[Linux-aus] Are LA making a formal submission on OOXML?

[Janet Hawtin]

On 8/12/07, Glen Turner <gdt at gdt.id.au> wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> Are Linux Australia making a formal submission to Standards
> Australia regarding DIS 29500 (OOXML)?
>
> Are they also writing to the relevant Minister informing
> them of the deficient process and misleading behaviour of
> some parties?
>
> Cheers, Glen

Hello Glen

I am certainly working on a response myself, and am going to forward
it through when better structured to the committee for the meeting
tonight.
Happy to send it through to the full list if that is a better idea.

Yes I think that any attention on this issues in the senate would be
very useful as I understand some nations have had people bypass the
standards organisations and negotiate direct with government for
acceptance of ooxml as a government standard.

ODF is an open standard which fits this purpose.
ooxml is non-compliant, unparsable, incomplete undefined, legally
squirrelly and is written to support only MS formats and applications
such as IE.
It would be a useful 6000 page reference for use within the Microsoft
extended community but is not a unifying or standards compliant
document for any external developer or user.

Glen is correct to suggest that the process is the root of the problem.
The ECMA fast track process bypasses the open participation in
development of the standard, forces 6000 pages including things like
'wordwrap like windows97' and throws it into a fast track process to
be digested and responded to in 6 months.
(USFTA copyright process anyone?)

It would be great if people could respond to this issue to  "Alistair
Tegart" <Alistair.Tegart at standards.org.au>.
At the meeting last week Alister suggested that there were format requirements
I have not found out what these are but the person to email to find out is
<michael.langdon at standards.org.au>. I have emailed both asking for
clarification.
It is a bit dissapopinting to be into 'time-on' in this process and to
have specific formats raised in an undefined way at this point.

The meeting was chaired in a way which enabled each persons individual
responses to stand which was useful.

Alistair was looking for folks to participate in this process earlier
in the year and it was hard to find people interested in 6000 pages of
MS foo.
I think we probably need to think about how we interface with
standards processes and to consider how we can support truly open
formats and processes.
I don't know what kind of workload is involved but it would be
interesting to have a conversation with Standards Australia about how
we could support their work more.

Perspectives welcome.

Janet