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That said, it goes on to acknowledge that “there are standards which we are obliged to adopt for pragmatic reasons which do not necessarily fully conform to being open in all respects.

As you know the so-called OpenDocument Foundation has been telling the world that CDF is a better approach than ODF. Updegrove met with W3C's Chris Lilley, the "go-to guy guy at W3C to learn what W3C's CDF standard is all about." Lilley says CDF can't replace ODF. It's not suitable for use as an office format, and he's mystified by the pronouncements of the Foundation. Here's what Updegrove reports: To find out the facts, I interviewed Chris Lilley, the W3C lead for the CDF project, and his answer couldn't have been more clear: "The one thing I'd really want your readers to know is that CDF was not created to be, and isn't suitable for use as, an office format." In fact, it isn't even an format at all - although it has been matched for export purposes with another W3C specification, called WICD - but WICD is a non-editable format intended for viewing only. Moreover, no one from the Foundation has joined W3C, nor explained to W3C what the Foundation's founders have in mind. It is highly unfortunate that the founders of a tax exempt organization that solicited donations, "To support the community of volunteers in promoting, improving and providing user assistance for ODF and software designed to operate on data in this format," should publicly announce that it believes that ODF will fail. By endorsing a standard that has no rational relationship to office formats at all, they can only serve to confuse the marketplace and undermine the efforts of the global community they claimed to serve. So, there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. CDF can't replace ODF, according to Lilley. It wasn't designed to be used as an office format. It's good for other things. So, was all this media push really about ODF? Or about damaging it with FUD and giving support to Microsoft's assertion that the world craves more than one office format standard so we can all struggle with interoperability complexity for the rest of our born days? And is it a coincidence it all happened on the eve of the next vote in February on Microsoft's competing MSOOXML? Was Microsoft behind this? Or did they just get lucky? Microsoft representatives, like Jason Matusow, certainly gave support to what the 3-man crew was saying, so much so that ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley wrote that, "the ODF camp might unravel before Microsoft’s rival Office Open XML (OOXML) comes up for final international standardization vote early next year." Dream on. ODF is doing fine. It's the OpenDocument Foundation that is shutting down. But here's my question: did the Microsoft reps not understand the tech, that CDF can't replace ODF? How trust-inspiring do you find that? Or did they think that *we'd* never figure it out? Whatever the story might be, unfortunately for Microsoft, people aren't as dumb as Microsoft needs them to be. FUD has a very limited shelf life in the Internet age. There is always somebody who knows better. And they'll tell the world.

If the OOXML format in its current form cannot get made into a true ISO standard, it could lock Microsoft out of any future plays in what could be the biggest IT revolution to date. Here are the pieces of the puzzle that fit together for me:

"Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time."

"Structured data." And what's a good way to contain such data? In well-built structured data file format of course. Like, for instance, the Open Document Format (ODF). And who has a vested interest in ODF? IBM certainly does. And so does Sun. And these two companies, along with Google, Microsoft, and I'm sure many others, realize that if cloud computing does indeed take off, then it will be the file format that makes the whole thing work. Which is why Microsoft feels it must get their format standardized. Even with tactics that ironically have started to attract the attention of the EU again. How else can they get a piece of the cloud pie?

This myth is rather silly if you think about it. Here is why… When people talk about interoperability and Open XML they do so primarily in the context of ODF. The story goes something like this: 1. Open XML is not interoperable with ODF 2. Open XML should be interoperable with ODF because ODF is already an ISO standard! 3. Hence: Open XML is no good, because it is not interoperable with ODF and therefore Open XML should not be an ISO standard!!!

2. Achieving interoperability is rarely as straight forward as selecting a single technical standard, and many of the policy positions around the world recognize this. Applications need to be designed to work together, groups need a solid framework for collaboration and the standards need to be ready to support these two objectives.

With the news that another state–California–is considering adopting open standard XML-based file formats for office documents (which could be interpreted to mandate ODF), and the continued march of governments around the world to ODF (ISO/IEC 26300:2006), their poorly-done translator is not likely to meet the standard. For one thing, it “bolts” ODF capability on, rather than building it in as a fully-native peer format. It also uses XSLT to attempt the translation when OOXML’s design is not fully usable with XSLT. I cannot see how they could have created a more error-prone method to do the conversions. This could potentially cause Microsoft’s office applications suite to be expelled from government agencies and their employees and contractors.

# re: Specifying the document settings @ Thursday, January 11, 2007 5:11 AM Brian, the fact that you are encouraging people not to use those compatibility flags does not matter at all here. There obviously will be documents with those flags turned on, right? Otherwise you wouldn't have put this in the standard. So it's just a corner case, but still: This means ONLY your office suite will be able to display those documents correctly, even if a competing program implemented the whole specification. Why? Because you didn't specify how those flags affect the display of the document (a hell of a specification you have there...). I still haven't seen any answer to this valid criticism. It's a competitive advantage for Microsoft since the standard is incomplete and your company is the only one that has the missing parts. - Stephan Stephan Jaensch

We wish to make it completely clear that we support DIS 29500 becoming an ISO Standard and are in complete agreement with its stated purposes of enabling interoperability among different implementations and providing interoperable access to the legacy of Microsoft Office documents.

