#1Gary Edwards said ...(on 04-17-2008)

As a follow-up to my previous response, i contacted a friend, Florian Reuter, who attended the February 2008 Geneva BRM. Florian works for Novell and is currently the only sitting member of both the OASIS ODF TC, and, the Ecma 376 workgroup. He's also wrote the OOXML plug-in for OpenOffice as well as the da Vinci ODF plug-in for MSOffice. His familiarity and skill with both the applications and the related formats is beyond unique.

Anyway, Florian claims that the Ecma 376 Charter clause binding the Ecma 376 work to "compatbility with MSOffice OOXML" was the subject of much contentious discussion at the Geneva BRM. Many ISO NB's (national bodies) demanded that the charter clause be removed, and it is Florian's opinion that this will in fact turn out to be the case. We'll have to wait and see. but what an important change this could be.

Florian also believes that Microsoft has agreed to fully document and submit to ISO ALL future eXtension proposals. That's not to say MSOffice will hold off implementing these eXtensions until ISO approves, but Microsoft has agreed to the semantic description - submission route.

Note that OASIS ODF vendors have not agreed to fully document their application-platform-vendor specific eXtensions. Sun OpenOffice/StarOffice has over 150 known application settings that are totally undocumented but nevertheless included in ODF. IBM's Lotus Symphony, which is based on the OpenOffice 1.1.4 code base, similarly makes use of undocumented eXtensions connecting Symphony to Lotus Notes. These connectors are sometimes referred to as "accelerators", but within ODF they are undocumented eXtensions.

This is an important issue so i'll try to track it down and verify Florian's opinion.

It's also interesting to note that ISO has designated three committees to take over the document format issue. The committees will individually be dedicated to maintenance of OOXML, ODF, and the interoperable harmonization of both formats. Ecma and Microsoft have turned everything over to ISO. OASIS ODF vendors continue to insist that they maintain and control ODF, submitting OASIS approved versions of ODF to ISO after the fact.

This OASIS ODF position flies in the face of what ISO has decided to do with the document format mess. Fireworks are certainly on the horizon.

For instance; Novel has a number of proposals pending at OASIS ODF, including Florian's field enhancement proposal so vital to Novel Office document merging functions. My guess is that if OASIS ODF TC does not include these proposals in the May release of ODF 1.2, Novel will submit the proposals directly to ISO for consideration! The field enhancement proposal has been stalled at OASIS for over six months. Proving once again that for the most part, proposals get approval only when Sun OpenOffice/StarOffice code base is able and ready to implement the proposal.

Maybe with ISO finally taking over both format contenders, the application-platform-vendor specific bindings of each format can finally be resolved? I hope so.

~ge~