Topic: OpenDocument Format Approved by ISO/IEC Members

[Nemesis]

Link to site

The six month voting window for ISO/IEC adoption of the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard closed on May 1, and at midnight (Geneva time) last night it was announced internally that ODF had been approved by the ISO members eligible and interested in casting a vote.  The vote passed with broad participation and no negative votes (there were a few abstentions), and ODF is now ISO/IEC 26300.  While there are still some procedural steps internal to ISO/IEC that are required before the official text of the standard will be finalized and issued, these steps (described below) are formalities rather than gating factors.

I'm assuming that Microsoft abstained.    (Yes they are on the committee).

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has posted a Request for Information regarding Open Document Format plug-ins for Microsoft Office. Here's what they are looking for, information on any existing or in-development plug-ins or converters that can allow Microsoft Office to open, display and save to ODF and also allow translation of documents between Microsoft's binary (.doc, .xls, .ppt) or XML formats and ODF.

It does show that Massachusetts is not trying to eliminate Microsoft (in spite of Microsofts choice not to support ODF) from bidding on government contracts.

[Mr_Tricorder]

I wonder how long it will be before Micrososft tries to kill those plug-ins.

[Bonk]

Notepad, Vim and Xywrite still work fine for me.

.pdf, .doc, and xml files all totally suck in my opinion.  .txt, .csv and .html work just fine thanks. Hell I'd prefer raw binary to most modern document formats. (I'll concede I do like excel but it can handle text file formats just fine)