Developers of an open source project to produce a
translator between the Opendocument format
(ODF) and Microsoft's Open XML document format have released a
completed version of the tool.
The Microsoft-funded translator project is being developed by
French company CleverAge and
Sonata Software of India. It is being tested by
Dialogika of Germany and India-based Aztecsoft.
With the project, Microsoft aims to convince users -
particularly in the public sector - that it is not locking them
into proprietary data formats built around its own products.
When plugged into Microsoft Office Word, for example, the
translator provides the choice to open and save documents in ODF
rather than the native Open XML format.
The translator may also be plugged into non-Microsoft word
processing programs that use ODF as the default format to open and
save documents in Open XML.
Microsoft announced its support for the open source project in
July 2006. Since inception it has remained among the 30 most active
projects on Sourceforge.net, and the tool has been downloaded more
than 50,000 times, said Microsoft.
Microsoft said the project, along with the standardisation of
Open XML within Ecma International, and the ongoing standardisation
of Open XML in the International Organisation for Standardisation
and the International Electrotechnical Commission, would help to
ensure that users have a choice of formats in which to store their
data.
Tom Robertson, general manager for interoperability and
standards at Microsoft, said, "The translator project is
independent of any one application, and has proved to be useful for
both Microsoft and our competitors in solving an interoperability
challenge for customers."
Novell plans to implement the translator in the next version of
the Openoffice productivity suite.
The second phase of the translator project, including
translators for spreadsheets and presentation software, will begin
this month.
Download the translator tool
More openness
needed in Vista
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