Erwin's StarOffice Tango

Microsoft Office 12 following OpenOffice.org/StarOffice
I guess most of you have already read or heard the news that Microsoft will add PDF support to the upcoming Office 12. I'm wondering what changed Microsoft's minds!? Is this a response to user feedback, as I read somewhere, or is this a reaction to Massachusett's recent endorsement of the OASIS OpenDocument format and PDF?

StarOffice and OpenOffice.org have PDF support since version 7 or 1.1 respectively, which were released in October 2003. Given that Office 12 is due out next year, OpenOffice.org and StarOffice were ahead of Microsoft by three years with respect to PDF support. Thus, Microsoft Office 12 is following OpenOffice.org and StarOffice.

It is interesting to see that this huge dinosaur of a company (i.e. Microsoft) can and does actually change the product strategy based on customer pressure. WordPerfect already supports PDF and will soon add support for the OASIS OpenDocument format. OpenOffice.org and StarOffice already support both formats, OpenDocument and PDF. Now Microsoft is adding PDF support. I'm wondering when customer pressure will make them support the OASIS OpenDocument format as well.

PDF is a great read-only format, but I strongly believe that OpenDocument will become the standard file format for editable documents.
( Okt 04 2005, 03:55:23 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [2]

Kommentare:

While it appears MS is changing strategy based on customer feedback, nothing Microsoft does is without advancing its agenda. The support for PDF might the same strategy they took when Word began to support WordPerfect, adopt and absorb. (Microsoft's other strategy is adopt and extend, typically exercised to eliminate less ingrained enemies.) My hypothesis: I foresee Word offering basic PDF support and their alternative option. Of course, their option would have more features from within Office, and this fact would be brought up every time someone exported to PDF. The reader program for their PDF competitor would begin to ship with Vista (the viral marketing begins) and possibly IE7. What worked for Flash will work for MS would be their thinking. There is reason to rejoice at Microsoft listening to the customers, but I would do it cautiously.

Gesendet von Kyle Miller am Oktober 04, 2005 at 09:56 PM CEST #

Since MS Excel 2002 and above, and MS Word 2003 and above have XML formats, I'm sure it won't be long before all of us can easily convert between OASIS OpenDocument and MS Office formate with ease, regardless of whether MS offers explicit support for it or not. Since MS has already decided to support XML, the pressure is off of them to explicitly worry about OpenDocument.

Gesendet von Steve Jorgensen am Oktober 23, 2005 at 08:14 AM CEST #