Craig Kitterman's Interoperability Community Blog : standards

ISO: ISO/IEC DIS 29500 receives necessary votes for approval as an International Standard

craigkitterman — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:10:52 GMT

The official ISO press release can be found here: http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1123

Martin LaMonica's (CNET) take: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9908939-7.html?tag=nefd.top

It’s Official: Open XML approved as ISO Standard

craigkitterman — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:28:00 GMT

Open XML vote results are in – Ecma appears to have secured ISO/IEC ratification of the standard – now known as IS 29500.

It is a great victory for supporters of document choice and flexibility and for those who prefer to use ISO standard formats. It validates the need for additional document standards – for users not completely served by previously existing ISO standards. Ratification also demonstrates that the global community is interested in ISO/IEC oversight of the maintenance and evolution of the spec for such a widely used format. This long process has added tremendous value to the specification through improvements proposed by national bodies around the world and it is great to see the global community working together to build consensus.

I am very happy with this result, but our work continues – not just for Microsoft but for the entire vendor community. We will be continuing to build on the work the community has been doing to improve interoperability between standards-based document format implementations through our Document Interoperability Initiative (DII). The next event will take place in Munich, Germany April 22 and 23 with a collection of vendors from across Europe. Please let me know if you would like to participate in the testing and/or discussion. I am really looking forward to learning more about the needs of the vendor community (or more importantly our shared customers), and together develop process/tools/? to improve our implementations and serve these needs.

-C

Great Endorsement for Document Choice from HP

craigkitterman — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:24:34 GMT

Check out the HP Position Statement on Standardization of Office Document Formats. It is a refreshing and pragmatic view - that choice is important and ODF and Open XML will co-exist and interoperate. On the ISO standardization process:

"HP believes that the international standardization process is working. This process has already significantly improved the OOXML specification and additional evolution of it will take place under control of the global community if the specification is ratified by ISO/IEC JTC 1. In the current vote on OOXML at JTC 1, HP is supporting an affirmative vote in those national standards bodies in which HP is active."

Bill Gates on Document Archival, Standards, and Open XML

craigkitterman — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:42:00 GMT

Here is a quick clip of Bill being asked about Open XML and digital archival by Washington State Congressman Brian Baird during a U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science and Technology meeting last week.

Document Interoperability Roundtables & Labs - Take 2: Seoul, Korea

craigkitterman — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 02:40:00 GMT

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.

An Open Letter by Chris Capossela, Sr. Vice President, Microsoft Office

craigkitterman — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:52:00 GMT

In this letter, Chris outlines the importance of Office Open XML as a document format choice for customers, the benefits of global stewardship of the format through international standards bodies, and Microsoft's pledge for future support of the open standard.

Document Interoperability Roundtables & Labs - Take 1: Cambridge, MA

craigkitterman — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:51:00 GMT

As announced yesterday, this week represents the kick-off in a series of technical labs and roundtable discussions that we will be driving focused solely on interoperability between open standards based document formats, including ODF, UOF, Open XML and others. The location selected for round 1 was Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Video: Document Interoperability Initiative (DII) - Cambridge, MA

The second goal (of equal importance) was to discuss how we as a community can work together improve the overall quality of implementation thereby improving interoperability. The questions that were discussed (note: this is an initial set and are really working to see how this can be improved) were the following:

What document interoperability issues exist with your product today?
Where and how should we collaborate as a community to solve issues?
What tools, test suites, sample document libraries etc. will enable developers to better implement open standards-based formats?
What types of templates should be created that can be optimized for interoperability across formats?
Where are customers demanding interoperability? (applications, formats, platforms)
What other questions should we be asking/discussing in future roundtables?

Some common themes that emerged from the discussion are:

Customers want high fidelity with no data loss
We need to carefully consider both presentation/authoring/exchange scenarios AND enterprise server scenarios (back office, unstructured data, schema across supply chains)
Test suites are critical to ensure quality, reduce development time
- We need to think creatively to solve this; these could be desktop, web or web-service based etc.
Speed of document rendering is important to customers (esp. in mobile) and view and edit modes may need to be treated differently to accommodate.
Access to an accepted library of quality test documents is a gap.

I am very happy with the outcome of these discussions and the technical engagement for the first go-around. This credit goes to the great set of partners who participated and their willingness to really collaborate on this key issue. We have a lot of work to do and will continue to evolve the approach to ensure maximum benefit for all the participating companies and their customers. The next stop on this "train" is Seoul, Korea next week where we will bring in another handful of ISVs with common goals of improved document format interoperability, then on to Germany in early April.

I want to call out here that this is open to any vendors who are implementing open standards based document formats and are interested in working with a broader set of folks with common goals. If you are interested in participating, please feel free to contact me directly (ckitter@microsoft.com) and we can work together to see how to integrate your company, product and ideas into the next session.

