OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-ins for Office
About
Overview
The goal for this project is to provide translators to allow for interoperability between applications based on ODF (OpenDocument) 1.0 standards and Microsoft OpenXML based Office applications. As a part of this interoperability initiative, add-ins are being developed that can be installed on top of Microsoft Office Word (document processing), Excel (spreadsheet) and PowerPoint (presentation) applications (Office 2007 / 2003 / XP version) to allow for opening and saving OpenDocument format / ODF files (.odt, .ods and .odp) that adheres to ODF 1.0 specifications. We also provide command line translator utilities that allow doing batch conversions.
The converter is based on XSL transformations between two XML formats, along with some pre- and post-processing to manage the packaging (zip / unzip), schema incompatibility processings and the integration into Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. We chose to use an Open Source development model that allows developers from all around the world to participate & contribute to the project.
Along with the Add-ins for Microsoft Word (v1.0 released), Excel (under development) and PowerPoint (under development), we also provide a command line translator that allows doing batch conversions. These translators can also be run on the server side for certain scenarios.
Contributors
This project involves several partners:
Clever Age (Dev & Project Management - France & Poland)
"Clever Age is an international IT services company specialized in software design and integration. It is based in France (Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux) and Poland (Gdansk, Katowice) with customers in Europe and the USA."
In September 2005, Clever Age released an Open Source project that allowed to open OpenOffice.org documents (SXW files) in Word 2003.
Sonata-Software (Development and End to End functionality testing - Bangalore, India)
"Headquartered in Bangalore, India, Sonata Software is an IT Consulting and Services Company which provides software services to global companies. Its portfolio of services include IT Consulting, Application Development, Application Management, Managed Testing, Business Intelligence, Infrastructure Management and Outsourced Product Development and is ISO 9001:2000 and SEI CMM Level 5 certified company."
Aztecsoft (End to End functionality testing - India)
"Aztecsoft is a product engineering specialist that has helped over 100+ ISVs develop and test high quality software products. During its over 10 year relationship with all major Microsoft product groups, Aztecsoft has acquired an exceptional competence in Microsoft products and technologies. These engineering capabilities, combined with Aztecsoft's expertise in Data Management, Integration, Software Testing and Quality Engineering Services, Security Engineering, and Performance Engineering, make Aztecsoft the best choice as an engineering partner to ISVs."
DIaLOGIKa (Development & European Institutions scenarios testing - Germany)
"DIaLOGIKa - a German systems and software house founded in 1982 - conducts projects on behalf of industry, finance, and governmental and supranational clients such as the institutions of the European Union (EU).
From the beginning DIaLOGIKa has focused on technically demanding projects in the field of multilingual text and data processing among others.
Due to the in-depth knowledge accumulated by DIaLOGIKa in the OSS world and in the EU institutions' IT applications, DIaLOGIKa is in an ideal position to contribute to the OpenXML / OpenDocumentFormat conversion initiative by identifying and implementing the word processing features required for the day-to-day work with international documents in an increasingly interoperable world."
Microsoft (Funding, Architectural & Technical Guidance and Project co-coordination)
Novell (Linux porting & OpenOffice.org integration)
"Novell delivers Software for the Open EnterpriseTM. With more than 50,000 customers in 43 countries, Novell helps customers manage, simplify, secure and integrate their technology environments by leveraging best-of-breed, open standards-based software. Our flagship product line is SUSE Linux Enterprise, the best engineered, lowest cost and most interoperable platform for mission-critical computing from the desktop to the data center. Novell includes OpenOffice.org as part of our award-winning SUSE Linux Enterprise Destkop.
Novell's contribution to the ODF Converter project is porting and integration with OpenOffice.org."
Licensing model
This project is developed and released under a very liberal BSD-like license:
* Copyright (c) 2006, Clever Age * All rights reserved. * * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * * * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the * documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * * Neither the name of Clever Age, nor the names of its contributors may * be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software * without specific prior written permission. * * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY * EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED * WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE * DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY * DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES * (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; * LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND * ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT * (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS * SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.