Corel to fully support ODF, Open XML
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(InfoWorld) - Corel Corp. is adopting a neutral approach to the electronic document format duel and updating its WordPerfect word processing software to fully support both the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML formats. The Canadian software vendor announced its new stance Wednesday after previously appearing to favor ODF over the Microsoft format. ODF, backed by Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM Corp. and open-source players, is facing off against Microsoft's Open XML, which will be the default file format for the software giant's upcoming Office 2007 desktop applications suite. At issue is which document format users will favor. Governments around the world are expressing interest in open-standard document formats to help them both ensure continued access to existing information and to ease their dependence on Microsoft Office. Corel was one of the initial members of two groups set up in March to evangelize ODF -- the ODF Alliance and the OASIS standards body's ODF Adoption Committee. Corel developer Paul Langille was also one of the original four authors of the ODF specification. Corel arrived at its decision to support both ODF and Open XML over the last few months, according to Richard Carriere, the company's general manager of office productivity. The vendor wants to meet the needs of both consumer and government users, with consumers looking to Corel to offer interoperability with Office 2007 and governments keen for the company to support ODF, he said. As a small desktop applications provider with some 11 million active users, Corel needs to be very flexible and can ill afford to back one format over another. It's also still unclear which document format will win out -- ODF or Open XML -- or whether both will coexist, Carriere said. "Companies and governments have not made a decision yet," he added. Corel is announcing joint support plans as Microsoft prepares to launchÂ Office 2007 Thursday. Come the middle of next year, Corel aims to offer open, view and edit support for both ODF and Open XML as an initial move toward fully supporting both formats, Carriere said. He wouldn't comment on the time line for when Corel will fully support the format, but said the vendor's efforts will be driven by the needs of its government customers. Â
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Following through on the company's groundbreaking deal with Microsoft made one month ago, Novell has announced that its version of the OpenOffice.org software suite will support Microsoft's Office Open XML format.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has failed in its attempt to have its Office Open XML document format fast-tracked straight to the status of an international standard by the International Organization for Standardization. The proposal must now be revised to take into account the negative comments made during the voting process. Microsoft expects that a second vote early next year will result in approval, it said Tuesday. A proposal must pass two voting hurdles in order to be approved as an ISO standard: it must win the support of two-thirds of voting national standards bodies that participated in work on the proposal, known as P-members, and also of three-quarters of all voting members. OOXML failed on both counts, according to figures provided by Microsoft, and by other sources with knowledge of the voting process. ISO has not yet officially announced the results. Microsoft could miss out on revenue from the lucrative government market if OOXML is also rejected next year. Some governments, worried that the need for access to electronic archives held in proprietary formats leaves them hostage to their software vendor, have mandated the use of document formats that comply with open international standards. Others are considering such a move, which could put Microsoft at a double disadvantage to open source products such as OpenOffice.org, which not only store files natively in the standardized Open Document Format, but are free.
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There is a fascinating article on Groklaw called Searching for Openness in Microsoft's OOXML and Finding Contradictions. One of the most relevant comments in the article is "So, they plan to be the only one in the Linux world that can actually interoperate with Microsoft. How do you think they will achieve that? By sharing? On the contrary, they already market themselves as uniquely interoperable, which means they get to interoperate and you don't, unless you are their paying customer."  There is also the Novell comment, "Only Novell has Microsoftâs endorsement as its partner to drive Linux-Windows interoperability."
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An introduction to XML and DocBook: what is it and why should I learn yet another data format?
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(InfoWorld) - A technical committee in India unanimously rejected Microsoft's Office Open XML file format as a standard, ahead of aÂ vote on Sept. 2 by the ISO on whether to approve Open XML as an international standard. However, the rejection may be temporary should Microsoft meet some of the objections to Open XML raised by committee members. The technical committee was set up by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), India's national standards body, which is a founder member of International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and represents India at the international standards organization. "There were a large number of technical objections raised about Open XML, and many of which Microsoft was not able to address at this point," said D.B. Phatak, professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai. One of the objections was that Open XML was not fully compatible with OpenDocument Format (ODF), a rival existing ISO standard, he added. IIT Mumbai is a member of the technical committee. The decision not to back Open XML as a standard was taken after a late evening meeting of the technical committee on Thursday in Delhi. Microsoft and Indian outsourcer Infosys Technologies were in favor of the committee voting "yes" but with qualifying comments, according to informed sources. That option wasn't available for voters. Open XML will be again reconsidered for a standard by the technical committee and BIS after Microsoft makes the required changes to the document format, Phatak said. Microsoft said in a statement that it respected the decision taken by the BIS, but it was important to note that all the BIS members unanimously supportÂ  the need for multiple standards. The company will work with the BIS and the committee members on the comments noted during the ballot resolution process, the statement added. Â
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Maker of the WordPerfect word processor and productivity suite will support Microsoft's Office Open XML, OpenDocument format.
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Microsoft's Open XML format has won ECMA approval as a standard, giving Redmond, so often the opponent of open-source software, a better footing to compete with OpenOffice.org's OpenDocument Format (ODF).
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Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML file format won approval from the Ecma International standards body. The vote could make it easier for users and vendors to justify supporting both Open XML and the rival OpenDocument format.
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Speculation mars Burton Group report that suggests Microsoft's OOXML document format is preferable to ODF, says OpenOffice.org.
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Microsoft Corp. has won approval for its Offfice Open XML document format from international standards body ECMA International.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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ODF? It's for poseurs Large organisations that are considering a move away from Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) in favour of rival standard (Open Document Format) ODF should think again, concludes a new report.â¦
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InfoWorld - It may be Valentine&#39;s Day but there are no love letters being exchanged between duelling electronic document formats, ODF (OpenDocument Format) and Open XML. Instead, Microsoft, the backer of Open XML, took a public swing at ODF supporter IBM.
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Microsoft is calling IBM out over its opposition to Office Open XML, saying it is attempting to create a movement to prevent ISO standardization of the format. In an open letter posted to its Web site, Microsoft claims IBM is trying to limit choice by pushing the OpenDocument Format.
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XML which is UTF-16 encoded is supposed to have a prolog (first two bytes) called a BOM  of FF FE to signal that the feed you're about to parse is multibyte.  The only problem is that (and get this) Xerces doesn't support this prolog!  "Exception in thread "main" org.apache.commons.feedparser.FeedParserException: org.jdom.JDOMException: Error in building from stream: Content is not allowed in prolog.: Content is not allowed in prolog."  Sam Ruby was nice enough to put out a bunch of unit tests  for UTF-16 and they won't even parse within Xerces.  ...  Nevermind... this was *my* bug... Boy is my face red!
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A bill introduced last week in the California state legislature would make it state law next year for all state agencies to create, preserve, and archive their digital documents using an XML-based file format, and to be able to receive new documents in XML-based formats as well. The bill does not mention any format specifically, though observers believe it refers indirectly to OpenDocument Format (ODF).
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On the Zend Developer Zone today, there's a new post from Maarten Balliauw about a set of PHP classes he's created to work with Office 2007 SpreadsheetML documents (yay! another format!).   I finished my first goals (some basic XLSX writing), and I want to share this set of classes to the community. [...] Each cell supports the following data formats: string, number, formula, boolean. Visual formatting is not implemented, but I'll get to that later.   Features supported currently include the creation of the Spreadsheet object, adding worksheets, adding cells, and exporting the object to the Excel 2007 OpenXML format.   You can check out the project and the latest version over on his blog.