[MLUG] What do you think of MS ODF support?

[Phillip Kelchen <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

As many of you may know now, Microsoft has had some input in providing 
technical support for making an Office 2007 XML <-> OpenDocument Format 
plugin for the upcoming Office 2007 and later it will support earlier 
versions of MS Office. There has been a lot of debate (some is captured here: 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202560,00.html ) but I was curious as to 
what other people who actually deal with and use ODF files and programs- such 
as you fellow Linux users- think about this. 

I personally think that it is good that I can send out my native ODT and ODS 
files and they can be opened by people who can't install or can't be bothered 
to install OpenOffice- but I think that the conversion will be roughly like 
trying to make MS Office-format documents in OpenOffice- fine for 
unsophisticated things but it can cause formatting incompatibilities and the 
same mantra of "you should have used $MS_OFFICE_PROGRAM and this wouldn't 
have happened" will continue to be heard for users who choose not to use MS 
Office.

BTW, the link for the converter plugin itself is here: 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter

Phillip 

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