free sun odf plugin for ms office on mac systems

Then it might take a week for a competent document suite developer to play around with the features referenced in the spec and characterize how each feature operates in the indicated version.Ĭompared with other structured data format specifications, OpenXML is certainly towards the top in sheer size and scope, but it’s not terribly obscure, particularly because it is a text-based XML format designed to be compatible with one of the most popular software products of all-time. But would there really be any objection to this minor hurdle if Microsoft supplied an open reference implementation? I can’t image it being very hard for a borderline-retarded person with an Internet connection to acquire a copy of every gold release of MS Office.

These references to back-level MS Office functionality make it significantly harder to implement the specification, but by no means impossible. I suppose that’s an important subset of the fact that there is no open reference implementation. The only (very) annoying thing is that you have to register on Sun’s website to download it, and you have to download it using Sun’s download manager, but perhaps this will change once the final version comes out. Hopefully these problems will be ironed out in the final release. Also, for some reason with the Sun tool a security check (“this could be a malicious file”) pops up every time I open an ODF. Unfortunately, it refused to convert one ODF I tried to open that had a table in it, whereas the MS tool did just fine. Meanwhile, this Sun tool is easy to install, about as fast as any other conversion, and integrates right into the open/save dialogues. The MS tool is EXTREMELY slow at opening ODF files (40 seconds to a minute), and it is not integrated into the open/save dialogue boxes, which is pretty annoying. NET 2.0 PLUS OpenXML filters PLUS the add-in itself.

To use the MS-sponsored tool with Office 2003, you have to install. I just tested this out, and in many ways it’s better than the Microsoft-sponsored ODF add-in.

Free sun odf plugin for ms office on mac systems