Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Sun, IBM launch ODF tools initiative [ComputerWorld]

Interesting that the ODF/Open XML debate, which was quite lively early in 2008, has mostly faded from the headlines

Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM are expected on Wednesday to announce the Open Document Format Toolkit Union, an open-source project aimed at making it easier for developers to use ODF.

Sun is contributing an initial set of code for an application programming interface (API) that developers can use to work with ODF files without having to know the ins and outs of the technical specification, the companies said.

Later in the ComputerWorld article:

IBM is also set to announce Wednesday that development of future generations of its free Symphony productivity suite will be done entirely on the ODF 1.2 and OpenOffice 3.0 software code base.

This will result in interoperability with Office 2007 file formats and support for Visual Basic macros probably by mid-2009, according to Brill.

On a related note, check out Dough Mahugh’s summary of a recent Document Interop Initiative meeting

Sun, IBM launch ODF tools initiative

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