Officeshots: making ODF truly interoperable

"A web service, Officeshots, was recently launched to remedy this problem. The project is in public beta and users can register for free to upload their ODF documents. The web site then generates the output of the document using various office applications, which enables the user to check for interoperability issues. The launch of the public beta took place during the second ODF plugfest in Orvieto, Italy on November 2nd and 3rd. A lot of vendors and developers using ODF in their software gathered in Orvieto, such as IBM, Google, OpenOffice.org, Novell, KOffice, AbiWord, and Microsoft.

"Officeshots is a project by NOiV (Netherlands in Open Connection), a Dutch government program to promote the use of open standards and open source, in collaboration with the OpenDoc Society and NLnet Foundation, a Dutch non-profit organization that financially supports contributors to an open information society. LWN talked to Sander Marechal, who developed the bulk of the Officeshots code and is the project leader. He owns Lone Wolves, a small non-profit open source development company based in The Netherlands.

"In June 2008, Sander was invited by Michiel Leenaars (of OpenDoc Society and NLnet) to give a talk at Sun Microsystems in Hamburg about another Lone Wolves project, ODF-XSLT. Sander drove to Hamburg with Michiel and the two talked about their mutual interests. That car drive started the ball rolling:"

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