linux-watch.com — Just because Microsoft refuses to support ODF (Open Document Format) never meant that someone wouldn't write a plug-in to enable Microsoft Office users to read and write ODF documents. Well, it's happened.
May 5, 2006 View in Crawl 4
zouhairMay 5, 2006
So then no need to get rid of Office then!?
cesclaveriaMay 5, 2006
the plug-in is not out yet
dickbreathMay 5, 2006
The files have several common suffixes, depending upon the type of document.Word Processing: ODTSpreadsheets: ODSPresentation: ODPDrawing: ODGDatabase: ODBMath forumlas: ODF
dickbreathMay 5, 2006
The point is that organizations that want to store documents for a loooong time (and I don't mean until Microsoft's next Office upgrade), I mean for, like, 100 years; those organizations can still choose to use Microsoft Office, but save documents in ODF.ODF is documented. It is an ISO standard. You don't have to "license intellectual property" from anybody in order to write software to read/write the format.The Commonwealth of Massachusettes, for instance, uses documents routinely that are over two centuries old. They would like to be able to do this with electronic documents. They don't seem to believe that they will be able to do this with undocumented, proprietary binary formats.The point of the ODF plugin is that they can still use MS Office (or any other ODF capable software) in order to comply with a requirement of saving documents into ODF format for longevity and interoperability.
pabsterMay 5, 2006
Bingo.Which is precisely why Micro$oft (privately) has worked so hard to PREVENT things like this from seeing the light of day.Why would Bill want people (companies) switching to OOo? :o)
pabsterMay 5, 2006
Radically different, and radically bloated. Let the march to OOo begin.
Closed AccountMay 5, 2006
I see the same thing around a lot of format's, like XMPPPeople seem to think of it as MSN or such, that it's a service (like Google Talk), they don't seem to understand you can change to any client you want, or talk to anybody with an account on any server in the world.
moeqMay 14, 2006
This pluging should be mandatory for all distros of MS Office. Of course, that would screw MSFT in the ass quite a lot as it would break the need for anyone to ever buy MS Office ever again, so MS won't do it.
carleetoMay 20, 2009
Don't know how the plugin is coming along, but MS Office 2007's supposed native support for OpenOffice is a joke : <a class="user" href="http://digg.com/software/Does_Microsoft_Office_2007_really_support_OpenOffice_Nope">http://digg.com/software/Does_Microsoft_Office_200 ...</a>