OpenXML Viewer 1.0 Released – Open source DocX to HTML conversion, with IE, Firefox and Opera (and/or command line) support

OpenXML Viewer

“The OpenXML Document Viewer project is an outcome of the feedback from participants of a series of Document Interoperability Initiative workshops.

The main goal of the OpenXML Document Viewer project is to create software tools, plus guidance, showing how documents created using Open XML Format can be translated to HTML. As a result, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Solutions Integrators & Mobile Solution providers can use these tools to enable their customers view Open XML documents on heterogeneous platforms and browser applications. The OpenXML Viewer is available under the open source Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL), which allows anyone to use the tools, submit bugs and feedback, or contribute to the project. We have chosen to use an Open Source development model that allows developers from all around the world to participate and contribute to the project.

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OpenXML Document Viewer - OpenXMLViewer v1.0

“…

The OpenXML Document Viewer team is pleased to announce the OpenXMLViewer v1.0 Release of the OpenXML to HTML translation project. The OpenXML Document Viewer project provides plug-ins and tools to view MS Word 2007 documents on platforms where Word 2007 is not available.

This is achieved by using the OpenXMLViewer browser plug-in or the command line interface to convert the Word document (.docx) into HTML. The current release supports IE 7, IE 8, Opera 9.62, Firefox 3.1b browsers on the Windows OS and Opera 9.62 and Firefox 3.1b on Linux (OpenSUSE 11.0). [GD: Emphasis added]

The project has been released as an open source project under the MS-PL license

The focus of this release is around providing a reusable OpenXML to HTML engine that can be leveraged to build more complex solutions.

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Word Document features including translation of

• Drawing shapes, including star, triangles, hexagons, lines and arrows
• Image fill for drawing shapes
• Document themes
• Equations (MathML)
• Cover pages
• Support for VML (IE) and SVG (Opera/Firefox)

Note: The Linux plug-ins are 32-bit binaries. They may not work correctly on a 64-bit OS/browser.

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Yes, you read that right, Microsoft, teaming up with MindTree Ltd., have created and released a OpenXML (DocX) Viewer for a Linux distro and for third party browsers… (oh and released the C++ source too)

 

Here’s an example. This is a very quick and dirty DocX file I created. With some tables, formatting, headers/footers, clipart, SmartArt, shape and an embedded graph;

This is the same DocX, viewed via as HTML via the OpenXML Demo site (and this is really HTML and not a browser plug-in);

 

 

I don’t it did a bad job at all. I’ve sure seen MUCH worse Word to HTML translations. And with this one, you get the source! ;)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
OpenXML Viewer (CTP) – Open DocX files in FireFox (Windows/Linux) or via command line DocX to HTML utility