Last December, Novell announced that it would roll out the word processor translator first, then follow with others for OpenOffice.org's spreadsheet and presentation maker. Novell said today that those translators would be released sometime in the second half of the year.

A month ago, a translator for Microsoft Word 2007 that allows the Microsoft word processor to open and save documents in ODF was posted for download on Sourceforge. Although Microsoft did not create the ODF translator -- three small developers collaborated on the add-in -- the company did endorse the project and provided some financial assistance. The Open XML translator for OpenOffice.org can be downloaded from Novell's site.