| Novell will support Microsoft's Open XML format |
Dec. 04, 2006
The first fruit of the recently announced Novell/Microsoft interoperability agreement arrived today, with Novell's announcement that its version of the OpenOffice productivity suite will now support the Microsoft Office Open XML format.
The release candidate of Novell's modified version of OpenOffice.org 2.02 is now available for Windows for free download by registered Novell users.
In addition to all the usual OpenOffice.org features, this version includes support for the Open XML document format, plus the ability to email any document as a Microsoft Office file from the system's default email application. It also enables users to migrate Excel VBA (Visual Basic Application) macros to OpenOffice's Calc. This version also includes AGFA fonts that mimic Microsoft's default TrueType fonts.
Novell is also working with Microsoft and others on a project to create bi-directional open-source translators for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office. The word processing translator is coming first, and currently is expected to be available by the end of January 2007.
The Open XML/ODF Translator project is hosted on SourceForge, and is licensed under the BSD open source license. The first component, the ODF Add-in for Microsoft Word 2007, which allows users to open and save ODF documents in Word, is now available as a 0.3-M1 beta.
This project had been started by Microsoft in July 2006. At the time, however, Jason Matusow, Microsoft's director of standards affairs, said that Microsoft was not contributing code or providing architectural guidance for the project.
These translators will then be made available as plug-ins to Novell's OpenOffice.org product. Novell will release the code to integrate the Open XML format into its product as open source, and will submit it for inclusion in the OpenOffice.org project. Thus, all OpenOffice.org end users will eventually be able to share files between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, as a result of the documents maintaining more consistent formats, formulas, and style templates across the two office suites.
Despite this greater compatibility with Microsoft's Office file formats, "Novell supports the ODF (OpenDocument format) as the default file format in OpenOffice.org because it provides customer choice and flexibility, but interoperability with Microsoft Office has also been critical to the success of OpenOffice.org," Nat Friedman, Novell chief technology and strategy officer for Open Source, said in a statement.
This follows Corel's reasoning in its announcement last week that it would support both ODF and Open XML in WordPerfect. WordPerfect, however, will not support both formats until the summer of 2007.
In addition, according to the OpenDocument Foundation's co-founder and president, Gary Edwards, there are at least two other efforts afoot to bridge the gap between the warring formats: the Foundation's "da Vinci," and Sun's "OpenOffice tap." In a September Linux-Watch interview, Edwards said, "In 2007 I expect all three to enter global evaluation and testing, with governments selecting whichever works best for them to meet the needs of the task at hand."
Friedman explained Novell's involvement as coming from customer demand. "OpenOffice.org is very important to Novell, and as our customers deploy Linux desktops across their organizations, they're telling us that sharing documents between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office is a must-have. The addition of Open XML support reflects Novell's commitment to providing enterprise customers the tools they need to be successful, from the desktop to the data center," Friedman said.
Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Division Product Management Group, added, "This is further evidence to our mutual customers that Novell and Microsoft have the same commitment to document interoperability and customer choice for document technology. As a leader in the open source community, Novell can help us make sure the Open XML translation technology works well across different applications and platforms."
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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