What would make an effective ODF plug-in for MS Office?
In a previous article we talked about Microsoft’s clever move to ‘outsource’ an Open Document Format (ODF) plug-in for Microsoft Office. Rather than do it themselves, it’s going to be done by an group of outside companies and ODF supporters.
That raises the question – what would make an effective ODF plug-in for MS Office? The existing ‘alpha’ plug-in is limited, to put it politely.
Here’s what we would consider necessary to properly implement ODF within Microsoft Office:
- Documents should be converted to and from ODF formats fully and effectively. This will be a problem because there are features in the Office document formats that don’t have equivalents in ODF. In particular, there’s the issue of defining spreadsheet functions.
- Microsoft always made a big deal about ’round tripping’ HTML files to and from Word – the same standard should apply to ODF.
- Seamless ODF support – not just import and export filters. In other words to directly create and edit ODF files.
- The ability to set ODF as the default document format, enforceable through group policies in companies.
- Documents with ODF extensions that are supported in Office need to have the appropriate Microsoft Office application icon showing in Explorer.
- ODF needs to be listed in the equivalent of Tools | Compatibility in Office 2003 – ie features not supported in ODF are disabled when you have an ODF document opening. This would benefit Microsoft since it would clearly point to features that people will get with native Office document formats but not with ODF.
- All this needs to apply to the last few releases of both Office for Windows and Office for Mac. For example. Office 2000, Office XP (2002) and Office 2003.
- ODF master documents need to be supported in some way. Unlike the MS Office feature of the same name, the ODF type of master document combines multiple documents into one file (ie a document, presentation etc). Perhaps if a master document is detected, the user is asked which document they want to open?
In other words, Microsoft needs to ensure that this group they appointed does a proper job. It’s not enough for Microsoft to farm this job out and hope it falls short, leaving their own document format remaining as the only contender.
