Why OpenDocument format is a big step forwards.


09 Jul 2006

Myself and Daniel have been talking a bit about tools recently, and it's all centred really around one thing: the fact that we've got and increasingly will develop XSLT stylesheets which make use of the OpenDocument format.

We started a Firefox plugin a little while ago, which needs a little love, and I've written some command line tools which will be available soon. But this is all kind of window dressing around the real beef, the actual XSLT stylesheets. The Fellowship started an ODF -> HTML transform, Microsoft have started an ODF -> OXML transform (and, will deliver one going the other way later this year). We have the ability to create a whole host of transforms for ODF.

One thing I think will be very important will be evangalism to developers. We need authors to build ODF support into their applications; showing them how easy the tools are to develop, and showing them how to migrate - that would help sell that.