Joined: Oct 27, 2004 Posts: 45 Location: Le Mans, France
Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2005 8:22 am Post subject: Compatibility with Apple's iWork
I think to integrate compatibility with iWork (Pages and Keynote) would be a good think, because we cannot use Microsoft documents as cross platform file exchange since Pages doesn't export Word very well.
I think it would be great also if iWork would have compatibility with OpenOffice / NeoOffice since it is more and more used espacially in the PC platform and especially in states administrations, like for us here in Europe, like in Germany and France. So it could be done via NeoOffice with Apple's RTFD files and from Apple with SXx files since they are XML based.
OpenOffice is becoming an important office suite that cannot be forgotten.
So I ask you if you want and need, to post your feedback to Apple to integrate compatibility between Pages/ OOo Writer and Keynote/ OOo Impress.
Joined: Oct 27, 2004 Posts: 45 Location: Le Mans, France
Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2005 8:29 am Post subject:
Here a lot of articles that shows in Europe how much OOo is used, but all written in French, so French readers only
Anyway, the number of links already gives an idea of the importance of OOo today for those who doesn't speak French. So I think they are enough to justify my previous post and to send feedback to Apple to request compatibility with the OOo files format.
Also, OpenOffice is hugely used in schools there because the teachers can make the lessons to the children and then give them the software to let them training at home.
In France, the ministry of defense, is switching to a special version based on Mandrake, made only for them. Ministries of education, agriculture and transportation began to support Mozilla, now OpenOffice by Mr Sarkozy when he was minister of economy to save money in the government.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2005 9:30 am Post subject:
Compatibility with various iWork components is something I've proposed but no developer has ever taken up. In particular, the Keynote file filters spec I wrote at:
I spent a bit of time on that one too since there were a coupe devs interested, but I guess when folks started to actually try coding instead of just building they got scared
The Pages document format is not yet public, AFAIK.
Unfortunately we can't go the other way around for either Keynote or Pages, that is, we can't write filters to allow them to open up OpenDocument formatted things. The only publicly documented stuff from Apple on Keynote is the XML file format. There's no way for third parties to write filter plugins for those environments.
I did propose a filter framework a while back inspired by the SearchKit in Panther, but I don't believe any headway was ever made on it. The idea would be to incorporate something like a MacLinkPlus or XTND framework into OS X. I used to use XTND in my own apps to get access to lots of filters but, alas, it's dead. I just put that and another proposal up on that specs page.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2005 9:32 am Post subject:
FWIW the best way to exchange documents between the two right now is through Microsoft Office formats. Yuck, I know, but they'll preserve the most formatting. Of course, not everything can come over...you can't do the spinning cube transitions in OOo, for example (PowerPoint neither).
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2005 10:21 am Post subject:
I'm not certain how vocal the calls for getting iWork to support other formats will be since, in a way they do support open document formats already (at least Keynote). I believe the EU standards only specify that the file formats need to be in an open format and XML based representation. Some of the OASIS talk I've heard says that OpenDocument is the only solution, but in reality that's wrong...Keynote also meets the criteria. I still am unsure of Pages, of course (as I don't own a copy and haven't seen any public schemas like for Keynote).
The primary motivator they have for supporting MS Office formats is that, for better or worse, they're a defacto standard. I think it's going to take a long time for OpenDocument to reach that level of proliferation to really put it high up on the radar for them to do and, AFAIK, there's no open file filter type of interface for those programs to allow third-parties to add in new format support.
Ironically, Microsoft office does have shared library Text Converters for which we could write the plugins, but I've never seen any SDKs for writing those Office v.X components and suspect they may only be able to be written by Microsoft.
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