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ODF Offers MS Word Plugin to MA
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu May 04, 2006 10:25 AM
from the state-has-a-friend dept.
from the state-has-a-friend dept.
Goalie_Ca writes "Groklaw just posted that the OpenDocument Foundation is offering Massachusetts a plugin that could 'allow Microsoft Office to easily open, render, and save to ODF files, and also allow translation of documents between Microsoft's binary (.doc, .xls, .ppt) or XML formats and ODF ... The testing has been extensive and thorough. As far as we can tell there isn't a problem, even with Accessibility add ons, which as you know is a major concern for Massachusetts.'"
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Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Funny)
From the old days: "DOS ain't done 'till Lotus won't run".
Parent
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Informative)
Not that Office invented the concept of plug-ins, but it probably is one of the most used targets for plug-ins there is. From CRM systems, advanced securities pricing models, Adobe Acrobat, etc, etc, etc, etc. There are TONs of plug-ins and MS explicitly built thier framework to encourage this.
Isn't that pretty much what the whole Open Doc format debate was about after all? While there may be technical ways to get through Microsoft's bullshit formats, the patent threats may make it illegal to do so.
Not an issue in this case. Just like Adobe's plug-ins which can convert and Office documents to thier format, this plug-in I'm sure won't even bother messing with the raw binary data. Just open the document in the Office application and then each application exposes a friendly API to be able to play with, convert, ect, etc the document all you want. No need to even consider the underlieing documents format (in fact would be quite silly to) just use the API provided.
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Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you forgot a "not" in there somewhere.
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Sounds great... (Score:5, Interesting)
At the same time though... this does conceivably give more power to Redmond as there is now less incentive for MA to leave the Windows/Office platform.
Re:Sounds great... (Score:5, Insightful)
The desired effect would be to allow a gradual trasition that would be easier to swallow than a all-at-once changeover.
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Re:Sounds great... (Score:5, Insightful)
If a simple plugin can allow MSOffice to use ODF, there is then no argument whatsoever for MA to use Microsoft's proprietary formats, which really do shut out all non-Microsoft users.
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Why MS should have supported ODF (Score:5, Insightful)
Now there's interoperability with no revenue stream for Microsoft. Nice going, MS.
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Re:Sounds great... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Sounds great... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's definitely true that it's open STANDARDS that matter. There is, however, a large pitfall: Don't let vendors like Microsoft redefine what an open standard actually is. They tried a little while ago, with their previous office XML standard...
- Vegard
Parent
Hilarious! (Score:5, Funny)
I love it.
Heh.. (Score:5, Funny)
too easy? (Score:4, Funny)
I've met plenty of people from Massachusetts. I can imagine the Accessibility add-ons would be crucial there.
This time with help from ODF, (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This time with help from ODF, (Score:5, Informative)
No, this is not correct.
The Office division of Microsoft has long been one of their major profit centers. MS Office is also a bigger monopoly than Windows, having greater penetration in the market percentagewise. These facts stem from the ability to lock-in customers by holding their data hostage to a closed format.
This plug-in is a door to the world of non-MS Office products -- a way out, if you will. Yes, other office-type products exist, but none of them have gained serious traction because of the perceived lack of totally compatibility with MS
1. It will increase the market share of non-MS Office products at the expense of MS Office;
2. It will cause Microsoft to lower the price of MS Office to compete, thus lowering their profits on what is widely rumored to be their LARGEST profit center, Office.
-Charles
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Let me see.... (Score:4, Interesting)
This foundation has decided to do so.
Kudos to them. They just proved that there is none of that so-called vendor lock-in.
Sure, it takes effort, but if you can be bothered to do it, it pays off.
Step program (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? The Catch 22 has been solved (we need MS vs. can't convert while using MS). And it's the bean counters that ultimately sway government decisions.
1) Plugin will be installed on gov pc's
2) Documents will be handled in ODF
3) Gov bean counters will be suggesting to managers everywhere they can save $XXXX if they use OpenOffice instead of MS Office
Re:Step program (Score:4, Insightful)
There is more to building a successful office suite than a choice of formats for storage, output and exchange.
Parent
Why isn't this available to everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. I don't use MSOffice all that much, but have to constantly exchange .doc, .xls, etc. formats all the time with other people. For the most part, OO.o saves in these formats and opens in Office fine, as intended. Sometimes it doesn't though. If I could save in ODF format and include a plugin with the document itself, I would think that would be far more helpful in getting people to at least look at open source, rather than just pointing them to OO.o and saying "Install this".
Smart Move (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially if the new Office they release with Vista changes the interface considerably, and requires re-training anyways.
Of course, the next Office update will break the plugin. It'll be a cold day in hell before M$ can let this stand unchallenged.
That New Office Interface (Score:5, Informative)
On the topic of Office 2007's user interface, the recent promotional movie [microsoft.com] published on the Microsoft web site seems like they're trying especially hard in this next release to be different for the sake of being different. So hard that some of their innovative ideas may prove better in concept than implementation. Here were some of my thoughts on this 12 minute video.
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Open documents good (Score:4, Interesting)
Currently my office runs on M$ Office 2k3. We could easily switch to OpenOffice save one luser who creates every one of his spreadsheets using M$ specific formatting that throws the OO conversion tool for a loop. I would switch the rest of us but we all have to be able to access his documents as he is the shop manager and he gets cranky when people don't read his crap. Had I been here when the network was set up in the first place this would be a M$ free shop as Linux has all of the tools these lusers need in a default workstation install. So I am going to sit here patiently waiting to move everyone to Linux immediately after we can get ODF translations for all of his crap. At least I can move the website to a Slack server soon (after I weed out the useless ASP code). IIS is killing me
I am Microsoft Certified, which is why I use Linux.
Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Yeah but WHICH VERSION of office? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of vendors that offer MS Office plugins that work across most versions, and the existence of these plugins is one of the reasons for the "MS Office lock-in". The plugins are NOT offered for other office suites (and this was one of MAs concerns; disability support plugins for MS Office that didn't translate well into other platforms).
The existence of these plugins makes MS Office a platform instead of simply a program. This plugin simply allows continued use of the platform where needed; yet allows competing product and platforms to coexist.
Note that conversion accuracy is no longer a concern:
Now, the plugin layer MUST be (reasonably) feature complete -- simply because if it is NOT, other plugins would suffer badly (eg. screen reader wouldn't be able to determine formatting, thus rendering difficulty to blind users of MS Office).
If you are paranoid about Microsoft, and think that the feature completeness of the plugin layer will or can be compromised -- that is very unlikely. Other plugins would also suffer, and government users would be forced to start looking at alternatives.
The existence of this plugin means that an ecosystem with both Microsoft and alternate vendors can be supported. Which is a good thing. Previously, the only way to use
I don't think it will hinder or improve MS Office sales at all, but it will make things possible that have been VERY difficult in the past.
I will start seeding the plugin as soon as I can!
Ratboy
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Re:Critical Update (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Embrace the plugin and create it as a standard feature of MS Office. Make sure this integration solution falls behind the standard and start including special Microsoft initiated ideas. When standards people complain about the new features, yell at them stating that the standard people are holding the product back from its true capabilities that customers keep demanding of Microsoft.
2) Include a warning message when loading or saving documents to special plugins that they may include viruses, have missing features, or that data may be lost. If people complain, Microsoft will state that feature X in Word is not in the standard.
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