Comments on: Open Document to Office Open XML converter: not good

By: Soft Maniac

Soft Maniac — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:17:09 +0000

OOps Sorry

By: SWare

SWare — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:31:43 +0000

“They also claim a version for odp and ods will be available in the spring.”
Hmmm… I don’t think so…

Soft Maniac, Tim was write this post at last winter

By: Soft Maniac

Soft Maniac — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:16:07 +0000

“They also claim a version for odp and ods will be available in the spring.”
Hmmm… I don’t think so…

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:35:08 +0000

After skimming through the code base, I can say pretty confidently that the problems this converter has in terms of speed (and perhaps fidelity) is due to the extensive use of XSLT.

I agree. A curious design decision. I made this point to Jean Paoli who just muttered something about it being a first attempt. Yet, it seems is almost as if it is deliberately poor, checking a box without really delivering. Microsoft could do much better.

Tim

By: Asbjørn Ulsberg

Asbjørn Ulsberg — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:50:39 +0000

After skimming through the code base, I can say pretty confidently that the problems this converter has in terms of speed (and perhaps fidelity) is due to the extensive use of XSLT. XSLT is a remarkable language, and I love it, but for extreme performant converters handling large documents, it’s simply just not fast enough. The converter even seems to be using XslCompiledTransform, which should be the fastest way to transform via XSLT in .NET, but it’s still not very performant compared to direct “hands-on” conversion in a SAX-like manner.

It would be interesting to see how Saxon fared in an equal converter with the same XSLT files, though. Since it exists for .NET, the converter could just as well have used that instead of Microsoft’s System.Xml.Xsl library.

By: Tony McNamara

Tony McNamara — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:37:08 +0000

I would have thought that, given that Open XML has yet to be ratified at ISO/IEC, Microsoft would have been out to impress. This certainly does not impress. Or is it that this effort has proven the criticism levelled at the ECMA-approved documentation, and that a document format that requires 6,000 pages to describe is, like, 5,000 pages too many?

By: Chris Puttick

Chris Puttick — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:07:20 +0000

Has anyone got hold of the Sun version? This should integrate (i.e. exist in Save-As and option to default to odt) and provide a fairly solid quality of export import. They also claim a version for odp and ods will be available in the spring.

By: Zaine Ridling

Zaine Ridling — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 08:43:08 +0000

I came to the same conclusion on my Great Software blog last week. This is a predicted embarrassment for this Microsoft-funded effort. And you’re right: either get with ODF now or just use .doc format under Word within Compatibility Mode, skipping OXML altogether. While the future of ODF looks bright and strong, OXML looks dangerously unstable.