RSSSun Releases Own ODF Plug-in for Office
By Nate Mook | Published July 5, 2007, 2:49 PM
Separate from Microsoft's efforts to create a translator that supports Office 2007's Open XML formats and OpenDocument, Sun has released the final 1.0 version of its own ODF plug-in for Office. However, Office 2007 is not yet supported due to what Sun calls a bug in Microsoft's newest suite.
Sun ODF Plugin 1.0 works with Office 2003, Office XP and even Office 2000. It fully supports Word, Excel and PowerPoint files - something the Microsoft-backed plug-in does not yet do. Office 2007 is not supported due to an issue in Word 2007 in which the application ignores installed filters and only opens documents with its own. And, of course, Word does not natively support ODF.
"This even happens if you explicitly select the ODF filter! I hope Microsoft will fix this issue with the next service pack. If not, we will work around this bug by doing the same kind of integration like in PowerPoint and Excel," said Sun developer Malte Timmermann.
The difference, Sun says, between its plug-in and the translator project, is integration. Because the plug-in works like any other file-type filter, users can work directly with the ODF document in Word. This means saving can be done like a regular file -- not requiring a separate Save As export command -- and ODF can even become Word's default file format.
"Conversion is done with StarOffice code, using it's proven and high quality filters. The other Plugin is developed from scratch, using XSLT, and there are things that can't be transformed with XSLT, because you need information about the computed layout," Timmermann added.
The Sun ODF Plug-in 1.0 is completely free and requires no extra downloads like the .NET Framework or Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. At the moment, only English is supported, but Sun is working on a multi-language version that will simply detect and select what language of Microsoft Office is being used.
Thats is so cool.
Now there is zero need for for the feature-poor OpenOffice.
Microsoft Office will rule forever.
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This is terrific. I'll start deploying it at work as soon as I finish experimenting with it myself. The MS plugin is soooo awful.
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This should be a default addon. :)
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can we trust M$ not to introduce a bug thru one of the office update patches to derail the plugin for the older Office versions ?
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A quality release. That's quality.
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The beta was pretty darn good, but this final version is spot-on accurate. With ODF and .doc conversion, there will never be a need to save anything in Microsoft's proprietary and suite-dependent MS-OOXML format.
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Wow this is pretty cool!
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Office 2007 has a bug that prevents installed filters from opening other file formats. A bug? yea, I'm sure that's what it is. Because if it was intentional it would (or should) stir up trouble with the DOJ.
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