Docvert 3.0 Lessens Reliance On Microsoft Office

An anonymous reader writes "After 10 months of development Docvert 3.0 was released today. This open source web service converts DOC files to Oasis OpenDocument 1.0, and then to HTML, RSS, or any XML format. Try the ODF demo or download the source and install it on your own box. Version 3.0 comes with an MS Word Plugin, FTP/WebDAV upload, and an in-browser document editor."

Is OOXML Truly Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest question to ask is not whether or not Microsoft provides access to the XML, nor whether Microsoft provides access to a schema, the question to ask is, "Is OOXML Truly Open Source?"

The biggest issue I have with the OOXML "standard" (and I use the word quite losely) is there are BLOB's (binary large objects) in the OOXML file created by Microsoft. In this BLOB is all the byte code used in the Macros, etc for the file in question (i.e. an Excel file). Since Microsoft has not provided proper instructions (whether it be a schema, or source code) to read the the BLOB containing this information, and how to intrupret this information, I doubt this will ever pass as a true ISO standard, nor be truly accepted as open source (not to mention marcos are still programmed using the Microsoft defined, and patented, VBA rather than using an open source standard such as JavaScript).

More info @ groklaw

[mario64]

Check out the article on Groklaw Searching for Openness in Microsoft's OOXML and Finding Contradictions [groklaw.net] for further comments. The article also has links to a couple of wiki pages with further comments.

Re:It promises to be an interesting battle

[mrchaotica]

Can anybody implement for free?

No, because bits of it are patented (especially the "legacy compatibility" parts that basically just say "emulate old versions of Office").

Can MS get fined for saying they support the standard when in fact their software actually does not (ala, Java, CSS, HTML, Kerberos, and others).

In this case it won't matter, because the OOXML "standard" is effectively defined as "whatever MS Office does." In other words, MS basically documented Office's behavior down to the smallest detail, and submitted it to ECMA and now ISO.

Re:It promises to be an interesting battle

[FireFury03]

In other words, MS basically documented Office's behavior down to the smallest detail

They didn't even do that. A lot of the document states that when you encounter certain tags you will emulate a Office bug, but never specifies the details of that bug because that is "beyond the scope of the document". So even if you have the standards document, you can't fully implement the standard without getting all the old versions of Office and reverse engineering their behavior.