ODF Offers MS Word Plugin to MA

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.'"

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[chill]

Microsoft wins yet again.

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 .doc and .xls. This one will solve the .doc issue and, if widely distributed, have two effects:

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

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[jbeaupre]

You're right, it's not useful. And for those wondering, the plugin is not yet availible for download (ref:Groklaw article).

Re:Yeah but WHICH VERSION of office?

[Gat0r30y]

FTFA: all versions of MS Office dating back to MS Office 97. RTFA!

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[dominator]

From TFA:

Authored by: gary.edwards (of the Open Document Foundation) on Thursday, May 04 2006 @ 04:15 AM EDT
Don't bother hunting for a download. It's not available. The ODF Plugin came
out of testing last week. I wish i could say we did this last night, but it's
been at least a year in development.

The first stop for the ODF Plugin will be Massachusetts, followed by the EU and
California.

...

Re:Don't worry

[andreyw]

Actually you got it wrong - its "DOS ain't done 'till Lotus runs".

http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos _aint_done_t.html [proudlyserving.com]

Which is really the reason why Windows is so buggy and unstable - they have/had to support all the OLD bugs and undefined behaviors exploited by other software vendors. You can't really sell another version of Windows if say, Adobe Acrobat, doesn't run anymore - even if its Adobe's fault!

Re:Don't worry

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

you're violating when you write a plugin for Office.

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.

Re:Sounds great...

[arodland]

RTF has no standard (other than various halfway-compatible implementations from Microsoft and open-source products), and has extremely little support for any useful formatting or metadata that you would want in an office format. Choosing RTF as your common-denominator standard format would be a lot like choosing HTML 2.0 for the same task. ODF, on the other hand, is flexible, with a complete and open spec, and one of its design goals is feature-compatibility with existing software.

So while I haven't tried this plugin, I find it entirely possible that it supports all or very nearly all Word features, allowing for open-standards interoperability without compromising the quality of the document. It also doesn't hurt that it's apparently implemented in terms of XSLT transforms -- translating OOo XML to Word XML.

That New Office Interface

[buckhead_buddy]

Tom wrote:

But when M$ comes knocking and tries to sell them an upgrade to Office200x, the answer will be "if we have to upgrade anyways, as you have just elaborately shown, then we'll upgrade to OpenOffice, thank you". Especially if the new Office they release with Vista changes the interface considerably, and requires re-training anyways.

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.

• They've done away with cross-application familiarity by doing away with the menu bar. With one exception, they put everything in tab like toolbars at the top of the window called the "ribbon". The one exception is the Microsoft Office logo icon in the upper left corner of the screen that, when discovered you can click on, opens a menu with unimportant options like "Save" and "Open".
• The "ribbon" has some sets of checkbox buttons (for settings like applying bold and italic styles) but mostly it's littered with icon popup buttons where your choice causes an action to happen. There's text labels on some buttons but text is minimized as much as possible including removing keyboard shortcuts. Perhaps they've been placed in the "tooltips".
• Speaking of tooltips, the video touted that Microsoft has revolutionized tool tip technology by making them larger providing fuller explanations of what you're looking at. The demo looked suspiciously like Apple's horrible Balloon Help feature from System 7.1. This was useful for about the first five minutes of using an application but quickly became obtrusive and annoying. Unlike balloon help though, they they showed no way to turn these new "wordy" tool tips off.
• Can't find which button you're looking for in the ribbon? That's probably because it's contextual. If you drop a photo into word, a special toolbar appears that gives you options you can only see if the photo is selected. Or rather, you must see if the photo is selected. Now we're looking at the days of 1998 with OpenDoc that promised to give you custom options for your web browser embedded in your MacDraw document: any accidental context selection or de-selection will drive you crazy looking for options that don't apply. Additionally you have duplicate options that would apply to all contexts, but in different places of the ribbon.
• Big features like Footer, Header, and Cell Format have been reduced to action popup buttons with about a dozen Microsoft designed templates in each. There's an option for you to customize your header/footer/cell format, but that was apparently not demonstrated. Like the Microsoft clip art that came with Word For Windows I think you'll get pretty sick of seeing many of these templates pretty fast. Hopefully there's a way to add 3rd party templates instead of the Microsoft defaults, but the size of those popup menus just won't show more than a dozen or so options in a comprehensible way.
• Changes from those popup action buttons happen automatically. You don't even have to select the option, just hover over it in the menu and the change happens automatically. The demonstration of previewing changes to typeface and typestyle just seems easy. Apart from performance issues. Apart from making concepts like style sheets even more abstract. Apart from accidental selection issues. But you can't see your whole document at once so your hip red and grey Microsoft excel template may look fine on the selection you can see, but look awful on a part you can't see. This isn't a new problem with the new office, but it easier than ever to do now.
• They claim these new popup action icon buttons in the ribbon does away with the need for "Undo".

Re:Sounds great...

[Anonymous Coward]

But if the government uses MS formats, everyone who wants to deal with the government has to use MS software. If the government uses an open format, then even if the government continues to use Office MS can't force the sale to people who need to work with the government.

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[drinkypoo]

That plugin only allows importing of OO.o documents into Word, at least AFAICT (I just installed it, I have office 2003.) It's precisely the opposite of what we're talking about here.

Re:DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's idiots like you who made it possible for the calm speaking lawyers of people like the RIAA/MPAA to manage to weasle the DMCA law past those who should have stopped it at the beginning.

That said, the DMCA is quite restrictive and does indeed apply to a surprising amount. I believe that it specifies bypassing PROTECTIONS though. The use of a published API to create a plugin allowing the use of a published documentation format doesn't really qualify obviously. There is no protection whatsoever at any point in that process. Neither one which gets bypassed, nor one which is followed through normally.

Re:DMCA

[amliebsch]

BULLSHIT!!! The DMCA makes it a felony (25 year in prison!) for me to play a DVD I bought on Linux.

You own the DVD. You do not own the copyright on the DVD. Therefore CSS is a system for protecting a copyright that you do not own.