OpenDocument up for adoption in Texas, Minn.
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States may follow Massachusetts in making the rival to Microsoft Word format the standard for all documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft&#160;has achieved a small victory in its&#160;effort to make Open XML an open technology standard. Massachusetts, the U.S. state that has mandated the use of open technology formats in its government agencies, has put the specification on its list of possible standards that can be used for documents, according to a document on its Web site.
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By Scott Streater, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas  Feb.
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InfoWorld - Sun&#160;has created software that will provide translation between the file format in Microsoft&#39;s Office 2003 suite and ODF (Open Document Format for XML). The plug-in lets people who use computers with assistive technologies to access documents written in ODF.
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A translation tool released by Microsoft will make it easier for users to move and share text files in open formats.
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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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Following BetaNews' story yesterday on the State of Massachusetts' decision to propose formally accepting Microsoft's Office Open XML as a "suitable" format, advocates on two of the three sides of this issue wrote us to say they were concerned our story's contents might tend to favor a different side.
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As the ISO standards battle over Microsoft's Office Open XML document format moves into the final days before a Sept. 2 vote, the company admitted Wednesday that it offered "compensation" to Microsoft partners in Sweden for joining that country's national standards body and voting for OOXML approval.
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Citing major collaborative contributions from a dozen companies and institutions, including Novell, Apple, Intel, the British Library, and the US Library of Congress, the Ecma International standards body today approved what will now be called Ecma Open XML - formerly Microsoft's "Office Open XML" - as an international standard for document formatting.
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(InfoWorld) - New York has become the latest U.S. state to ponder whether to use open standards for government document formats, though the move is not necessarily good news for proponents of the ISO standard ODF (Open Document Format). New York State Bill A08961, sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman RoAnn M. Destito, proposes the state study how government documents are created, exchanged, and preserved and how these documents can be used in a way that "encourages appropriate government control, access, choice, interoperability, and vendor neutrality," according to the text of the bill. Though lawmakers in other states -- including Texas, Connecticut, Florida, Minnesota and Oregon -- have proposed similar bills that might have mandated the use of open standards for document formats, none of those states has ended up officially supporting ODF yet. ODF is a freely available document format and rival to the default file format in Microsoft's Office 2007 suite, Open XML. If what has happened in other states is any precedent, Destito's bill may end up going nowhere. Bills that would have required state agencies to use freely available document formats in Texas, Connecticut, Florida, and Oregon were shot down mainly due to the pro-Microsoft lobby, while a bill in Minnesota was passed only to study the possibility of using open document formats, not to actually mandate them. Battle lines between Microsoft and ODF supporters, such as IBM and Sun have been drawn for some time, and while both sides claim to have the best interest of technology users in mind, both have been criticized for promoting their own commercial interests. IBM uses ODF as a file format for its Lotus Notes 8 software, and Sun uses it in its StarOffice productivity suite. Key Microsoft rival Google also supports ODF in its Google Docs & Spreadsheets online application. So far, Massachusetts is the only U.S. state that has officially adopted an open documents policy that will include ODF support, though governments in other countries such as Belgium, Denmark, and France are ahead of the U.S. in mandating their agencies use open document formats. Microsoft also has submitted Open XML to be an international standard in the ISO (International Organization for Standardization, though it has been criticized for trying to control the Open XML specification more than is usually the case with standard technologies. Nevertheless, ODF is scheduled to be up for an approval vote before the ISO late this year.
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After a few years of flirting with the idea of developing its own suite of applications, perhaps under the Lotus banner, that support the OASIS OpenDocument format, IBM has decided to join Sun Microsystems in the development of OpenOffice.org, the principal open source ODF applications suite.
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Along with 6,000 pages of notes International tech standards body Ecma has approved the Office Open XML document format.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - The Danish government could save around 125 million Danish krone ($21 million) over the next five years if it adopted the OpenOffice.org productivity software instead of upgrading to Microsoft's Office 2007 suite. Doing nothing could save it even more, according to a study by consultancy RambÃ¸ll Management A/S. RambÃ¸ll compared the cost of different ways of implementing the Danish Parliament's June 2 decision that government institutions exchanging information digitally with citizens or companies must do so in file formats based on open standards from Jan. 1, 2008. The Danish Open Source Business Association commissioned the report, which was published in Danish in August. An English version of the report was linked from the OpenOffice.orgÂ Web siteÂ last week. Adam Lebech, head of office at the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency, welcomed the debate the report had started, but warned that the numbers did not tell the whole story. "It's very difficult to make these calculations because you have to make a lot of assumptions," he said Wednesday. "The report doesn't look at savings from open standards, it only looks at costs. ... It's not a business case," he said. The report examined the cost of switching the exchange of documentation to two possible open standard document formats: Office Open XML and OpenDocument Format (ODF). Microsoft developed the Office Open XML file format for its Office 2007 software suite, and proposed it to European standards body ECMA International for standardization. In late August, an ECMA technical committee chaired by Microsoft was still discussing draft version 1.4 of the specification, whereas the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) approved the rival ODF standard in May. ODF is the format used by open source software suite OpenOffice.org, and also by proprietary software including Sun Microsystems' StarOffice and IBM's WorkPlace. RambÃ¸ll estimated the cost of two ways the government could switch its document exchange to Office Open XML: by using free file translation tools Microsoft has said it will provide for existing versions of its Office software, or by upgrading to Office 2007 when it becomes available. For ODF, RambÃ¸ll compared the cost of migrating to OpenOffice.org software, or of using file translators, still in development, to open and save ODF documents from within Microsoft Office. It concluded that if the government continued its policy of progressively upgrading to newer versions of Microsoft Office, the cost of licensing and installing the upgrades, and switching document exchange to the Office Open XML format, would cost around 380 million krone. The cost of continuing to upgrade Microsoft Office whileÂ switching to ODFÂ would be slightly more, because of greater file conversion and support costs. Migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org, while switching to ODF, would cost around 255 million krone, RambÃ¸ll said. The cheapest route, at 105 million krone, would be to adopt Office Open XML -- but to stick with the versions of Microsoft Office already in use, primarily Office XP and 2003, RambÃ¸ll said. Sticking with current versions of the software and switching to ODF would cost marginally more. The report, Estimating the Costs of Implementing Office OpenXML and ODF in the Central Government, isÂ available in EnglishÂ from Danish Open Source Business Association.