What is Digg?Sponsored by HowLifeWorks
How Private Online Shopping Clubs Work view!
howlifeworks.com - How to become a member and get discounts of up to 80% on must-have luxury goods
99 Comments
- Midnightbrewer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+42RTFA. They said that it will be made available to older versions through an Open XML compatibility pack. Sounds like a Good Thing.
- Airconditioning, on 10/12/2007, -8/+28Will some clever person be able to add this plugin to previous versions of Office? It would be very handy to port our documents out of DOC / XLS without having to install Office 2007.
- KAMI_no_kodomo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21Well you still can use OpenOffice.
So soon I will stop pushing out .doc files (created whit OpenOffice) and yust say 'hey the nerwer version of microsoft office suport the OpenDocument. I gie you an open Document, be smart ans use OpenOffice or yust pay tons of mony for your update) and since I gove them (some) freedom of choice they cant mail me 'no I need a doc becose I need word)
And OpenOffice van read & write .docs so if you want to migrate away yust download OpenOffice on www.openoffice.org and your good to go. - Xsecrets, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13I agree that native support would be best, but at least this will quash a lot of arguments that people have about moving to odf since such a move would not force people to abandon office. It just makes a little more work for them to use office.
- dhan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13@cplusplus: From microsoft.com,
In addition to being made available as free, downloadable add-ins for several older versions of the Microsoft Office system, the translation tools will be developed and licensed as open source software. The translation tools will be broadly available to the industry for use with other individual or commercial projects to accelerate document interoperability and expand customer choice between Open XML and other technologies.
So next time, read before you comment (#1).
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jul06/07-06OpenSourceProjectPR.mspx - chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12They only did it before someone else did.
They get free PR points and we get a plugin... all works out in the end. - drinequality, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13@cplusplus: I agree. Plenty of evil tricks like Java.
Another one: make a tool that doesn't work for "complex" word documents (like those with
tables or something), claiming that ODF is not rich enough. Microsoft just has to make their
converter about as good as the Openoffice one to avoid losing face. That's still not good
enough for most people. - Chewie67, on 10/12/2007, -13/+21NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
We don't want some open source project to create a converter.
We want NATIVE SUPPORT in Office for the Open Document format. That means that Office reads and writes Open Document right out of the box.
Short of that, this is just some cheap PR move to quiet the uprising against Office. - Airconditioning, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10@Midnightbrewer
Ahhh, cheers. I missed that part. - -Jeroen-, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10At least it's a start.
I also find it hard to believe that Microsoft would become 'nice' just like that, but it looks like the pressure from governments who switch to open standards has it's effect. - YellowBook, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12Embrace and extend.
- moochfish, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Well, at least the project is open source so other developers can take it and run with it. Seeing as this version doesn't exactly do what the headline claims. Check out this doozy of a quote:
"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=1531122&forum_id=579283 ) - Deusiah, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11No people can't finally use both products without worrying about incompatibility issues as this is only news and until we see it in action there is no way of telling how well it will work. For instance MS Office could have a message saying "Some of the formatting may be lost if you save in ODF". There are many tricks they can and will try. Afterall supporting ODF is not something they want to do but are being forced to do.
- zoxed, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Call me again when it is available. And the license is acceptable. And it supports bi-directional conversion, including any binary elements of Open XML.
- spyres, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6MS is already showing how they're going to screw those using their plugin. Read the whole paragraph and tell me the last line isn't a harbinger of the old "Some formatting will be lost and your document will look like ***** if you use the .ODF plugin!"
_______________________________________________________________________
Open XML and ODF advocates alike. The Open XML formats are unique in their compatibility and fidelity to billions of Office documents, helping protect customers%u2019 intellectual investments. Open XML formats are also distinguished by their approach to accessibility support for disabled workers, file performance and flexibility to empower organizations to access and integrate their own XML data with the documents they use every day. In contrast, ODF focuses on more limited requirements, is architected very differently and is now under review in OASIS subcommittees to fill key gaps such as spreadsheet formulas, macro support and support for accessibility options. As a result, certain compromises and customer disclosures will be a necessary part of translating between the two formats. - Grimboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6ODF should be trademarked and then lisenced only to products that pass a number of acid tests to make sure that loads of hacks don't have to be introduced to work with microsoft's stuff, like the way they corrupted html.
- flake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5When MS didn't support OpenXML? WTF, they *invented* OpenXML!
- spyres, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10...and extinguish...
- schwit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Hopefully it's better than the 'HTML' that MS Office generates. Even saving to 'Filtered HTML' creates a file filled with Office specific tags.
- BuddhaChu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4How is it vaporware when the converter for Word 2007 is done already and can be downloaded off of Sourceforge (albeit a beta aka "prototype")?
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=169337 - Dracker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Valona - Your stereotyping is just as bad as ours! A few points:
-Your Digg score for that comment suggests that MS Bashers are not a small but vocal minority, at least here on Digg.
-Think about one of your major points: That Linux users decry Microsoft without contributing back to open source projects. This could not possibly be true, as open source projects are managed by small teams, relying on the community for design, suggestions, bug reports, and code. I've personally submitted all of the above to several projects.
