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May 21, 2007
Microsoft Continues to Expand Interoperability Options for Office
Customers
REDMOND, Wash. — May 20, 2007 — As part
of its continued commitment to deliver interoperability by design,
Microsoft Corp. today announced a new collaborative effort with
the Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics)
and others to create an open source translator project
between China’s Unified Office Format (UOF) and the Ecma
Open XML File Formats. In addition, the company announced
the beta release of translation tools for Windows® XP,
and the 2003 and 2007 versions of Microsoft® Office
Excel® and Microsoft Office PowerPoint® as part of the
Open XML Translator project launched in July 2006.
The
UOF translation tools will be developed and licensed as
open source software, and ultimately will be made available
as free, downloadable add-ins for Microsoft Office Word 2003
and 2007 customers from SourceForge.net. As such, the tools
will be available for use with other individual and
commercial projects to accelerate document interoperability across the industry
and benefit Microsoft Office customers in China who need
to work with the UOF standard. A preview of
the UOF translator tools will be released on SourceForge
this summer, with final versions expected early next year.
Further details on the UOF SourceForge project are available
at http://uof-translator.sourceforge.net.
“Our customers have told us their data needs
can’t be addressed by a one-format or one-standard-fits-all approach,”
said Jean Paoli, general manager of Interoperability and XML
Architecture at Microsoft. “Everyone wants to use their data
in slightly different ways. That’s why we are enabling
customers to pick from whatever format they want to
use with their Office documents — whether it’s ODF,
Open XML, PDF, or new standards like UOF.”
The UOF-specific
translator meets the needs of government and public sector
customers in China who are interested in using the
emerging standard, which is being developed by the Chinese
Office Software Work Group (COSWG), led by the Ministry
of Information Industry (MII), major suppliers of Chinese office
software suites, and academic institutions such as the Beijing
Information Technology Institute. The translator tools themselves will be
developed and tested by leading Chinese independent software vendors
and academic institutions such as the Beihang University, Beijing
Information Technology Institute (one of the co-creators of the
UOF Chinese standard), Tsinghua University and LitSoft (a member
of Lenovo Group).
Since Microsoft first announced its support for
its open source Open XML Translator project to provide
interoperability between the Open XML and ODF formats, it
has remained among the 25 most active projects on
SourceForge.net, and the Microsoft Office Word tool delivered earlier
this year has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.
More information on the ODF project is available at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter.
The Open XML to ODF Translator is just
one of many interoperability initiatives Microsoft has spearheaded. The
company continues to work with others in the industry
to provide access to its technologies through projects such
as technical collaborations with AOL LLC and Yahoo! Inc.
for instant messaging interoperability; the creation of the Interoperability
Vendor Alliance and Interoperability Executive Customer Council; the collaboration
with Novell; and implementation of an Open Specification Promise.
Further details on Microsoft’s interoperability efforts are available at
http://www.microsoft.com/interop.
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