Microsoft is including support for several new document standards in its Office 2007 products.
The software giant will expand its formats to include Open Document Format (ODF), XML Paper Specification (XPS) and Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF).
The expansion will be distributed in Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) in the first half of next year. "We're committed to giving Office users greater choice among document formats and enhanced interoperability between those formats and the applications that implement them," says Microsoft SA platform strategy manager Paulo Ferreira.
This means that when using SP2, users will be able to open, edit and save documents using ODF, and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats directly within the application without having to install any other code.
"The move offers customers greater choice and more flexibility among document formats, as well as creating additional opportunities for developers and competitors," says Ferreira.
The company says to provide ODF support for users of earlier versions of Office - including Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 - Microsoft will collaborate with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net.
"By increasing the openness of our products, we believe we can help create opportunities for developers and competitors, including members of open source communities, to innovate and deliver new value for customers."
Microsoft has also defined a roadmap for its implementation of the newly-ratified ISO standard, Office Open XML. The standard was approved by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in March. It 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".
The company also says it will be an active participant in the future evolution of ODF, Open XML, XPS and PDF standards. Microsoft will join the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards technical committee working on the next version of ODF and will take part in the ISO/IEC working group that is being formed to work on ODF maintenance.
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