-Many of the people at Microsoft are great software developers. Bet you didn't see that one coming! But think about it. Windows is a miserable platform, and yet you see tools like DirectX and ASP running extremely fast on it. It takes a lot of time and dedication to optimize code to this degree. Microsoft has a lot of great developers, and bad designers.
-The source of both Microsoft's success and a good deal of the bashing is that WIndows is designed as the ideal platform for the mass market. It's made to be friendly but still include advanced options. Unfortunately, these clash all too often.
-Bugs. With an open source project, you can release early in front of a huge audience and get stuff fixed, stuff that you never would have found such a creative solution for if it weren't for outside contributions. Even if no one submits fixes, even the inexperienced masses can report "Hey, theres a bug when I do this. Fix it!" and bring bugs to your attention that could be overlooked when testing for smaller audiences. Unfortunately, Microsoft has to do QA through a relatively tiny testing audience and a lot of bugs remain in final products. Just count up the Windows Updates.
-Flawed software and strongarm business practices. Lets talk about Office. Upgrades from one version to the next cost hundreds of dollars. But you can't be left behind, as you wouldn't be able to open Office docs! If someone in the office upgrades, either they will get a visit from IT forcing the default save format to be the old version, or EVERYBODY upgrades, cha ching. Not to mention Word macros being a security threat (The program even SAYS it's a security threat. Great confidence, eh?) I see a huge lack of backporting in Microsoft's world. This "Requires _____ OS or higher" for something like, DirectX 10 requiring Vista (still a rumor) is really another forced upgrade. THere are so many examples of this. And when a company's backbone is using these proprietary formats, it's not practical to switch over. A wise man said that the cost of buying the next version of proprietary software is no more than the cost of switching to the competitor's software. Lock-in gets more cash for MS!
I could talk about the usual bloat, viruses, spyware, etc. but I'm sure you've heard plenty of that already.
Fortunately, this article shows that MS is working to address this! If Office becomes compliant with OpenDocument, the lockin will stop, and the company will look a lot better in my eyes. - Yogurth, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8It's not like they were left any choice. This effectively means that 2 branches of the same company that uses some of available Office packets(OO, MSO...) will not be tied anymore one to another or restricted in their platform of choice.
As I have worked for one big international company, I can tell You that software costs (office and Windows), were completely overtaking IT budget, and I was constantly scraping for parts just because of that. At that Time OO had flaky MS Word/Excel support and I couldn't persuade upper management even if I tried since all other branching Offices around the world relied on MS Office formats.
But now this is completely different. It puts MS where OO was 3 years ago.... to make good converter. This means that IT departments in Offices all over the world can actually choose based on budget projections and needs which Office packet they will use.
In longer terms this also means that You are not tied to Windows or Mac OSX(Yes there is/was MS Office on Mac's too ^^) and that if needed You could move entire network to Linux.
These are vrey very important news. - lefthandedlinux, on 10/12/2007, -11/+15you would be best off sticking with the MS-Office you have now and also getting OpenOffice.org and make all new documents in OpenDocument and when you have spare time convert existing MS-docs to OpenDocument with OpenOffice...
this is the only way anyone is going to break themselves of vendor lock-in with Microsoft... - cazabam, on 10/12/2007, -8/+11"They listen to what people want." Wrong. Or if they do, they ignore it.
"They are willing to do whatever it takes for you to use their product." Correct. Including anti-competitive practices, underhand business tactics, forced upgrades, spyware ...
That's better _how_ exactly? - OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Um, MS what are you talking about? There is already an opensource doc>opendoc>XML converter! It's called Docvert.
http://digg.com/programming/Online_MS_Word_to_OpenDoc_to_HTML,_RSS,_XML_converter - MasteRR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Oh boy. How long till we see "Enhanced ODF with Microsoft Extensions"?
They sure do like to screw up good standards. - airship, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's a converter and an add-in, not native support, so it's still not good enough. It's Microsoft being a******s again. And if either the converter or add-in works worth a d**n on complex (i.e. real-world) documents, I'll eat my hat.
- Ryuuzaki, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Since ODF will only be more necessary in the future to communicate with administrations and with other corporations, businesses will have a serious pressure to install ODF-supporting office suites like Open Office.
Microsoft doesn't want that to happen, they do not want people to realize that there are alternatives, so they're working in adding support on their Office; Of course, not as the default format, but more like adding import/export capabilities; this way, their clients will use that options to inter-operate where ODF is needed and for everything else, they'll use the prison formats, effectivelly keeping them away from those opportunities to discover Open Office and other serious alternatives like koffice, abiword, gnumeric, etc. - suldar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"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. As a result, certain compromises and customer disclosures will be a necessary part of translating between the two formats."
So wait, I can't translate my MS Office Macro Virus's into the OpenDocument format? I'm just kidding. I think its great that the pressure for a more standardized document format was able to make this come about. I admit I was hoping Microsoft wouldn't budge and more people would adopt an alternative to MS Office but this is good too. - TomP, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think docx is a real pain because my college wont have 2007 for a longtime so most of the time i'll be saving in doc anyways..
