[odf-discuss] OOo OOXML filters

[Alex Hudson]

marbux wrote:
> On 12/12/06, Alex Hudson <alex at stratagia.co.uk> wrote:
>> The "external conversion" API which relies on RTF is also a completely
>> different thing; Word doesn't use that to import OXML.
>>
> Are you sure? Remember Microsoft is also building EOOXML retrofits for
> Office 2000, XP, and 2003. That's a much bigger job if they don't use
> the existing  modified RTF external file conversion schemes in those
> earlier versions.

Not really; it's the same amount of work. First: I don't believe that
they are using RTF for Office 2007 because RTF just can't represent OXML
files. Macros, forms, all sorts of advanced features just are not
possible. _However_, Office 2007 plainly can convert OXML into RTF:
that's what the internal conversion API is used for - to change
documents into different formats without having to re-walk the internals
in every different file converter.

The internal API decouples the file converters from needing to know
about Word's own internals.

Now, earlier Offices - quite possibly. I got the impression their
support is something less than stellar. RTF only handles a small part of
the problem, though - they have spreadsheets and presentations to worry
about too. RTF might be part of the solution, but it's unlikely to be
the whole thing.

>> You can tell this is the case by what the Mac guys said recently:
>> they're porting the WinWord OXML loader to Mac Office. The RTF
>> conversion API would be a *separate* implementation - they state that
>> specifically.
>
> Got a link?

Yup:
http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2006/12/07/open-xml-converters-for-mac-office.aspx

If you look down to the update, he states that the calculation he made
to support OpenXML was artificially extended by the requirement
read/write RTF - if you just wanted OpenXML support, you wouldn't
apparently need to do that.

Now, I could be wrong - perhaps the reason they're losing macros in the
next version of Office is because they're sucking up RTF - but again, I
would be surprised.

-- 
Alex Hudson
IT Director, Stratagia Ltd.
P: 0845 226 17 13     W: http://www.stratagia.co.uk/
F: 0845 226 17 14     E: alex (at) stratagia.co.uk