Microsoft becoming more "open source" friendly
It’s been well known that when you save a document in Microsoft Word, it can only be viewed in Word; the only simple way around this is to save a document in a neutral format which will erase all the styling aspects of the project.
ODF: Open Document Format
If the open source community had their way, there would be one standard in formatting electronic documents, the Open Document format (ODF). Applications such as Open Office, the highly popular and free alternative to Microsoft Office, use this ODF format which is also backed by Microsoft’s competitors IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Novell.
Microsoft’s new Office 2007 suite uses their primary document format, Office Open XML; which, until recently, could not easily be converted to other widely used formats.
Last year, Microsoft teamed with three developers to create a plug-in that will allow you to open and save ODF documents within Word; thereby, providing the ability to convert between OOXML and ODF.
It’s not a push towards a “ONE” standard’ it’s just a way for Microsoft to keep their users from having to download and ‘experience’ any competing software to view certain documents. Microsoft needs to keep you in Word.
The plug-in for Word works with versions 2003 through 2007, and can be downloaded from SourceForge; it will soon be available on Microsoft’s website as well.
Jean Paoli, the general manager of interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft, notes the same developers will start to work on applications to convert documents between Excel and Powerpoint to their rivals’ standard ODF formats; although, they are not expected to be available until the end of the year.
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