ODF Alliance Newsletter 30 January 2008

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ODF YEAR-IN-REVIEW 2007 HIGHLIGHTS MAJOR GAINS WITH GOVERNMENTS, GROWING APPS SUPPORT
 
The ranks of governments requiring the use of ODF continued to swell in 2007, as did the number of software vendors implementing support for ODF in their products, according to a new annual report published by the ODF Alliance. Major developments and milestones for ODF in 2007 included:

*The Netherlands and South Africa adopted policies requiring ODF's use by government agencies, joining ten other countries that had already done so.

*ODF software support grew rapidly to include over 40 applications, with more than a dozen announcements of new or improved support during the months of September and October alone.

*The OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee, which maintains the ODF specification, reached consensus about extensible metadata for the upcoming ODF v1.2 specification, which among these and many other new features will come with digital-signature support. A first draft of the spreadsheet formula specification that will also become a part of ODF v1.2.

*Accessibility-related improvements were incorporated into ODF v1.1, allowing ODF to meet or exceed the accessibility features of any other office document format.

http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/AnnualReport2007.pdf


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ALLIANCE RESPONSE TO ECMA'S PROPOSED DISPOSITION OF COMMENTS ON OOXML

ISO fast-track procedures provide the submitter of a proposed standard, in this case Ecma, the opportunity to address the problems that national standards bodies (NBs) identified in the hope of persuading them to change their vote. Ecmas Proposed Disposition of Comments was published on January 14. The Alliance report explains what is missing from the 2,293 pages of proposed fixes? Beyond the inadequacy of a six-week review period for over 1,000 changes (the total number of "fixes" proposed by Ecma) and the inappropriateness of the "fast-track" procedure (when normal procedures are available) for a specification of this magnitude, the proposal: ignores the request from several countries and EU advisory bodies for harmonization between OOXML and the already ISO-approved ODF; adds to the confusion between the trademarked name of OpenOffice (ODF's first implementation) and the proposed standard, Office Open XML; introduces new errors, inadequately addresses existing ones, and ignores many other errors altogether; inhibits interoperability; and proposes contradictory solutions.

http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/Disposition%20of%20Comments.pdf


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ODF COMMUNITY BLOG LAUNCHED

Want to inform a global audience about document freedom in your part of the world? Or vent a little? The new ODF Community Blog may be your ticket. Simply send me a proposed topic followed by a draft post. 

ODF Community Blog - http://www.odfalliance.org/blog/


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PARANA, BRAZIL JOINS GROWING RANKS OF REGIONAL GOVERNMENTS REQUIRING USE OF ODF

Continuing the trend at the national level, Parana, a state in southern Brazil, became the second regional government in South America and sixth globally to adopt ODF. On December 18th 2007 the Legislative Assembly approved a law requiring all public administrations and autonomous bodies and companies under state control to adopt ODF (ISO 26300: 2006) for the creation, storage and display of digital documents.

https://www.documentos.dioe.pr.gov.br/dioe/servlet/SltDownloadPdf?ec=kWyYWYpWYZwYEWyEWKw&arquivo_codigo=3694  (in Portuguese)


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UK EDUCATIONAL BODY ADVISES SCHOOLS AGAINST SAVING IN OOXML

Becta, the UK government's lead agency for ICT in educational development, has published a review of Microsoft's Vista and Office 2007 products. In the report, UK schools using Office 2007 are advised not to save in Microsofts new Office Open XML format (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) in order to ensure widest compatibility of files between different computers. Due to limitations in Microsofts implementation of ODF (via a plug-in), the report warns, users of Office 2007 should continue to use the more widely adopted .doc, .xls and .ppt formats.

http://publications.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=35276


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UNIVERSITIES NOW MAKING THE MOVE TO ODF

The University of Salamanca in Spain has just passed a regulation that requires open access in its electronics documents; specifically, ODF for text, presentation and spreadsheets where the document needs to be modified by the recipient; PDF/A for documents requiring longer-term preservation; and HTML/XHTML for documents on the university's web site.

http://oca.usal.es/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=110
(in Spanish)


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ODF ALLIANCE RESPONDS TO BURTON GROUP REPORT

The ODF Alliance published a response to a Burton Group report entitled What's Up, .DOC? ODF, OOXML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications. The Alliance analysis, which highlighted 18 errors and unsubstantiated conclusions contained in the Burton Group report, was produced for the benefit of governments and others who are now evaluating their options regarding the management of electronic documents.

http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/BurtonGroupResponseFinal.pdf


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REPORT FINDS ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES REMAIN UNSUPPORTED BY OOXML

The white paper, "Accessibility Issues with OOXML," by Jutta Treviranus, Director of the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre and Dr. Stephen A. Hockema, faculty member of Information Studies - both at the University of Toronto - has been updated in response to Microsoft claims that many of the unsupported accessibility guidelines discussed in the white paper were, upon further analysis by Microsoft, actually supported by OOXML.  The updated white paper, however, finds these new claims misleading and that in almost all of these cases, the accessibility checkpoint is not satisfied despite Microsoft's amended claims.

http://atrc.utoronto.ca/index.php?option=com_content&sectionid=14&task=view&hidemainmenu=1&id=371


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NEW OR IMPROVED ODF APPLICATIONS SUPPORT

The Alliance is happy to highlight new or improved applications support for ODF, so please keep us informed of any product announcements.

Wikipedia: Announced plans to add ODF for word processors to the list of export formats. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikis_Go_Printable

ODF-XSLT Document Generator: This library written in PHP 5 brings the full power of XSLT to your ODF files. http://www.jejik.com/odf-xslt/


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NEW ODF ALLIANCE MEMBERS

Please welcome the following new members: QindelGroup (Spain); Carvalho Azevedo & Martins Braz -
Advocacia|Consultoria Jurmdica (Portugal); Administragco Central do
Advocacia|Advocacia|Sistema de Sazde (Portugal); F&B Sistemas (Ecuador);
Advocacia|SEA Tecnologia (Brazil); and Instituto de Governo Eletrtnico,
Advocacia|Inteligjncia Jurmdica e Sistemas (Brazil)


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ODF IN THE NEWS

Study: Open Document Format gained momentum in '07 (Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service) http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/010408-study-open-document-format-gained.html?page=2 

Office 2003 SP3 Disables Old Files (Mark Long, Sci-Tech Today) http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Office-2003-SP3-Disables-Old-Files/story.xhtml?story_id=010001473O0Q

Remembrance of things past (Glyn Moody) http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/01/remembrance-of-things-past.html

Public Request For Microsoft To Release Deprecated File Formats (Slashdot) http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/15/139215

EU opens new cases against Microsoft (Vnunet.com) http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2207211/eu-opens-cases-against

EU Opens Two New Investigations Against Microsoft  One Involving OOXML http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080114105017559

How Will EU Microsoft Probe Impact Open Office XML? (Jennifer LeClaire, Enterprise Software) http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=1000039ILIMO

Defend it? Of course, but what's next for Open Office XML?(NetworkWorld) http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/24078

ODF Vs. OOXML: Someone Is, Indeed, Writing A Book (Serdar Yegulalp,
InformationWeek) http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/01/odf_vs_ooxml_so.html

ODF Alliance strikes back at report (James Archibald, Tectonic) http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2050

The world does not need a "conversion nightmare": a standard office file format already exists (Tony Mobily, Free Software Magazine) http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/editorial_22



Marino Marcich
Managing Director
ODF Alliance
1090 Vermont Avenue, NW, 6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
Direct Line: 202-789-4450
Fax: 202-289-7097
Email: mmarcich@odfalliance.org                    

www.odfalliance.org