Microsoft is giving in to the unrelenting pressure to be more open, particularly with regard to its Office Open XML file format and interoperability with the Open Document Format alternative. The company will announce July 6 that it has set up an open-source project to create a series of tools that allow translation between the OpenXML format and the ODF format, and which will be developed with partners. The Open XML Translator project, as it is known, will be posted on SourceForge, the open-source software development Web site. 
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Member since:2005-07-12
>> By that same logic, HTML export will be fun, because there are a lot of MSWord features that don't exist in HTML. Yet MSWord still provides HTML support (you'll instead get a dialog warning you that some features used in your document aren't supported by HTML/whatever format you're saving as).
...and I expect it to work about as well, where it screws up even in IE on the auto-replaced characters, screws up in Firefox and Opera thanks to all the non-standard CSS, and in general doesn't work worth a damn (to the point it generally takes less time to get GOOD html out of it by exporting to .txt and adding it by hand)
In other words, it'll be supported, but it will also work like CRAP.
Member since:2005-07-12
>> By that same logic, HTML export will be fun, because there are a lot of MSWord features that don't exist in HTML. Yet MSWord still provides HTML support (you'll instead get a dialog warning you that some features used in your document aren't supported by HTML/whatever format you're saving as).
...and I expect it to work about as well, where it screws up even in IE on the auto-replaced characters, screws up in Firefox and Opera thanks to all the non-standard CSS, and in general doesn't work worth a damn (to the point it generally takes less time to get GOOD html out of it by exporting to .txt and adding it by hand)
In other words, it'll be supported, but it will also work like CRAP.
Member since:2006-07-04
I like how you guys keep moving the goal posts.
First, you beg Microsoft to add ODF support. Then when they do, you whine because you think they'll "extend" it or it'll "work like CRAP". I guess the demands that Microsoft add ODF support were disingenuous to begin with (you never thought Microsoft would actually do it, and now that they have, you don't know what arguments to make against it, so you grasp at straws).
How will this "work like CRAP" when its a BDS project that OSS devs will be contributing to (Microsoft isn't writing the code)?
BTW, did you know that OO.o has already "extended" ODF for their own purposes?
Member since:
2005-07-29
EXPORT is going to be the fun part, as there's still a LOT of MS word features that don't even EXIST in the ODF spec.
By that same logic, HTML export will be fun, because there are a lot of MSWord features that don't exist in HTML.
Yet MSWord still provides HTML support (you'll instead get a dialog warning you that some features used in your document aren't supported by HTML/whatever format you're saving as).
There's no problem with not being able to support everything MSWord supports in every file format MSWord imports/exports to. That's already the case. The problem is that Microsoft still refuses to "properly" support ODF, as it does for many other formats (HTML, WordPerfect, RTF...).