Microsoft bows to pressure on Office standards

Microsoft is sponsoring an open-source project to translate between its new Office file formats and the rival Open Document Format (ODF), which has already been adopted as an international ISO standard.

The news follows growing support from the European Union and elsewhere for an open standard to allow rich documents to be freely exchanged between different platforms.

Microsoft has submitted its OpenXML formats to the European standards body ETSI, as a fast track to getting ISO approval.

But Europe says OpenXML cannot be open, by definition, because the formats were not developed in an open process and Microsoft retains control over their development. The issue has also caused a political rumpus in the state of Massachusetts.

The company stands to lose lucrative contracts if it cannot get OpenXML accepted by government organisations.

Belgium decreed last week that all government documents should be in ODF from September 2008. Two French ministries have made a similar ruling and Holland has declared government documents must use an open format.

Both OpenXML and ODF are based on Extended Markup Language (XML) but reconciling the two will not be a trivial task. Microsoft had previously said that it would leave third-party developers to provide translation software between the two.

Microsoft software engineers who created OpenXML say they retained control over its development not for commercial reasons, but because of the sheer impossibility of reconciling a cumbersome standards process with the need to create a complex backwards-compatible format within a reasonable timeframe.

Microsoft says its Open XML Translator project 'will create tools to build a technical bridge' between Open XML and ODF.

The company said in a statement: 'This work is in response to government requests for interoperability with ODF.'

It went on: 'In addition to being made available as free, downloadable add-ins for several older versions of the Microsoft Office system, the translation tools will be developed and licensed as open-source software.'

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