Microsoft opens up Office to open document formats
Very interesting move, and a major step for Microsoft: the software giant announced yesterday that it will enhance its Office line of products with native support for competing formats.
Microsoft will add native support for Open Document Format (ODF ) 1.1, Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5 and PDF/A, as well as their own XML Paper Specification (XPS). This support will start with Office 2007 SP2, and will be implemented directly in the next version of Office, codenamed Office 14. Microsoft will also join the OASIS and ISO working froups working on ODF.
Interesting to see how Microsoft have moved away from their proprietary document formats, which were previously considered as their “crown jewels”, and now focus their innovation efforts on the applications themselves.
More surprising though, is the fact that Office 2007 will not support OOXML, Microsoft’s own competing format for ODF, which they recently “fast-tracked” through ISO approval.
In any event, this is great news for the Future of Documents, as this is a major step towards one open document format for easy interchange between applications.
[...] Francois Ragnet – “Microsoft opens up Office to open document formats” Interesting to see how Microsoft have moved away from their proprietary document formats, which were previously considered as their “crown jewels”, and now focus their innovation efforts on the applications themselves. More surprising though, is the fact that Office 2007 will not support OOXML, Microsoft’s own competing format for ODF, which they recently “fast-tracked” through ISO approval. In any event, this is great news for the Future of Documents, as this is a major step towards one open document format for easy interchange between applications. [...]