It looks like others have had the same idea as me. The OpenOpenOffice project (not convinced by the name, though - how does it make OpenOffice more open?) aims to give the ability to read and write OpenDocument to Microsoft Word users. Their plan is to use a remote conversion server and SOAP. It's being sponsored by Open Source Victoria in Australia, who should have a press release up soon.
In related news, OpenOffice.org 2.0 final has hit the mirrors. Don't all rush at once - this link is to a particular mirror, as it hasn't propagated fully. There's also no official release announcement yet; although I expect that very soon. I hope they won't be upset that I've noticed. No-one tell Slashdot ;-)
Posted by gerv at October 20, 2005 3:05 PMIt doesn't do anything to OpenOffice, it does things to Microsoft Office. Specifically, it lets it "Open(load) OpenOffice"-supported document types.
Whoever though "Open" was a cleared word for this stuff than "Free" needed to do their homework a bit more thoroughly. I blame ESR. :)
Posted by: Adam Kennedy at October 20, 2005 2:41 PMBut they aren't OpenOffice document types - that's the point. They are OpenDocument document types, implemented by multiple vendors! That's the reason they made the Massachusetts decision.
So the correct name would be "OpenOpenDocument".
Posted by: Gerv at October 20, 2005 2:58 PMOppenoffice was just posted to Slashdot. Thankfully I beat the Slashdot rush.
Posted by: Roger at October 20, 2005 3:44 PMBittorrent tracker for 2.0 releases: http://borft.student.utwente.nl:6969/announce
It's going pretty fast right now.
Whoops, should've checked it was the right link first. Take the "announce" off the end.
Posted by: ant at October 20, 2005 10:26 PM