A few interesting links I wanted to point out:

• Content Reuse with Open XML and XSLT – Alexander Falk (Altova's CEO) has a great post giving examples of how to work with Open XML files using XML Spy:

  "This is the first article in a series of blog postings that I plan to write about practical Open XML tips & tricks, so I encourage you to subscribe to my XML Aficionado blog (via RSS or via e-mail), if you haven't already done so. This will ensure that you get future articles from this series automatically as soon as I post them."

• Myth: ISO Approval of Open XML Will Hurt Interoperability – Jasper Hedegaard Bojsen has a great post where he tries to cut through some of the FUD we've seen around whether or not ISO approval of Open XML will help or hurt interoperability. Years ago we were asked by the European Commission to submit our formats for standardization because they wanted them to be in the public domain. Clearly the approval of Open XML within ISO will help interoperability.
• There is humor is the OOXML morass – I think Bob Sutor is protesting a bit too much here. Bob, do you deny that your company is flying people around the world trying to block Open XML from being approved by ISO? Where is Rob Weir this week? He wouldn't happen to be out in Asia meeting with National Bodies and trying to push for a "no" vote would he?
• ISO 32000 — Document management — Portable document format — PDF 1.7 – While from a practical standpoint, Jim's statements make total sense, I wonder how people would react if this has been something I said about Open XML:

  As we began to make decisions, answer questions and move forward, it became clear to me that the standards process that Adobe had been following and the standards process that AIIM/ANSI/ISO follow are quite different. For the standards organizations the carefully written standards document is supreme. It defines the standard. While Adobe's PDF 1.7 Reference document is intended to do that same thing it isn't quite so clear. For example, if the billions of files in existence today all contain a construct that has A=1 and the Adobe document says they should have A=2 the document must be changed. That is, the existing files triumph the documentation. It would be of no value to have a specification that does not cover the existing files. So, one focus I put forth at each opportunity, was that the primary objective of the new ISO PDF 1.7 standard was to document the existing files.