OpenDocument for Office

It looks like others have had the same idea as me. The OpenOpenOffice project (not convinced by the name, though – how does it make OpenOffice more open?) aims to give the ability to read and write OpenDocument to Microsoft Word users. Their plan is to use a remote conversion server and SOAP. It’s being sponsored by Open Source Victoria in Australia, who should have a press release up soon.

In related news, OpenOffice.org 2.0 final has hit the mirrors. Don’t all rush at once – this link is to a particular mirror, as it hasn’t propagated fully. There’s also no official release announcement yet; although I expect that very soon. I hope they won’t be upset that I’ve noticed. No-one tell Slashdot ;-)

5 thoughts on “OpenDocument for Office

  1. It doesn’t do anything to OpenOffice, it does things to Microsoft Office. Specifically, it lets it “Open(load) OpenOffice”-supported document types.

    Whoever though “Open” was a cleared word for this stuff than “Free” needed to do their homework a bit more thoroughly. I blame ESR. :)

  2. But they aren’t OpenOffice document types – that’s the point. They are OpenDocument document types, implemented by multiple vendors! That’s the reason they made the Massachusetts decision.

    So the correct name would be “OpenOpenDocument”.