A fatal flaw in your analysis By Marbux Posted Saturday 21st April 2007 08:15 GMT Your analysis contains a fatal flaw, Martin. That is your belief that adequate Microsoft XML <> OpenDocument translators will be available. In fact, all of the translators suck mightily and there is no prospect at all of them being perfected. The major problems are: (i) that Microsoft's XML formats seem deliberately designed to thwart their parsing with XPath, which is essential to XML transformations; (ii) that Microsoft's "XML" file formats include binary blobs, bitmasks, and multiple Windows and Microsoft dependendencies, all of which defy XML transformations; and (iii) OpenDocument assumes a richer page layout engine than Microsoft Word provides, so while DOCX can be completely mapped to ODT it is impossible to fully map in the other direction without declaring an MS Office interoperability subset of OpenDocument and ODF applications implementing a compatibility mode with reduced features. (That is more than somewhat ironic, given Microsoft's spin that it couldn't implement all of its features in OpenDocument. In fact, the exact opposite is true.) In fact, Steve Ballmer is on record as saying that the developers of the Novell-Microsoft-Clever Age plug-ins will not even attempt to achieve full fidelity file translations between the two formats. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2050848,00.asp?kc=EWEWEMNL103006EP17A Those translators achieve at best far less conversion fidelity than existing file conversion filters between OpenDocument and Microsoft binary file formats such as the OpenOffice.org conversion filters, which achieve only about 80 per cent fidelity. The file format cognescenti know this. See e.g., the paper by Gary Edwards and Sam Hiser included in this edition of the European Journal for the Informatics Professional. http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2006/6/up7-6Hiser.pdf (PDF). (Note that I contributed to that paper.) And as also detailed in that paper, what works well enough for some of us does not necessarily work well enough for all. Anything less than full fidelity data conversions is absolutely unacceptable in the context of wholly automated business processes and is in fact illegal in various contexts, including government records. So your thesis doesn't fly. In fact, I'd go so far as to bet that you have been suckered by the Microsoft spin doctors. Another indication is your depiction of the file format wars as being waged primarily between IBM and Microsoft, a recent theme of Microsoft's public relations machine. While it is seductive to believe that the controversy is just another chapter in the war between major competitors, the pro-ODF camp is far broader than IBM. For example, nearly 20 governments recently opposed fast track processing of Microsoft's draft standard at ISO. Do you believe they were all carrying water for IBM? Government bodies in more than 50 nations have chosen to adopt ODF. http://opendocumentfellowship.org/government/precedent And dozens of developers now support the OpenDocument standard in their applications. http://opendocumentfellowship.org/applications While IBM has had a noteworthy role in proliferating the OpenDocument formats, there is a movement without a recognizable leader in the industry. When it comes to vendor influence on things relevant to ODF, Sun Microsystem's far outshines IBM. But in fact, a core group of open standards and free and open source developers and advocates -- inside and outside government -- have played a far larger role. This is a customer-driven phenomenon, not a vendor-driven effort as you portray. So I will respectfully suggest that you reexamine your position on these issues. Reasonable minds can differ, but not on the grounds you advocate.

In a highly informative post to his Open Stack blog Wednesday, Edwards explains how three key features are necessary for organizations to convert to open formats. These are: Conversion Fidelity - the billions of binaries problem Round Trip Fidelity - the MSOffice bound business processes, line of business integrated apps, and assistive technology type add-ons Application Interop - the cross platform, inter application, cross information domain problem

Xandros, the leading provider of intuitive Linux solutions and cross platform interoperability tools, today announced it will join Microsoft and other companies to build and ship open source translators between documents stored in Ecma Office Open XML and Open Document Formats. The translators, being developed through the Open XML/ODF Translator project, will be made available to Xandros users via the Xandros Networks update facility. Every Xandros product that includes OpenOffice.org will be equipped with the translators. This announcement underscores the shared view of Xandros and Microsoft that competing office productivity applications should make it easy for customers to exchange files with one another and allow them to use their operating system and office productivity applications of choice. "This is good news for customers. Xandros and Microsoft share the view that competing office productivity applications should make it easy for customers to exchange files with one another," said Tom Robertson, general manager for Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft. "Mixed system environments are becoming more common, and we believe in delivering interoperability by design for the benefit of our customers. Our ongoing collaborative relationships with commercial open source companies like Xandros help us achieve that goal." "We are delighted to join forces with Microsoft and others to provide interoperability between standardized XML document formats," said Andreas Typaldos, Xandros CEO. "The work of the world is done using various document formats as well as operating systems, so it is vital to provide our customers with the means interoperate with ease in this diverse environment."

Adding a twist to a high-stakes conflict over document formats, some advocates for OpenDocument, or ODF, are abandoning the standard in favor of the World Wide Web Consortium's Compound Document Formats standard. The reason? Technical limitations in sharing ODF files with Microsoft Office applications.

The marketing folks in IBM's Lotus division are starting to sound like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who insists he's winning a fight even as he loses both arms and legs: "'Tis but a scratch," the Black Knight declares after one arm is lopped off. "Just a flesh wound," he says after losing the other. "I'm invincible!" The same goes for IBM's (nyse: IBM - news - people ) Lotus, which keeps declaring victory even as Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) carves it up.