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OpenDocument Alliance to Fight Digital Dark Age

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the dragons-not-included dept.

OSS_ilation writes "A consortium of vendors and academic institutions -- including IBM, Sun Microsystems and the American Library Association -- has announced today that they are forming the OpenDocument Alliance as part of an effort to promote open file standards worldwide. The group will support the one truly open standard file format, OpenDocument, which is an XML-based file format used saving and exchanging editable office documents such as text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Sun's Simon Phipps said he believed ODF would allow future generations to view all of today's digital docs and prevent a digital Dark Age from occurring."

2 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. what are the comparisons: openxml vs. open doc? by yagu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Open formats are definitely the standard for which to strive.

    It appears Microsoft claims an open format, from the (fine) article:

    OpenXML will be the default format for saving documents instead of Microsoft's proprietary formats, said Alan Yates of the company's Office division

    Can anyone clear up exactly what OpenXML is? When I google it, I get vague references leading me to believe OpenXML is more of a container, and not Microsoft's specific document format. So, this sounds like another canard from Microsoft with the claim "open" obfuscating what is probably not.

    Any /.'ers have more info about Microsoft's format?

    On the other hand, the consortium (if you will) proposing a universal open document standard sounds more open and the proof will be in the implementation. Still, I'd like to know more specifically what that standard proposal is in detail.

    1. Re:what are the comparisons: openxml vs. open doc? by owlstead · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Ah, supersets. Great. So, does Microsoft also states that it won't use supersets by default? And if anyone defines supersets, will there be any way to get them accepted in the standard? Or will MS just create a worse superset themselves and push that as default? Sun does not accept supersets of Java (called Java) for compatability reasons, since supersets can (and will) mess up the standard. See extended HTML added to MS IE as reference to that.