ntouk.com - Jerry Fishenden's technology policy blog

So the big news today will I guess be the fact we’re helping fund the development of an ODF / Open XML convertor for Microsoft Office – one that will be developed as an open source project on Sourceforge. Alongside the convertors for the many other file formats – WordPerfect, RTF, TXT, etc – it makes sense to support the various XML file formats that are getting a lot of attention right now.

The ODF file format has already been through OASIS and ISO and represents the state of the art for storing Open Office file documents. Likewise, the Open XML file formats (which will enable the millions if not billions of Microsoft Office file formats to be stored in XML without any loss of fidelity) are currently going through ECMA International and will then be submitted to ISO.

There is clearly a need to convert between these various file formats – although users need to understand that they will lose content and fidelity if they go to Open Office’s ODF format when they have been using Microsoft Office (in the same way that content and formatting will be lost when saving as .txt from Office). But having the ability to convert between the various document formats available has always been important – and we need to ensure our users have the flexibility they need in the way they work.

I’ve blogged before (see here) that I think the artificial focus on the ODF file format (with some suggesting that simplistic mandation of a single, closed file format is some kind of panacea for interoperability problems) is a distraction from the real business issues we need to be tackling.  Open XML is the best way of ensuring that Microsoft Office documents can move into the XML age without any loss of fidelity of historic context – alongside supporting other important features such as accessibility, business-specific schema and support for formulae in spreadsheets, none of which currently feature large in the Open Office ODF file formats.

As I commented before:

To suggest that interoperability is somehow magically solved by forcing everyone to adopt a single file format and to insist there can only be a single, global “open standard” flies in the face of reality. Successful interoperability programmes work with existing systems, enabling those systems to participate in a wider information ecosystem. I believe the combination of open and proprietary technical standards and the wide range of other published interfaces, file formats and protocols, provides precisely this: practical interoperability, of high value to customers, partners and organisations.

I’m sure that as Open Office’s file formats develop, future versions of ODF will begin to support things like accessibility features and support for formulae in spreadsheets: and it will be important for convertors to support the various releases of ODF (and other file formats) as they develop over time. Having the convertors work as an inclusive open source project on Soureforge will, I hope, prove a good way of the various communities continuing to update and develop the convertors to meet the changing reality of these file formats.

I was quoted – correctly as it happens – only last week at the Open Source Business Conference as saying that customers don’t care about these rather futile “turf wars”. Which is why I believe taking the heat out of the artificially created debate about ODF versus Open XML is exactly the right thing to do. There will always be a variety of file formats, interfaces and protocols available, each focused on specific needs of users. And we would be failing our customers as a company if we did not ensure that all of the existing Microsoft Office documents could make the transition to XML properly – without any loss of the quality, fidelity, accessibility, functionality and performance that our users take for granted.