Corel Corp. recently released a new version of its WordPerfect Office Suite, WordPerfect Office X3.
This latest edition of the venerable office suite looks good for Windows users. As PC Magazine Editor Ed Mendelson wrote, “Think of an annoyance in Microsoft Office, and you probably wont find it in Corel WordPerfect Office X3.”
In particular, the renewed office suite boasts of its ability to import and export documents, spreadsheets and presentations to Adobes PDF (Portable Document Format). What it doesnt have, however, is the ability to import or export to the open-standard ODF (Open Document Format).
This is somewhat surprising, since Greg Wood, communications manager for Corel WordPerfect, recently pointed out, “Corel is an original member of the OASIS Technical Committee on the OpenDocument format, and one of Corels senior developers is among the original four authors of the ODF specification.”
Wood went on to say in that September 2005 eWEEK interview that, “Suffice to say, Corel remains committed to working alongside OASIS and other technology vendors to ensure the continued evolution of the ODF standard and the adoption of open standards industrywide.”
Still, at that time, Wood was unwilling to commit to ODF support in WordPerfect.
“It is not appropriate at this time for Corel to disclose its plans for OpenDocument in future versions of WordPerfect Office,” said Wood.
Nevertheless, it was assumed that since Corel had helped create ODF, the format would be included in the next version of WordPerfect. It hasnt been.