Open Document gives Office a new look

We know that Open Document Format or simply ODF is a widely used XML based document representation format to which Sun is the key contributor. OpenOffice, KOffice and a lot other office suites stores its documents in any one of the following OpenDocument formats by default

• .odt for word processing (text) documents

• .ods for spreadsheets

• .odp for presentations

• .odg for graphics

• .odf for formula, mathematical equations

Though, these suites support the proprietory and popular .doc, .xls, .ppt formats, Microsoft had, for a long time gave a deaf ear to what happened on the “other” side. It never even cared to support these formats for a long time.

But after a biiiiiiigggggggggggggg annoucement by the State of Massachusetts that “we cannot have our public documents locked up in some kind of proprietary format, perhaps unreadable in the future, or subject to a proprietary system license that restricts access”, Microsoft started financing the ODF plugin for Word last year (under BSD license, of course). A lot of third parties, even before Microsoft, announced that they are developing plugins for ODF in Office environment.

All this happened last year. So, why this blog now? The popular open document format has just been approved as an ISO standard. And the Open Document Foundation Inc has annouced complete development of ODF plugins for Office suite. With it, every 32-bit Windows user can use ODF. They are planning to distribute the plugin bundled with the Google Pack. Oops !!! (Google always gives me that heart attack)

Now that we see a huge migration of windows users to Linux flavours, this plugin surely gives an extended life to MS Office. But then this should really have given Gates a taste of his bitter future.

Edwards, co-founder and president of Open Document Foundation Inc, says that he’s now waiting for the “Microsoft ODF plugin to show up. Microsoft has said that if the demand is out there, they will produce it. If Bill Gates holds up a finger to judge the wind for ODF demand today, he’ll get his arm ripped off.”