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Novell Ships Office OpenXML Translator
Novell quietly announced Monday it is shipping an Office OpenXML/Open Document Format translator that works with its own edition of the OpenOffice.org open source productivity suite.
The delivery was only five days later than the company had planned last month.
The OpenXML Translator provides support for opening and saving Microsoft Office OpenXML-formatted word processing documents (.docx) in OpenOffice.org, according to a posting on Novell's public relations blog. The blog post hailed shipment of the translator as the first deliverable in an agreement that Novell and Microsoft announced last fall.
Novell's move is one of several recently aimed at providing native file compatibility between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org. SourceForge last month released an Open Document Format (ODF) add-in for Word 2007, in a project that uniquely was funded by Microsoft.
Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems last month announced a preview of its ODF translator for its own OpenOffice distribution -- StarOffice.
Novell's OpenXML Translator is available for download here.
About the Author
Stuart J. Johnston has covered technology, especially Microsoft, since February 1988 for InfoWorld, Computerworld, Information Week, and PC World, as well as for Enterprise Developer, XML & Web Services, and .NET magazines.