Monday, 29 January 2007

ODF Toolkit Could Restructure OpenOffice

The Open Document Format (ODF) toolkit is supposedly based on OpenOffice. It is said that it allows for easier integration of the OpenDocument format. Sun had started the project with a goal of providing programmers with a framework to create and process ODF documents...

The Open Document Format (ODF) toolkit is supposedly based on OpenOffice. It is said that it allows for easier integration of the OpenDocument format. Sun had started the project with a goal of providing programmers with a framework to create and process ODF documents.

Microsoft and OpenOffice, both rivals have launched toolkits that support building applications for their document file formats.

Louis Suarez-Potts, community manager for OpenOffice.org said, the OpenOffice.org ODF Toolkit Project has published an initial version of its toolkit online and is inviting members of the community to add to its development.

The reason ODF Toolkit is needed is because initially developers had to add 'a good piece of OpenOffice.org' code to an application to give it the ability to save documents in ODF, Suarez-Potts says. The creation of the ODF Toolkit makes this easier, he says.

For example, "if someone has a mail application, they can take the tools we're making available and make it so mail messages can be saved as ODF," Suarez-Potts says.

"Developers interested in moving beyond office suite functionality to areas that express files as ODF, however 'beyond' is imagined, are invited to join," reads the project completion announcement on OpenOffice.org. "We envision this project as giving all a hint of the potential of OpenOffice.org source and ODF."