Content Management Matters ™

Big news for Microsoft as they find themselves the proud parents of an ISO 29500 certified OOXML specification -- almost.

The ISO -- International Organization for Standardization's approval of the Open Office XML specification was officially announced on April 2. It is subject to no official appeals from the ISO/IEC national bodies in the next two months and word is there are many questions arising already on the voting process.

Is this the end of the other ISO Office standard ODF -- Open Document Format?

In January 2005, Massachusetts became the first state to throw down the gauntlet in terms of moving all public documentation to a non-proprietary format. The justification being, that it shouldn’t be necessary to purchase proprietary software to use digital public documentation.

Not only does it hold the constituents hostage in their need for a tool to read the proprietary format, but it also holds the government hostage in that the initiative to change off of any proprietary format is colossal.

In English this time: IBM has joined OpenOffice.org, reportedly to "collaborate on software development for the Open Document Format (ODF), an ISO standard that governs the creation, storage, and exchange of documents," says Mark Long of newsfactor.com.

IBM will start by sharing the code it's been developing for its Lotus Notes software, including certain accessibility fixes that may allegedly help OpenOffice "reach parity" with Microsoft's current offering for disabled workers via Office.

Ecma International, gatekeepers of the ISO format, just accepted WiMedia as an ISO standard. This puts the WiMedia ultra-wideband protocol on the same plane as, well, PDF, for example.

The transition makes WiMedia the de jure standard for radio platform ultra-wideband wireless networking.

OASIS and W3C recently announced their joint partnership for WebCGM 2.0. This is a new industry standard for technical illustrations in e-documents.

Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is the ISO standard for tree-structured binary graphics typically used by industries like aviation, architecture, defense and transportation. However, the results of the effort between OASIS and W3C have still yet to cover some ground -- the best use for CGM on the Web still remains a touch unclear.

Considering its notable release of Acrobat 8 just months ago, and withstanding some recent criticisms we've published, it's clear Adobe is not shy about raising the bar for the next generation of document collaboration and security software.

So it comes as little surprise that this year Adobe plans to drive towards ISO standardization of its PDF specification. According to Adobe Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch, this means PDF will evolve from de facto security standard to de jure. As, he doesn't hesitate to add, "it should."