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ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Huge news to wrap up the week! The open source project for creating a translator between the ODF text format and the OpenXML wordprocessing format has announced the release of version 1.0 of the tool (http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=660889). Within the first 6 hours of the release they already have had 10,000 downloads.

This means you can now download the final version of the tool and open ODF documents in Microsoft Word. This really is going to be an important year for general document interoperability and choice in formats. You now have support for two international standards (OpenXML and ODF) in Microsoft Office, and I'm told that Novell is very close to releasing a version of OpenOffice that will support OpenXML (in addition to its current support for ODF). The OpenOffice release will be supported in both SuSe Linux and the Windows platform.

I also believe that the translator was tested against the test documents that the University of Central Florida set up as a test suite for ODF. You can see a summary of the ODF compatibility for the latest versions of OpenOffice and KOffice (http://testsuite.opendocumentfellowship.org/summary.html). It will be interesting to see how the translator running in Microsoft Word will fit into this. I'm sure at some point we'll see something similar done for the OpenXML formats as well.

-Brian

Published Friday, February 02, 2007 9:50 AM by BrianJones

Comments

Friday, February 02, 2007 10:45 PM by OpenXML Developer

# Open XML Translator enables interoperability with ODF

Microsoft announced yesterday that the Open XML Translator project has released version 1.0. As it says...

Friday, February 02, 2007 11:12 PM by Doug Mahugh

# Open XML Translator 1.0 available

Version 1.0 of the Open XML translator project is now available on SourceForge. Here are links for the

Saturday, February 03, 2007 4:13 AM by neuhawk

# Open XML Translator 1.0 available Open XML

http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2007/02/02/open-xml-translator-1-0-available.aspx ...

Saturday, February 03, 2007 4:08 PM by John

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Hello Brian,

congratulations on making this. You know I have criticised you in the past, but anyway, this is really a huge leap forward to interoperability. No longer will be children at our school locked away when they bring their openoffice documents from home to work at school. And they can freely choose whether MS Office or Open Office suits them (and their money, of course) better.

John

Saturday, February 03, 2007 4:11 PM by John

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Hello Brian,

congratulations on making this. You know I have criticised you in the past, but anyway, this is really a huge leap forward to interoperability. No longer will be children at our school locked away when they bring their openoffice documents from home to work at school. And they can freely choose whether MS Office or Open Office suits them (and their money, of course) better.

John

Saturday, February 03, 2007 4:15 PM by BrianJones

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Thanks John! I agree it's a great move forward. The next big step will be when OpenOffice supports OpenXML (which should be soon). Then they not only have choice of application, but also of format. :-)

Have a great weekend.

-Brian

Saturday, February 03, 2007 5:30 PM by Dennis E. Hamilton

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

I was stunned to read that the package is done in a way where it can be plugged into third-party products.  That's very interesting.

As Craig Kitterman says,

http://blogs.msdn.com/craig/archive/2007/02/02/open-xml-translator-downloads-hit-10-000-in-6-hours.aspx

there is great discipline in this work.  I have great admiration for how the team applied professional skills in a transparent, open-source project.

Having it be bi-directional is very important at defusing some of the cynicism about this work, and it will be exciting to see the next bits roll out over the course of this year.

This seems like one of those days where you get to tell yourself that you've done good work.  Congratulations.

Monday, February 05, 2007 5:33 AM by Joe

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Why use that, when the <a href="http://fussnotes.typepad.com/fr0mat/2007/02/odf_as_the_perf.html">Foundation plugin</a> achieves 100% fidelity?

Monday, February 05, 2007 10:27 AM by BrianJones

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Go for it Joe :-)

Monday, February 05, 2007 12:24 PM by Sam Hiser

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Here you <a href="http://fussnotes.typepad.com/fr0mat/2007/02/odf_as_the_perf.html">go</a>, Joe...Brian.

Monday, February 05, 2007 12:24 PM by Roberto Galoppini

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Good news! Looking forward to get a SLE* mounting OpenOffice.org supporting OXML too, we might have a look into to deliver a new release of <a href="http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/03/22/free_conversion_to_pdf_rtf.htm">DocTransformer</a> supporting both standards!

Monday, February 05, 2007 3:06 PM by Sam Hiser

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Here you go...

http://fussnotes.typepad.com/fr0mat/2007/02/odf_as_the_perf.html

Monday, February 05, 2007 5:19 PM by BrianJones

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Thanks Sam. Hyperlinks seem to be kind of odd with the commenting tools...

Roberto, that would be awesome!

-Brian

Monday, February 05, 2007 5:23 PM by Tim Anderson

# re: ODF to OpenXML conversion complete

Trouble is, it's not much good, at least in my small trial.

See http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=116

Tim

Tuesday, April 01, 2008 11:32 AM by Brian Jones: Open XML Formats

# Open XML Overwhelmingly Approved as an ISO / IEC standard (IS 29500): the end of the file formats war

I'm sure many folks have seen the news by now that Open XML has been approved as an ISO/IEC standard

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