Move enhances customer choice and interoperability with Microsoft’s flagship productivity suite.
REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft Corp. is offering customers greater choice and more flexibility among document formats, as well as creating additional opportunities for developer and competitors, by expanding the range of document formats supported in its flagship Office productivity suite.
The 2007 Microsoft Office system already provides support for 20 different document formats within Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel and Office PowerPoint. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list will grow to include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.
When using SP2, customers will be able to open, edit and save documents using ODF and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. It will also allow customers to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007. To also provide ODF support for users of earlier versions of Microsoft Office (Office XP and Office 2003), Microsoft will continue to collaborate with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net.
This is great news for OpenOffice and Linux supporters.
Hi,
Caveat Emptor.
A number of people and organisations have looked at, and tested, MS Office’s implementation of ODF, and the over-riding impression is that, being kind, it comes very far short of a proper implementation.
Some examples of these reviews are to be found at:
+ Groklaw (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090503215045379), where there’s a screen-shot of poor ODF representation;
+ An Antic Disposition (http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/update-on-odf-spreadsheet.html), where extensive tests were performed.
+ The ODF Alliance (http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/fact-sheet-Microsoft-ODF-support.pdf), who published a “fact-sheet” regarding Microsoft’s implementation.
It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that Microsoft deliberately mis-implemented ODF, especially in light of the fact that so many of the other implementations are very strong on interoperability. No one who uses MS Office 2009 SP2 for reading or writing ODF files will be able to interoperate with any one who uses any of the other implementations (including those developed as plugins for MS Office!).
We shouldn’t be fooled: While Microsoft says it has implemented ODF, it definitely hasn’t done so in MS Office 2007 SP2. Anyone thinking of use ODF with MS Office 2007 SP2 should think again.
Éibhear