In March, Microsoft launched its Document Interoperability Initiative (DII), a program aimed at promoting user choice among document formats and expanded opportunity for developers, partners, and competitors. The program was part of Redmond's promise to abide to interoperability principles it set out for itself in February. Today, the software giant is boasting about three interoperability solutions that have come to fruition thanks to the DII:
- Open XML Document Viewer: a customer technology preview for Firefox on both Windows and Linux platforms, which provides direct interoperability from Open Extensible Markup Language (XML) to HTML formats, has been released. Open XML documents can now be viewed within the browser without the need to install Microsoft Office or other office suites.
- Open XML/ODF Translators: version 2.5 is now available. This add-in provides interoperability between ODF and Open XML for Microsoft Office XP, 2003, and 2007. Some of the improvements in version 2.5 include a set of ODF 1.1- compatible templates optimized for greater fidelity through the translation process, chart-related enhancements in spreadsheets, an enhanced installation experience, and greater reliability.
- Apache POI Java SDK for Open XML: Java developers interested in working with Open XML documents should find this software development kit (SDK) useful. The Apache POI project, which provides pure Java libraries for reading and writing files in formats used by Microsoft Office and other productivity products, launched in June 2007.
It took the software giant a very long while to admit that it needed to change its stance on supporting file formats from its competitors, but it is good to see that the company is finally taking the steps to make many people's lives and jobs easier.
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