Weird, MS originally wanted to include Save to PDF in Office 2007. In fact, it shipped as part of Office 2007 Beta 2.

However, Adobe threatened to file antitrust actions against MS if they didn't remove it, so MS did.

I wonder what has changed since then?

Weird, MS originally wanted to include Save to PDF in Office 2007. In fact, it shipped as part of Office 2007 Beta 2.

We will see... i fully expect an intentionally broken implementation... that was the Microsoft strategy since earliest Windows days.

Excelent, now we will have an incompatible version of ODF available only for Windows and under the Microsoft's control. This is great news.

"We will see... i fully expect an intentionally broken implementation... that was the Microsoft strategy since earliest Windows days.

Right. Let's just think about the past. We had this before with Java. Microsoft told everybody about their great Java support and indeed included it in their development tools. The result: MS's "java" had several proprietary extensions which made it incompatible to the standard. Sun had to fight MS in court for years to stop this crippled "support" which was just another attempt to keep MS' vendor lock-in. After that, you could see how much MS really cared for Java: They removed their support and instead created the competing .NET. I expect them to do the same attempt on OpenDocument.

Well, if Microsoft doesn't permit parts of MS Office functionality to be saved in ODF format (eg. embedded controls, embedded spreadsheets/docs/presentations, VBA, etc), and other Office suites (say OpenOffice 3.0) are perfectly capable of representing equivalent functionality in ODF format, then the failing will clearly be with Microsoft's product and not the format itself.

Despite Microsot's vehememnt historical opposition to OpenDocument format, the format itself (especially at version 1.2) is actually quite capable of representing any such content you might wish.

Interactive and animated vector graphics ... SVG. Macros ... choose from a number of supported scripting languages such as Javascript, beanshell or Python ... OpenOffice 3.0 even supports VBA.

So, if Microsoft comes out with a lacking ODF implementation, and other Office suites can pack far more functionality into the ODF format than Office 2007 SP2 can ... then indeed there is a legitimate complaint to be made that "it's "broken" or "poorly-designed" or "intentionally intended to EE ODF" or whatever.

Given that there is an agreed compliance test suite for ODF ... I'm actually a bit optimistic here.

If Microsoft do the right thing ... then kudos to Microsoft.

What they are promised to implement is ODF 1.1 and not the soon to be ratified 1.2 that OpenOffice 3 and StarOffice 9 will offer in the fall 07. They will do the same thing they did to DR-DOS. Everytime you will try to save a message it will send bogus messages to discourage people from using it and think that their document will not be saved properly and recommend the user saves into their proprietary format. Don't forget that 1.1 does not support the formula specifications and that was one of their main criticisms of ODF. Suddendly they will support 1.1 and not 1.2 that support formula specs and much more. it is extremelly suspicious that just a couple of months they were fighting to get OOXML as a standard and today they are talking about supporting ODF and not theit own standard until at 2011 or 2012.

If Office continues to get great sales and maintains dominant user share, it'll be due to something other than document format lock-in (like mabye Office is just better

"If Office continues to get great sales and maintains dominant user share, it'll be due to something other than document format lock-in (like mabye Office is just better

I am cautiously optimistic for now, if a bit suspicious. This seems too easy, and I'm wondering what the hidden catch might be. We'll just have to wait to see what they implement, and then judge it as fairly as we can.

Do they mean 'support' or 'micro-support'?

With micro-support: I means half-hearted support or even to try and break things on purpose (which could be as simple as wrong margins when printing out pages or tabular data that is wrongly displayed).

That doesn't say much. Microsoft was also a member of the OpenGL standards board, that didn't stop them from the unholy things they did to OpenGL in Vista.

If Microsoft would finally be really playing fair in the Office place it would clearly hurt their sales. No one i know would still shovel 150€ towards Microsoft for their unsupported student version if they could get a really compatible Office suite for free.

Well maybe they really start playing fair this time, but after all those years lying, sabotaging, blackmailing, bribing, stealing and deceiving it would be naive simply to take their word now.

Nice strategy... who the hell uses '07 by '09?

A good honest Microsoft Office implementation of ODF would mean that everybody wins ... probably even Microsoft themselves!

Seems that ODF advocates should celebrate rather than complain (unless they're mad that they've lost a talking point).

I see talk of Microsoft coding Office to intentionally produce "bad" ODF files, but Microsoft has no history of that.

Their PDF plug-in has been available for months with no complaints that it produces "bad" PDF.

(BTW, not even OO.o's files are fully faithful to the ISO ODF spec.)

Also, since Microsoft will be joining the OASIS ODF Technical Committee AND the ISO ODF Maintenance committee

(Office's current OOXML support is for ECMA OOXML 1.0 which lacks the changes that were made for ISO ratification)

BTW, the onus is now on Office's competitors and/or Office's detractors, as the document format issue is no longer an excuse. If Office continues to get great sales and maintains dominant user share, it'll be due to something other than document format lock-in (like mabye Office is just better ).