The popular Free and Open Source Office application, OpenOffice.org is going to have OpenXML (*.docx, *.xlsx, *.pptx) support by default. Scheduled to be release on September 2008, OpenOffice.org 3.0 packs a lot of features you might find interesting :
- Import PDF files support. PDF documents can be edited in Writer
- Official Mac OS support, now includes native “Aqua” interface
- Multiple page view in Writer
- Error bars in OpenOffice.org charts
- Supports OpenDocument 1.2 specification
The BETA is scheduled to be released on April 30th, 2008. For the time being, OpenOffice.org 2.x users can open Microsoft OpenXML files (*.docx, *.xlsx) using odf import filters
Thanks to Andrew Ziem for the original article, OpenOffice.org 3.0 new features, an early look
If OO.o supports OOXML out of the box, won’t this diminish any reason for people to use ODF? I mean MS will not support ODF out of the box, will they? So why will users not just use a standard that’s more widely supported?