[odf-discuss] Sun's OpenDocument filter for MS office released

[Daniel Carrera]

Peter Vandenabeele wrote:
> It works stand-alone on a MS Windows + MS Office 2000, XP or 2003 install.
> It expands to a 40 MBytes plug-in (the code itself is smaller due to
> compression). Installation is easy, does not depend on other software.

Thanks. That's very interesting, and very good news. I always thought 
that their plugin would require OOo on a server. This is great news. 
Like you said, now we can start giving ODF files to everyone and asking 
them to download the Sun plugin if they have MS Office. Very good news 
indeed...

> I executed a large number of tests on this plugin (actually slightly
> newer versions from "head") and the results are very good now...
> 
> As a reference, I consider rendering of .odt and .odp files in
> MS Office 2003 + Sun plug-in now to be significantly superior to what I
> have used and whitnessed for many years in rendering .doc and .ppt
> files from OO.o

Excellent... and very interesting. You mean that *two-way* communication 
is better using the Sun plugin + ODF files:

MS Office <-> Sun plugin <-> ODF <-> OOo

Than using MS formats?:

MS Office <-> .doc/.ppt/.xls <-> OOo

That is great news, but it's also surprising. If the plugin is based on 
OOo I would expect the quality to be the same. Do you know anything that 
might explain this difference?

This is great news indeed. I'm very excited about the prospect of being 
able to send ODF files to anyone.

Cheers,
Daniel.