sudden an about face.

Not sure if this is him realizing just how difficult a lack of interoperability was making things in the real world, or his way of saying "Folks, I'm really (honestly) hands off now, see?"

So ... on the list of probably wont happen ... :

[21] hell freezes over
.
.
[24] MS Supporting ODF plug-in
.
.
[28] Cheney on TV without makeup

Well, progress, anyway.

What about existing versions of Office?

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.

Not as convenient as native support

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!

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.

I've had it with Microsoft

If they do this, I'm not going to buy Office 2007. I don't want my office "productivity" suite cluttered up with a lot of extra options on how to do things. I want Microsoft to tell me! Long live .doc, the one true format.

why plugin

Hmmm, seems the will make people install a plugin that will be hard to find. So home users still won't be able to see ODF documents and won't understand how to install the plugin. Microsoft still hates it that they are losing the battle... Well people they still could install OpenOffice.org.

Obligatory Russian Reverse

In Soviet Russia Microsoft suppor.... Oh, wait!?

Hipocratica

I don't usually jump on this band wagon, but this statement:

Nobody wants a format that's constantly changing

just adds to the idea that all of these people are so brain washed that they are actually doing something that will benefit users, that they can not but help spouting the virtues of the company line at every opportunity.

I would appreciate someone just being honest with themselves for a change. Something like "That brouhaha in Massachusetts gave us a scare and we think that we had better support this ODF format or we might loose alot of government business. Geez, an open file format, why didn't we think of that?"

Taking bets...

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? :)

Re:Taking bets...

Well, since the project is BSD licensed, what's to stop you from fixing it?

Microsoft at it again -

total bull!
it's a cancerous disease
read groklaw

Why is this important?

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...

Top Execs Leave?

Is it just a coincidence that MSFT joins the Open Source community and adopts ODF after some of their top [slashdot.org] execs [slashdot.org] say they're leaving? Perhaps there was a movement within that these top execs didn't like?

Clarifications

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.

I remain a bit more optimistic

While other people repeat the "embrace, extent, extinguish, extort, exume" prophecy, I see reasons not to make that assumption about Microsoft.

For one, it has received a lot of attention in the mainstream press about delays in delivery of Vista and the next release of Office. Further, there has been a lot of significant changes in the heirarchy of Microsoft. Couple that with their loosing streak against political and business pressures, suggests that they should change and adapt or face catastrophy.

They CAN compete on the basis of merit. Many of their people still remember how and those who can't could be quickly replaced with fresh blood I'm sure. And the momentum is still in Microsoft's favor. If it means admins across the world have to roll out plugins instead of new office suites, which do you think they would be more inclined to do?

Now will Microsoft break the standard in some way they way they perist in doing with CSS? It remains to be seen, but it's an open source project so I'm doubting it... "the people" won't stand for anything less than perfect and will keep workin in that direction.

Less fear on this one

Since it will be an open source project on Source Forge, I am not very fearfull about some big plot to embrace, extend and Extinguish(it can be forked or whatever). I think MS really needs this plug in to gain sales in the long term. There are many places that will adopt ODF where there will be individuals and departments that are MS fans. Now they can come up with some reason that they have to have MS Office and cut the cheque themselves.

Here at work I am encouraging the switch to ODF, and plugin's like this will allow MS to keep playing for all our desktops, even if we switch to ODF.

Too late! Support for older Office suites?

We need this plugin for Office 2000, XP etc too. No-one is going to upgrade to 2007's DRM hell to read ODF.

it's not "our" fault

In my eyes the move here is to lift a weight of the developers at Microsoft. And if something goes wrong it is still possible to arrange the arguments in a way that they don't come back to MS.

Everybody thinks it's so great..

but what they are actually are going to do is create a broken implementation of ODF and then point and say: see see see, while some OSS developer is going to create another plugin that does it all perfectly but breaks with every Office update. They are going to be sued for some pennies for not opening up their documentation and maintaining their monopoly. We've seen it over and over again with HTML, Java, Novell and it's going to happen again.

