Microsoft Budges Under Pressure, Talks Of ODF
	The Redmond giant to provide support to ODF and other formats in its Office suite.

Thursday, May 22, 2008: Microsoft seems to be putting a zip on the mouths of critics by expanding the range of document formats supported in its Office productivity suite. But before reaching out and patting Microsoft on the back, have a look at the EU's pressure on the giant to behave a bit. [The Commission’s Decision of March 2004 requires Microsoft to disclose complete and accurate interoperability information to developers of work group server operating systems on reasonable terms.] The company has announced that the Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2), scheduled for the first half of 2009, will include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.

The move makes sense owing to losing out on the government clients who do not want to get locked into any proprietary format. The beast of OpenOffice.org is out there, and Microsoft wants to ensure it continues to dominate.

SP2 will allow customers to open, edit and save documents using ODF and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. It will also allow customers to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007. To also provide ODF support for users of earlier versions of Microsoft Office (Office XP and Office 2003), Microsoft will continue to collaborate with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net.

In addition, Microsoft has defined a road map for its implementation of the newly ratified International Standard ISO/IEC 29500 (Office Open XML). IS29500, which was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in March, is already substantially supported in Office 2007, and the company plans to update that support in the next major version release of the Microsoft Office system, code-named 'Office 14'.

Microsoft will also join the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) technical committee working on the next version of ODF and will take part in the ISO/IEC working group being formed to work on ODF maintenance. Microsoft employees will also take part in the ISO/IEC working group that is being formed to maintain Open XML and the ISO/IEC working group that is being formed to improve interoperability between these and other ISO/IEC-recognised document formats.

The company will also be an active participant in the ongoing standardisation and maintenance activities for XPS and PDF. It will also continue to work with the IT community to promote interoperability between document file formats, including Open XML and ODF, as well as Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY XML), the foundation of the globally accepted DAISY standard for reading and publishing navigable multimedia content.

Good to see that; thanks to the EU for building that pressure. Microsoft for sure doesn't want more fines from the EU. Someone once quipped, "A good stick can make an old dog learn new tricks!"