[LINK] re: Australian consultation on proposed OOXML standard

Tom Worthington Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au
Sun Aug 12 12:33:24 AEST 2007


I wrote Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:01:53 +1000:
>... I had a telephone call from SA on Wednesday to say that there 
>was no committee considering OOXML. Instead SA are hosting a forum 
>on the proposed Draft International Standard ISO/IEC 29500, 
>"Information technology - Office Open XML file formats" standard in 
>Sydney on 9 August. ...

There are at least two reports on the meeting:

* Rick Jelliffe's "Report on Standards Australia industry forum on 
DIS 29500" 
<http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2007/08/report_on_standards_australia_1.html?CMP=OTC-TY3388567169&ATT=Report+on+Standards+Australia+industry+forum+on+DIS+29500>.

* Lee Welbur's "Report from Australia - the OOXML Forum": 
<http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070809103920651>.

Rick refers to my excerpts from the Standards Australia agenda for 
the meeting to clarify the purpose of the meeting 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/08/australian-ooxml-stanadard-process.html>. 
The comments show a number of shortcomings in Standards Australia's 
processes. But I suspect that much of the controversy about the 
meeting is due to a misunderstanding over the fast track 
international standards process used. Rather than asking "is this 
good enough to be a standard?" the process essentially says "is this 
so bad it should NOT be made a standard?".

Rick seemed to be supporting OOXML and says it is not difficult to 
implement. But, like the reported position of National Archives of 
Australia (NAA), I think it will be more difficult to support an 
additional international standard format (OOXML), than it would be to 
just use the existing one (ODF).

Rick argues that government agencies, such as NAA, don't have to 
implement OOXML, as Standards Australia is not a government body. 
However, SA is a government endorsed body for making standards and so 
its advice is likely to influence Australian government agencies. If 
agencies send NAA documents in OOXML, then it will have to accept 
them (and most likely convert them to ODF for long term storage).



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml  




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