Have we stepped closer to a world where you can open any office document with a number of competing software applications without encountering any annoying compatibility problems?

A step closer maybe but, we are not there yet. Microsoft has announced the Open XML Translator project to be located on Sourceforge which will create tools to build a technical bridge between the Microsoft Office Open XML Formats and the OpenDocument Format (ODF) commonly used by applications such as StarOffice by Sun Microsystems or the free, open source Open Office.

There has been recent Government pressure for open document standards. Belgium has adopted a proposal that all federal government agencies ensure that they can receive and read ODF documents by September 2007. This follows similar a recent similar move by Massachusetts (USA) with France and Denmark rumored to be considering similar initiatives.

Likely to benefit from this progress will be Impress , recently covered by Presentation Technology Reviews, the free OpenOffice application for developing presentation slides.