- KCorax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Click to Edit (Available for 54 Seconds) > We want NATIVE SUPPORT in Office for the Open Document format.
The only native thing one can do is serialize the bunch of classes and dump the memmory to a file. Even the office-xml representation is a mapping. Now consider this: with some xslt product transformations the opendoc output will be just as good as the office-xml.
I really can't see why this is PR. What you as a customer should care about is that you can read/write opendoc without loss of information. - w0mbat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This is good news, but the governments (and everyone else) need to keep the pressure on them to do this right.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They aren't really supporting it, they are funding a project to build compatibility tools. Reported as inaccurate.
- zoxed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I found some answers: the is an Alpha version for use in Word 2007
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=169337 and it has the BSD License.
I do not have Word 2007 so can anyone answer: does it work better then using RTF as the exchange format ?
See also the BBC have picked it up: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5153350.stm - seandaly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's a shame that MA CEO Peter Quinn had to be forced out before this happened.
Interesting that the new CEO coming in planned on pushing for the same OpenDocument initiative! - drakaan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Let's look at this while keeping something else in mind: There is *already* an Office < - > ODF converter (created specifically to address early concerns about accessibility for disabled people).
What MS is doing is saying "We're moving forward with OpenXML/XPS because we don't really like ODF. If you want to use ODF with our products, you'll need to convert it to OpenXML first".
Microsoft, who knows its products far better than the Open Source community, could have written a converter long ago, or just made use of the existing one, if the only issue was providing support for ODF. Note that the open source project they're talking about will be BSD-licensed, which means they'll take whatever work their contributors offer, but don't have to give back any improvements, etc.
This article is *seriously* mistitled...how about "Microsoft to attempt to marginalize OpenDocument using donated programming resources!" - vincnet1000, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5@cazabam
Could you please explain to me why MS OFFICE, one of the most widely used application, supporting Open Office Format is anti-competitive practice, underhand business tactics, forced upgrades or spyware?
Sure, they might have their own agendas behind supporting Open Office Format, but after all, it DOES makes us end user's life easier.
The way you describe Microsoft, I would assume you are using Open Office and you would understand the incompatibility issues between Open Office and MS Office. This is a good change for both sides. - qingshuo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3What will happen is that Microsoft's own ODF implementation will be barely compliant and largely *broken*. This will make most unenlightened office users think that ODF completely sucks and scoff off OpenOffice.org. It's exactly the same strategy as "supporting" Java by implementing a broken proprietary VM into Windows when Sun's VM was perfectly fine.
- neko, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I'm skeptical too, but the nice thing about an XML format is that documents can be validated against the schema (be it DTD, W3C XSD, RelaxNG, whatever). The schema says quite clearly what constitutes an OpenDocument format, so anything that's clearly invalid can be picked out quickly.
Still, wouldn't stop them from doing something uber-dumb like... bundle the .DOC file as a big binary lump inside the ODF (since ODF has a zipfile like structure). - tnvwboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Frankly I don't care which word processor/office suite wins out or has market share. What I care about is how Microsoft Office is the dominant suite of choice for third party developers to write interfaces to. My office cannot switch to OpenOffice or any other product besides Microsoft Office because our CRM system only intergrates with MS Office. Sucks. I'd love to save the company money and switch to OOo, but we can't.
A unified single format might help drive application developers to support more than just Microsoft. One can hope! - spyres, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No way to set it as a default format due to the plugin nature I bet...
- ActivitY, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3god damn it, now i have to run a lap of my block naked.
- MoeB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's not just Microsoft sites.
- zoxed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2> PHP, PDF, SVG and Flash are the most important Internet technologies.
What, like more important than TCP-IP, DNS, HTML... ? - lkallion, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4That's the whole point in here, they are NOT supporting it properly, they are providing converter to convert openDocument docs to their own proprietary format. Yes they are promising also conversion to other direction, but as always that remain to bee seen and judged when there is actually something more than promises. Utopia is that Microsoft Office would read and write openDocument like any other format, but so far thats something microsoft definitively has not promised
- DocNo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, for one ODF doesn't support everything in Word - one example:
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/06/01/612952.aspx - jameshales, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2A load of the best-sounding features have been dropped by MS for Vista, but I doubt that they will drop the ODF feature in Office. They do not want to lose out if governments switch to ODF.
The worst that they probably would do is, as many have suggested here, is muddy up the format by producing sub-standard code, or leave out parts of ODF. If the plugin is released as open source however (BSD license apparently), then neither of those will be a problem, as they can be improved upon by the community. - Zanneth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The second surprise move by Microsoft!
http://digg.com/gadgets/Microsoft_s_iPod_killer_to_provide_free_versions_of_all_your_iTunes_tracks - seweso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you want to link to the files please link to: http://www.seweso-systems.com/2006/07/odf-plugin-for-office-12.php
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why would a format called OPEN XML need any special conversion tools? Open? XML? wtf?
-
Show 51 - 99 of 99 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is