On Open Office

Tim Bray visits the OpenOffice.org guys.

It turns out that OpenOffice already comes with a doohickey that will produce an XHTML approximation of most documents (Lauren tells me it’s shaky on tables); plus it’s got a nice HTTP library and APIs out the wazoo. Can you see what I’m thinking? There’s no reason this sucker shouldn’t have a “Blog this” button that XHTML-i-fies whatever you’re typing, lets you preview, and then lets you ship it out via one of the existing blogging APIs or the Atom API.

Geeks like me are fine with writing in Emacs, but lots of people seem to like writing in word processors, and as of this week, I think that any word processor without a “Blog This” button is just broken.

I’ve been thinking for a while that OO.o can make a pretty good XHTML editor. More soon.