Former OpenDocument advocates bolt for W3C standard
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The document format sagas continue as ODF gets competition from the W3C's Compound Document Formats.
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In another carefully timed move to garner support for its document format still under consideration for an international standard, Microsoft today altered the terms under which use of its Office Open XML format by developers is permitted.
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Microsoft-sponsored open-source group expected to release ODF translator for Word.
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Thanks to some new developments in document standards, Office 2007 users will be able to share files with open-source office apps and online productivity suites from the likes of Zoho and Google. In Monkey Bites.
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Responding to requests, Microsoft will sponsor open-source project to build translators between older office formats and Open XML.
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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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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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Massachusetts Monday proposed adding Microsoft-developed Open XML to its list of approved open documents formats.
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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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Sharepoint is getting an open-source webpart.  This is good for Microsoft and for its customers.  It could be better, though....
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Sunday, September 2 is the deadline for ISO member countries to vote on Microsoft's Office OpenXML -- the result will determine if it's approved as an international standard. Name calling, finger pointing and muckraking have sparked a debate over current standards-approval procedures and how they're affected by corporate influence. All this excitement over office docs?
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has won approval for its Offfice Open XML document format from international standards body ECMA International. ECMA's General Assembly voted by 20-1 in favor of the standard at a meeting in Zurich on Thursday afternoon, and will now submit the format to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for its approval. The vote against came from a representative of IBM Corp. A standardized document format will make it easier for competing software companies to develop products that can interoperate with one another and to edit the same documents. Products meeting the standard could find favor with governments, or other organizations concerned about interoperability. Interoperability is vital for the preservation of archive information, according to Adam Farquhar, head of e-architecture at the British Library and a member of the committee that worked on the standard at ECMA. The British Library archives electronic documents, but must deal with whatever format they arrive in. The development of interoperable software tools will make that work easier. "The level of precision in this standard is unprecedented," Farquhar said. The standard runs to several thousand pages. To help developers digest the standard, the committee has published a 14-page white paper explaining it. "The committee put a lot of effort into making the document accessible," Farquhar said. That accessibility is important if Microsoft is to win developers over to its document format, as the company faces competition in the standards industry just as it does in the software market. A rival document format,Â OpenDocument Format (ODF), has already won approval from ISO, and was published as an ISO standard last month. ODF is used by office productivity suites such as OpenOffice.org or Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice, and has gained the support of other companies, including IBM. Government officials in France and the U.S. commonwealth of Massachusetts have recommended adoption of ODF as a government standard. ISO approval "is a critical factor for governments," said Marino Marcich, Managing Director of the ODF Alliance, a body that promotes the OpenDocument Format. Microsoft's general manager for interoperability and XML (Extensible Markup Language) architecture, Jean Paoli, agrees that "some public institutions prefer standards that are ISO-certified." There are still several hurdles to overcome before Microsoft can obtain ISO approval. ECMA has asked that the standard be fast-tracked, a process to which national standards bodies now have about 30 days to object. If no one objects, then ISO Subcommittee 34 will spend five or six months examining comments on the standard received from the national standards bodies, and only then will the ISO's Joint Technical Committee 1 vote on the standard.
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OpenLink Software are pleased to announce release 2.1 of the OpenLink AJAX Toolkit (OAT).    This release introduces the following new features:     * Enhanced RDF Parser (includes support for RDF/XML and RDF/N3)    * New Faceted RDF Data Browser    * RDF Graph Visualization Control with sidebar for Graph Density manipulation    * New RSS Reader Control    * Visual SPARQL Query Builder added to + Form Designer's Data Source control    * OpenAjaxAlliance conformance    * Inter-control messaging system    * Enhanced Tree and Dock Controls    * Enhanced Anchor tag that facilitates lookups to SQL, XML, and RDF Data Sources via In Page Activation of Data Driven Web Pages    * Updated Animation API  For further information, please see:   Project homepage on sourceforge.net: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oat   File downloads: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oat/files   Live Features Demonstrations: http://demo.openlinksw.com/DAV/JS/demo/index.html
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Blog: Does it make sense to have multiple document standards? Upcoming votes consider this and other technical factors.
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Microsoft-endorsed Open XML Translator project releases downloadable ODF converter.
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(InfoWorld) - Google, which has been less vocal than some on the furor surrounding the standards process for Microsoft's Office Open XML, came out Friday in support ofÂ the ISO's decision to reject the specification. In a post on its internal Google Code blog, Open Source Programs Manager Zaheda Bhorat said that the company agreed with the decision of the International Organization for Standardization not to approve the fast track of OOXML and listed some of the problems company engineers have with the format. The ISO voted earlier this month to reject an attempt by Microsoft to use another standards body, Ecma International, to fast track its XML-based file format OOXML through the process to become an international standard. The process was riddled with complaints that Microsoft placed people sympathetic to its cause in key voting positions toward the end of the process in an attempt to swing the vote in its favor. The company's decision to submit OOXML to Ecma and then the ISO has been controversialÂ as ODF (Open Document Format), which many rivals support, already is an ISO standard for XML-based documents. In fact, one of the problems Bhorat cited for why Google disapproves of OOXML is that it is incompatible with ODF. Other reasons Google supports the ISO decision are that the company believes there was not enough time to review the specification; there are undocumented features of OOXML that prevent implementation by other vendors; and dependencies on Microsoft proprietary formats and technical defects makes OOXML difficult to fully implement, according to the blog post. "Technical standards should be arrived at transparently, openly, and based on technical merit," Bhorat wrote on the blog. "Google is committed to helping the standards community remain true to this ideal and maintain their independence from any commercial pressure." Bhorat also used the post to stump for ODF, which Google supports in its Web-based office applications. IBM, Sun, and other Microsoft rivals also are vocal supporters of ODF. "With multiple implementations of one open standard for documents, users, businesses, and governments around the world can have both choice and freedom to access their own documents, share with others, and pass onto future generations," Bhorat wrote. Issues raised by Google and technical experts about OOXML during the voting process are set to be resolved at an ISO ballot resolution meeting been scheduled for Feb. 25-29, 2008.
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Bills seeking to mandate the use of open document formats were introduced in various states this year. But heavy lobbying by Microsoft has helped to squelch or water down all of the proposals.