Microsoft Embraces Rival File Formats

摘要

Microsoft corp. last week said it will add support for the ODF and PDF file formats to Office 2007 - a change of heart that won it some praise from desktop application rivals such as IBM and OpenOffice.org. Native support for the Open Document Format for Office Applications and the Portable Document Format will be built into the Service Pack 2 release of Office 2007, which is due in the first half of next year. Office users currently have to install third-party plug-ins to store documents in ODF. Gray Knowlton, an Office group product manager at Microsoft, said that the software vendor previously had heard from users that supporting plug-in translators was good enough. But now, he added, "we've gotten the direction that people want ODF in the product." Ironically, the ODF and PDF support will be added before Office 2007 gets full support for the recently ratified ISO-standard version of Microsoft's own Office Open XML format in its next major release.