Microsoft plans new document formats

Microsoft is expected to announce its sponsorship of an open source project to create a converter between Ecma Open XML and a Chinese national standard called Unified Office Format (UOF).

Microsoft decided to support UOF through a translator because of interest from the Chinese government customers and institutions. The project is a collaborative effort with Beijing Information Technology Institute, one of the creators of UOF.

Ecma Open XML is a set of file formats closely tied to Microsoft Office. The convertor, which will allow users to open and save documents in either Ecma Open XML or UOF will be available at SourceForge.net, an open source project hosting site.

Microsoft is also expected to release beta versions of translators between Excel and PowerPoint and corresponding applications that support the OpenDocument Format (ODF).

The company released an initial translator for Word earlier this year, and translators for XP, 2003 and 2007 versions of PowerPoint and Excel are expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The Microsoft Office Word tool has already been downloaded over 100,000 times and the open source Open XML Translator project is among the 25 most active projects on SourceForge.net.

Story link: Microsoft plans new document formats

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