The discussion continued Wednesday the 12th in Seoul, when we sat down with representatives from KANOi, Wooam, ECO and Tomotec. Through these discussions we learned that there are a number of very interesting products in the Korean market that are currently taking advantage of open standards-based document formats. Discussion Wednesday centered primarily on DAISY and Open XML. Vijay took some of his allocated time to demonstrate the ODF translation work being done on Source Forge and showcased how this can be implemented in centralized or distributed scenarios. The discussion was active considering the language barrier and I believe that seeing cross-format translation working in real world scenarios was eye opening to the folks in the room; my sense what that many will be moving forward with ODF and additional format implementations in the near future as well to broaden their offerings and provide greater choice.


Windows Live Spaces

I was excited to learn that the team at Tomotec was already working with the beta Open XML to DAISY translator for their fascinating DAISY reader product. They will be a great showcase for this open source work and have committed to helping test future versions and actively participating in the Source Forge project.

General feedback we received on community needs to improve implementation quality (leading to better interop):

  • It would be great to have a developer friendly authoring tool that provides real-time WYSIWYG rendering – developers should not have to use MS Office (or other office package) to validate output
  • The community needs to collaborate to develop a "trusted" source of documents. This would be a common library of documents that encapsulate the gamut of capability in each format and can be tested against using batch or manual processes.
  • For Open XML, there was a request for better authoring and development tools for working with documents that include data based on custom defined schemas.

On the event itself:

  • We need to spend time at the beginning of each event to recap the activities, discussions and action items from previous Document Interoperability events so that the discussion can continue to build & evolve.
  • We need to increase the amount of technical collaboration and discussion so that vendors can understand at a deeper level; depending on the # of companies, 1 day may not be enough:
    • Some vendors would like to do deep-dive peer architectural reviews
    • A discussion of challenges and opportunities from all points of view would assist in cross pollination of ideas and solutions
  • Future (or regular ongoing?) follow up engagement with regional groups would be useful
  • Overall, a great way to share ideas and improve interoperability between products

The next event in Germany in April will take all of this feedback into account and will hopefully result in an ever richer experience for all participants. This event is not meant to be specific to Germany and we are really looking forward to bringing in participants from all over Europe to make this a truly pan-European discussion. If your company is interested in participating, please email me.

Additional events are currently being planned now in other locations around the world and have been discussing about another US event as well. Feedback on locations etc. is always welcome as well.