Content Management Matters ™

Try as some might to stop it, it looks like Microsoft may soon be celebrating the official recognition of its OOXML document standard as an international standard by the ISO.

Microsoft may still be riding high from obtaining ISO certification for its OOXML specification in April, because they are now openly offering to support ODF in their Office 2007 productivity software. It's a ploy, some open source camps are whispering. It's about time, says others.

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.

Microsoft's Open XML format has just been turned down for international standard status.

Microsoft reportedly fails two major criteria for standards designation under the rules of the ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission.

Critics are making much ado about Microsoft's Open XML format, which may be adopted as an international standard this weekend.

To loosely paraphrase any of a handful of these naysayers, the new format is -- at best -- a ploy to keep customers nailed to the Windows cross.

'Til death do us part.

It is not pleasant to complete a project in your format of choice, only to discover it does not comply with a sanctioned formatting standard.

With this frustration in mind, the OpenDocument Fellowship (ODF) brings us the ODF Validator, a simple tool you can use to verify whether your document complies with its formatting standards. Yes, these days even compliance can be solved with a widget.