Just yesterday was the second Dutch ISO standardization meeting of OOXML. For those unfamiliar, after being standardized at the European ECMA organization OOXML is now going through ISO. The ISO accreditation is broadly accepted and would allow OOXML to become even more stable and open than it is now. I am greatly exited about this happening, it will really enable all kinds of solutions which were previously really difficult to do. Great for our customers!
One thing that continuously makes me wonder is the debate around this ISO process. In the past there has been quite a lot of demand on opening up the old binary format. Going forward with the old format is obviously not ideal for the developer community, writing binary processing code is definitely more difficult than working with XML. It also allows to remove some of the kinks in the format that should otherwise remain compatible, shielding us from document mayhem. Now that it is opening up, there is debate...
The meeting boistered quite a heated discussion about the merits of OOXML compared to other, in my opinion less powerful and enterprise ready, markup languages. I've been asked to come up with a list of just these benefits. There are quite some things that I can consider, but to go for the low blow, at least it defines a model for storing spreadsheet formulas. Some of us actually use them you know.. :) I'll blog it for you all soon.
One thing that really struck me at the meeting was the open statement of the IBM representative of having been given a 'secret agena' for the meeting, I suspect some others to have received the same. The bad thing about this is that the debate no longer covers the merrits of Office Open XML, but instead is targetted by IBM to enlarge the market share of their own office productivity suite and accompanying language ODF. There have been some occurences that can be identified as at least worrying.
All the while other more interesting things pop up as well. The Germans are investigating the interoperability standpoint of all the new XML based languages, OOXML, ODF, and UOF, the one the Chinese are developing. There are some great things to consider, especially with tags looking like this.
Keep you updated.
Go Office Open XML!