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:”

Complete Story