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Norway Moves Towards Mandatory Use of ODF and PDF
Andy Updegrove writes "Norway has become the latest European country to move closer to mandatory government use of ODF (and PDF). According to a press release provided in translation to me by an authoritative source, Norway now joins Belgium, Finland, and France (among other nations) in moving towards a final decision to require such use. The Norwegian recommendation was revealed by Minister of Renewal Heidi Grande Roys, on behalf of the Cabinet-appointed Norwegian Standards Council. If adopted, it would require all government agencies and services to use these two formats, and would permit other formats (such as OOXML) to be used only in a redundant capacity.Reflecting a pragmatic approach to the continuing consideration of OOXML by ISO/IEC JTC 1, the recommendation calls for Norway to 'promote the convergence of the ODF and OOXML, in order to avoid having two standards covering the same usage.' According to the press release, the recommendation will be the subject of open hearings, with opinions to be rendered to the Cabinet before August 20 this summer.The Cabinet would then make its own (and in this case binding) recommendation to the Norwegian government."
There is no such requirement. Many operating systems (Ubuntu, OS X, and probably everyone except .. ) bundle other lighter and nicer PDF viewers because they are nicer to the users.
Is it a question of time before a lightweight, free software pdf reader captures the windows userbase as well?
Try another PDF viewer. KPDF and XPDF are both great for Linux/X users. For a barebones Windows viewer, try SumatraPDF.
If you're stuck with Adobe Acrobat for some reason, then you might try these instructions to make Acrobat run a lot faster.
Just thoughts...Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
It's amazing how slowly word is getting around, but you do not have to put up with Adobe's bullshit. This company makes a no-cost reader that absolutely blows Acrobat Reader away. It's lightweight, fast, stable and when you close the window, the process actually stops instead of just sitting in the background, screwing up your system.
I like KPDF as well and that's my default viewer, but look at what is coming: Okular promises to be, if not an Acroread killer, at least a very serious contender. Note that this is KDE4 stuff (ergo Qt4, ergo it may easily be on Windows machines by year's end!).
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
A white paper based on a technical comparison between the ODF and OOXML formats
...the OOXML "standard" is terrible from a technical point-of-view, even if you forget about Microsoft's motivation behind it.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms