OpenDocument Format gets ISO Approval
By Jerry Kuntz - Posted on May 5th, 2006
Tagged: Digital Libraries
As anticipated, earlier this week the International Standards Organization approved the OpenDocument Format for retrieving and exchanging documents. The impetus to move to an open standard has come from governments, archivists, and librarians concerned about the storage and use of longtime proprietary document file formats such as MS Office documents and pdf files.
See:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1957497,00.asp
Microsoft is countering ODF with an open format, OpenXML, which is also under review by ISO.
These competing standards could inspire a new IT battlefront that could effect the adoption of office software suites being used in publicly-funded institutions. This fight could get nasty.
Jerry Kuntz's blog
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See also Docvert, a nice-looking mass-conversion tool. I'm thinking of trying to weld this to DSpace's MediaFilter and running Word docs through it.
Microsoft's OpenXML format is *NOT* under review at ISO. It hasn't even been submitted yet. For that matter, it hasn't even been finalized at Ecma yet.
There is no guarantee that Ecma will ratify it (though this is likely) and if it is submitted to ISO, it it probably will be rejected (Gartner gives that a 70% chance) because there is already an ISO standard for office documents (OpenDocument). ISO frowns upon designing two standards for the same thing.
In this case ISO has more reason to reject it because this particular standard is tied to one product. Microsoft's format is not about interoperability or creating a common platform, but about documenting on particular product. That's hardly the sort of thing we should make into a standard.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Reference:
http://www.gartner.com/resources/140100/140101/iso_approval_of_oasis_opendo_140101.pdf