BTW: their current conversion tool doesn't work for certain features (manual page break) which is NOT a compatibility issue. It's obviously broken by design.

I for one am not impressed and do NOT welcome our ODF-importing overlords.

Microsoft can't afford to not play the Game...

Microsoft will do whatever it takes to stay in the Game, and they'll cheat, lie and steal to stay on top of the Game - a.l.a. embrace, extend, and extinguish.

If you don't know what the Game is, then you're not just not a competitor, you're not even a spectator.

BSD license = good!

Well I was amazed to see no one had commented on their choice of LICENSE yet. It's interesting to see what MS would choose as a license in their foray into the OSS world. I would have been really surprised if they'd chosen GPL, because of obvious ethical conflicts, but I don't think I quite expected them to choose BSD.

This is significant, because it means developers are free to take the code and do what they want with it. For instance, how many people actually have Word 2007? With the BSD license someone could back-port it to previous versions...

It also implies that MS can't get away with "embrace and extend", because whatever they choose to do, someone will come along and create a custom version with the cruft removed. Consequently, I expect they just won't bother to put any in the first place. (Well, maybe that's wishful thinking.)

Additionally, if this plugin integrates badly with Word, making it difficult or non-obvious for people to use, or doesn't adequately convert certain features that it could probably handle better, someone is free to come along and improve it!

Even if the MS project doesn't accept people's suggestions and changes, the BSD license ensures that anyone is free to fork it and release their own version.

So: The fact that they chose the BSD license is a really important detail here.. very interesting move.

And the reason was ...

Belium and Massachusetts. Software is developed by a Frech, an Indian and a German company.

Sound like Europe has become the fighter of freedom of the people. I also like the quote on this Flemish site [datanews.be] that Microsoft Tom Robertson sayd that they noticed that cusomers did not want homogenity, but diversity.

Darn, the cat has not even left the house and the mice are already dancing.

Re:And the reason was ...

Belium and Massachusetts ... Sound[sic] like Europe has become the fighter of freedom of the people.

Since when did Massachusetts join the EU?

PR Stunt

First off, plugins like this were going to arise anyway. Look at (http://sourceforge.net/projects/aodl). This is a conversion program started in 2005. MS has just decided it would like to be "officially, but not too officially" in charge of it.

Interesting comments in the blog:

While we still aren't seeing a strong demand for ODF support from our corporate or consumer customers, it's now a bit different with governments. We've had some governments request that we help build solutions so that can use ODF for certain situations...

From my understanding this is more along the lines of "certain governments in all situations." But, hell, MS can probably win those markets back with an Open Office that supports ODF in some way, but as a plugin MS can blame the standard or the plugin writers (who are working on an Open project, remember, not a MS one!). Which brings us to:

Nobody wants a format that's constantly changing, so if you do decide to extend the format like OpenOffice did, what happens when ODF 2.0 comes out and it specifies that feature differently from how OpenOffice did it?

A little late to ask these questions isn't it? Why not just go to the OASIS site (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php? wg_abbrev=odf-adoption) become a member, and get the standards set for the stuff you need? Oh. Because you really don't care, you're just doing "lip DIS-service" to ODF by pointing out the problems that all standards run into.

If Microsoft had gone to OASIS and said "Look we really love this ODF stuff, but to interoperate properly with Office, it would have to support feature X, Y and Z, at least in theory" it would have happened for SURE. However, they were betting that once MS said "hey we won't support ODF" then the "turncoat" governmental offices that had demanded ODF would say "oh... well... poo" and go back to Office.

MS will never learn or change...

As usual, PJ over at Groklaw has interesting information [groklaw.net] and insight into this latest from Microsoft.

It never ceases to amaze me that some people still want to believe that MS is 'now' trying to do the right thing.

About Time

I've been on a bit of a personal campaign to get MS to see sense and support OpenDoc. This is good news - although a bit late (and sadly not in the box).

OK, but how about.....

This is certainly a step forward for users everywhere, but what about MS-Project? There is no open interoperability between MS Project and any other tools at all.