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 ;-)
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. :)
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”.
Oppenoffice was just posted to Slashdot. Thankfully I beat the Slashdot rush.
Bittorrent tracker for 2.0 releases: http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/announce
It’s going pretty fast right now.
Whoops, should’ve checked it was the right link first. Take the “announce” off the end.