Documentation has been published by Microsoft, informing about its plans to implement support to the OASIS Open Document Format Version 1.1 in Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2, when it becomes available in 2009. Microsoft informs that it would offer similar notes on how it will support Open XML in Office in the near future.

“The goal is to support interoperability among office productivity applications. Microsoft announced its plans to support ODF earlier in 2008, and this documentation represents the software giant's first concrete step toward fostering true interoperability,” reported Doug Mahugh, senior project manager for Office interoperability at Microsoft. He also informed that detailed documentation on Microsoft's implementation of Open XML in Office is soon to come.

He explained, “The goal here is transparency of our implementation. We're committed to do the same for other document formats.”

Microsoft informed via a news release that a comprehensive guide is offered by means of these implementations as to how Microsoft is implementing ODF and Open XML within its flagship Microsoft Office suite. The developers will find these notes available at no charge on the Document Interoperability Initiative (DII) site, www.documentinteropinitiative.org, very useful in improving the interoperability of their solutions with Microsoft products.

Dennis Hamilton, document-system interoperability architect further informed, “This is an extremely valuable contribution in the pursuit of grounded, practical interoperability among applications. This step raises the bar for transparent disclosure of how standard formats are supported at a detailed level.”

“By publishing notes on how we are implementing file format standards in Microsoft Office, we are providing details that others can use as a reference point for their own applications. We encourage other companies to take similar steps to help achieve greater interoperability across the industry,” informed Mahugh in the same release.

He further said that there would be utter transparency in the way vendors approach the implementation of standards in their own products, and collaboration with other vendors to identify and resolve real-world issues among implementations and build tools and solutions to improve interoperability over time. “Events such as the DII workshops around the world enable technical vendor discussions, labs and solution-enablement programs that help vendors develop solutions for effective data exchange between product implementations of document format standards,” he said.

It was also reported by Mahugh that Microsoft's implementation notes include details on implementation decisions, details on additional data written into files and details on implementation variances.

If in case someone requires more information regarding the ODF Implementers Notes, he can find it at the DII site.