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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(InfoWorld) - Standards body Ecma International expects to publish the final draft of the Office Open XML file formats specification proposed by Microsoft Corp. as early as Monday, ahead of a formal vote to adopt the specification as a standard in December. Governments are taking an interest in open-standard document formats as a way to guarantee access to legacy public information, and to avoid dependence on developers of proprietary software. Denmark's government voted in June to mandate the use of open-standard document formats in central government from Jan. 1, 2008. For now, five ministries are testing the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard, used in open-source software suite OpenOffice.org, and also in proprietary software including Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice and IBM Corp.'s Workplace. ODF is a rival to Office Open XML. If ECMA approves the Office Open XML format, used by Microsoft in its forthcoming Office 2007 software suite, the Danish ministries could use that instead. The French government is conducting a public inquiry into how to make its computer systems interoperable, but has reached no conclusions yet. However, in a report commissioned by the prime minister, National Assembly Deputy Bernard Carayon called for a law making it compulsory for French government departments to use ODF when they create or distribute documents. He suggested that France ask its European partners to do likewise when exchanging documents at a European level. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO)Â approved the ODF standard in May, but the Office Open XML specification is still some way off that status. Ecma's General Assembly will vote on the text during its meeting on Dec. 7 and Dec. 8. It cannot amend the text, only accept or reject it. If the final draft of the Office Open XML specification wins the assembly's approval, it will become an Ecma standard, and go on to ISO for fast-track approval, which can take six months to nine months. ISO may request amendments to the standard before voting to approve it. Both Ecma and ISO are based in Switzerland. Before submitting the text to the general assembly, Ecma's Technical Committee 45 will publishÂ the final draft on the standards body's Web site. That could happen as early as Monday, according to Ecma employee Isabelle Walch, and another source with knowledge of the process. The publication of the draft will give software developers a chance to make their applications compatible with the final version of Microsoft's Office 2007 document format ahead of the application suite's launch to business users at the end of this year. Technical Committee 45 has held six meetings to discuss the Office Open XML specification since beginning work on it last December. At the most recent meeting held in Trondheim, Norway, from Sept. 26 to Sept. 28, participants discussed numerical data precision, a mechanism for describing application characteristics, and extending spreadsheet capacity before agreeing the final draft, committee member Tom Ngo wrote in a report of the meeting. Ngo is chief technology officer of NextPage Inc. The meeting is chaired by two representatives from Microsoft, while other committee members represent the British Library, the U.S. Library of Congress, and companies including Apple Computer Inc., Intel Corp., Novell Inc. and Toshiba Corp.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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The OpenDocument Foundation, which was set up to promote its namesake file format as a universal choice for storing documents, is switching  its allegiance to the Compound Document Formats created by the World Wide Web Consortium.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is enlisting Linux distributor TurboLinux to help tailor work being done to translate documents between Open XML and ODF file formats for Japanese and Chinese users. TurboLinux has joined the Microsoft-funded but community-led Open XML-ODF (Open Document Format) translator project and will help ensure that documents based on Open XML can communicate smoothly with ODF-based documents in Office suites that use Japanese and Chinese characters, said Jean Paoli, general manager, interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft. "TurboLinux is one of the major distributors of Linux in Japan and China," he said. "They are bringing more knowledge [to the project]." TurboLinux, which also distributes a version of OpenOffice.org for Japan and China, also will ensure those suites can read and write Open XML files, Paoli said. More information about the Open XML/ODF Translator Add-In for Office can be found on the project site on SourceForge.net . Other companies contributing to the project are Novell, Clever Age, Aztecsoft, and DIaLOGIKa. The project already has released a 1.0 version of the Open XML Translator, a Microsoft Office 2007 add-in that converts Microsoft Word documents written in Open XML to ODF and vice versa. Novell is including the plug-in in its own distribution of OpenOffice.org. A beta version of a spreadsheet converter add-in that will work with Microsoft Excel also is available, and project members are working on the final phase of the project, a plug-in that will convert presentation files such as those developed in Microsoft PowerPoint between Open XML and ODF. Independent of the Sourceforge.net Open XML/ODF translator project, Sun MicrosystemsÂ last week released a 1.0 version of its ownÂ ODF translator add-in for Office, called Sun ODF Plugin. However, it only works with Office 2000, Office 2003 and Office XP. According to Sun, it was difficult to build a version to support Office 2007 at this time because of a product feature that ignores installed filters and opens documents with its own. ODF isÂ not supported natively in Office 2007, one of the reasons plug-ins must be built for the software. Much has been made of the fact that MicrosoftÂ did not provide native support in Microsoft Office 2007Â for ODF, though it provides support for 30 other file formats and uses Open XML as the default document file format. However, at this point companies such as Sun and IBM and others accept that there will be at least two XML-based file formats for documents and agree that it's important to have technology that can translate between them.
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IBM has taken the lead in lobbying against the adoption of Microsoft's Office Open XML format. But it does support the format in a few products -- a fact that some Microsoft bloggers were happy to point out.