Wednesday July 04, 2007

Sun ODF Plugin 1.0 for Microsoft Office FAQ

OK, the Sun ODF Plugin is now available, and people have some questions...

Q: What's the difference between this release and the "Technology Preview" version of the Plugin?

A: There are 3 big differences between these versions:

• This version does not only support Word, but also Excel and PowerPoint!
• This version not only supports MS Office 2003, but also MS Office 2000 and MS Office XP.
• We collected feedback on the conversion quality and made some improvements here.
  

Q: Why doesn't it support Office 2007?

A: Well, basically, it does, but there is an issue in Word's 2007 Filter API handling. You can save to ODF, but when you try to open ODF, Word ignores the installed filters and tries to open with it's own filters. Of course Word can't, so you get an error message "The Office Open XML file <name> cannot be opened because there are problems with the content". This even happens if you explicitly select the ODF filter! I hope Microsoft will fix this issue with the next service pack. If not, we will work around this bug by doing the same kind of integration like in PowerPoint and Excel.

Q: Is it really free?

A: Yes, it is! Of course, if you desire - Sun is also offering Support and Service contracts for this. It's a Sun product, and as such, we will actively support and maintain it for many years.

Q: What about localized versions?

A: We are just working on a localized version. The plan is to have only one MUI (Multi User Interface) version, which will detect and use the language that you are using in MS Office.

Q: What's the difference between the Sun Plugin and the "OpenXML/ODF Translator" on SourceForge.net ?

A:  There are many..

• Only the Sun Plugin has this neat integration into Word. It's just an other filter, and when you open some ODF file, you really work with the ODF file, which means you can save your modifications by pressing Ctrl+S. You can even configure Word to make ODF your default file format!
• Conversion is done with StarOffice code, using it's proven and high quality filters. The other Plugin is developed from scratch, using XSLT, and there are things that can't be transformed with XSLT, because you need information about the computed layout
  
• The Sun Plugin doesn't have other pre-requirements.  Just download and install, no need to install additional things like the "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack", ".NET Framework" and hot fixes.
  

Posted by Malte Timmermann ( Jul 04 2007, 12:24:58 PM CEST ) Permalink Comments [22]