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Subject: Re: [office] Claim to implement MS Office 2007 files, not OOXML



"David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com> wrote on 05/21/2008 01:22:47 PM:

> Here's more evidence that suggests that YEARFRAC (etc.) should
> document something compatible with Excel 2007, and NOT what OOXML does:
> "Office 2007 won't support ISO's OOXML" By David Worthington,
>
http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32228
>
> Brief quote: "For customers expecting an ISO-conformant Office Open
> XML (OOXML) in Microsoft Office, the wait will continue: Microsoft
> will not implement the standardized version of its own document
> format until Office 14 ships. Meanwhile, a service pack due in 2009
> is expected to expand the formats supported by Office 2007.
> Today, Microsoft announced that it was making new commitments to
> document interoperability within its Office product line for
> Windows. Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will add native support for
> OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1, PDF 1.5, PDF/A and XML Paper
> Specification, an XML-based fixed-document format created by Microsoft.".
>
> Note the ODF 1.1 implementation.  I don't know what its quality will
> be, but in any case, welcome aboard to ODF!
>

Yes, welcome Microsoft!  Indeed they were always welcome to join, but we shouldn't hold that against them.  Remember, IBM didn't join the TC until ODF 1.0 was almost done.  Google didn't join until ODF 1.1 was done, etc.  We can never have too many friends.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see more interest from Microsoft partners as well, since now they can write ODF-processing tools that can reach almost everyone's documents, from MS Office to OpenOffice to Symphony to Google Docs to KOffice to WordPerfect Office, etc.  This is the network effect at work.  As soon as MS Office supports ODF natively, _everything_ that supports ODF, producers and consumers, applications and toolkits, automatically becomes more useful and more valuable, because of its increased reach.

We may look back at this announcement in a few years and say "This was the tipping point".

In any case, our ODF 1.2 goals and plans remained unchanged. The only difference is maybe Microsoft can confirm our understanding of the YEARFRAC() spreadsheet issues so we can ensure that our definitions are compatible with what Excel does.

-Rob


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