<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 12:06, Terry Dawson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tjd@animats.net">tjd@animats.net</a>></span> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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ITWire reports that the Australian Department of Finance are
intending to mandate OOXML as the document standard for whole of
government.<br>
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<div><a href="http://www.itnews.com.au/News/245276,australia-mandates-microsofts-open-office-xml.aspx" target="_blank"><font color="#0000ff"><u>http://www.itnews.com.au/News/245276,australia-mandates-microsofts-open-office-xml.aspx</u></font></a></div>
<div></div></div></blockquote></div><br><div>Thankfully that's itnews, not the objectionable itwire. :-)</div><div><br></div><div>They've required that compliant operating environments include an application which can read and write ECMA-376, but not exclusively. Due to the prevalence of such documents throughout government, it makes sense as a common *internal* interchange format. At least until the market (or policy) problem with standardised formats is fixed.</div>
<div><br></div><div>A few thoughts:</div><div><ul><li>This is a Common Operating Environment COE/SOE specification. Don't expect innovation or visions for the future here. Expect the terrible drudgery of standardisation, squeezing the common blood out of a many-headed stone, etc. I may have mixed a metaphor there. :-)</li>
<li>I suspect that use of the term "ECMA-376" is almost entirely an arse-covering exercise, when what they really mean is "DOCX and friends (including DOC and friends!) created with Office 2007".</li><li>
ECMA-376 should only be referred to as OOXML by the most charitable of commentators and/or partisan hacks. It's the fish that John West (ISO) rejected, and for good reason. ECMA accepted what is essentially an XML serialisation of the binary Office formats.</li>
<li>But that's a silver lining: You're more likely to have a compliant implementation of ECMA-376 (or thereabouts) than ISO-29500, whichever vendor you go with.</li><li>Pretty embarrassing putting a globally rejected, piece of shit, bought-and-paid-for "standard" on your COE document! Would have been more honest to just say "Office 2007 compatible binary and XML formats". :-)</li>
</ul></div><div>Bottom line: I'm betting someone thought a standards number sounded better than mentioning a certain vendor by name. Oops.</div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><br>
</div><div>- Jeff</div>