If you cannot participate directly in one of the events but would like to add your comments as to what kinds of things we can and should do as a community in the interest of document interoperability, please feel free to comment or shoot me email.

Open XML documents on Symbian Devices!

craigkitterman — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:42:00 GMT

With the latest version (4.0) of Quickoffice Premier from Quickoffice® one can open, edit and save as the Open XML file formats on Symbian OS based mobile devices! This is yet another great example momentum of Open XML across a broad array of platforms and devices. See the You Tube video here!

Apple Products Support Open XML: Video Demos

craigkitterman — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:26:00 GMT

My colleague Jean-Christophe Cimetiere has been working on a lot of demos and these were just posted to You Tube. It is really cool to see very wide spread adoption of Open XML in consumer products like iPhone, as well as in other products on Apple OS X. It is remarkable not only how many products are already supporting the format, but also how many non-windows platforms are supporting it as well!

Here is the iPhone demo to "wet your whistle". For more, check out www.youtube.com/openxml!

Back In Action + Burton Group Report on Open XML / ODF

craigkitterman — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 03:26:52 GMT

After taking a month off for parental leave over the holidays I am back at work. A lot has been happening over this period with the Open XML ISO standardization effort as the process moves closer to the final Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM). All exciting stuff (to geeks like me anyway).

This morning I read the Burton Group report "What's Up, .DOC? ODF, OOXML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications" (registration required to download document). It is a great piece of independent analysis on the much hyped document debate regarding Open XML and ODF and the effects on the IT ecosystem. Definitely worth a read and a discussion if you are at all fascinated with document formats and interoperability.

DIN working group formed on translation of document formats!

craigkitterman — Fri, 11 May 2007 22:22:18 GMT

The Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin today announced a new DIN working group that will be focused on document translation to support interoperability! The working group is open and has issued an invitation for participation. The output of this group will be focused on providing a pragmatic approach to translate between document formats, allowing customers to have choice in their format selection.

To quote Gerd Schürman (head of the eGovernment unit at Fraunhofer FOKUS):

"Today there's no longer any reason why we should have to make a straight choice between the two standards," he said, "Instead of either/or, we're enabling interoperability between various document standards"

This is great news for governments and enterprises around the world who are seeking choice and improved interoperability between the ODF and Office Open XML (Ecma 376) document format standards.

Pragmatism in IT

craigkitterman — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:00:45 GMT

The approach of Microsoft in the context of interoperability is one of proactivity and pragmatism. The reality of the IT ecosystem is that heterogeneity is reality and that we as a company (and an industry) must continually adapt to properly address the needs of customers operating in these environments. True interoperability can only be achieved through this pragmatic approach. There is no silver bullet and we must work closely with our customers and partners to understand what their real needs are in order to build solutions, and partner with the industry to effectively solve them.

Standardization is often a great tool in building a common bridge which everyone can cross. There are a few different types of standards including those submitted to formal standards bodies, as well as "de facto" or industry standards. Both serve an important role in providing interoperability, but should not be viewed as the one-size-fits-all solution.

By working directly with the community, we are able to foster interoperability in a very direct way, that meets the needs of the market and our customers where they are today. Often through the interaction and collaboration with partners (like those in the Interop Vendor Alliance) we are able to build bridges between innovative technologies quickly responding to real needs and providing shared customer benefit.

IT evolves at such a rapid pace and we must be agile in order to innovate at the pace required by the market and our customers. Over the past several months, one thing has become very clear to me (perhaps I am a little slow in the uptake here): IT Professionals really don't care about marketing, politics and idealistic debate – they just want stuff to WORK and drive strategic business value. They also don't want to have to make it work themselves – it is the responsibility of the vendors to work together to enable interoperability so they don't have to. I had the opportunity to speak with several IT Professionals at TechX World in San Francisco on Tuesday and this message was repeated loud and clear through and after our panel discussion.

I am looking forward to continuing to meet and engage with more and more customers and partners in the near future to really learn about your pain. We are fully committed to listening and understanding your issues. By then taking this input and engineering interoperability into our products by design, engaging deeply with the community, making Microsoft intellectual property available, and by embracing and participating in standards setting activities, we will to continue to foster pragmatic interoperability between Microsoft and non-Microsoft products and technologies.

Novell Releases Open XML Support for OpenOffice.org Novell Edition

craigkitterman — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 05:23:37 GMT

Monday, Novell released code that provides support for Ecma Open XML in their OpenOffice.org implementation. The add-in provides the capability for loading and saving of Open XML documents by the popular productivity suite in both the Windows and Linux versions. This release represents one of the first outputs of the technical collaboration agreement between Microsoft and Novell. Furthermore, it demonstrates the adoptability of the format in non-MS software packages (and platforms).

For details and the download bits, visit the Novell PR Blog.

Collaboration between Microsoft, Novell, and the open source community is ongoing and will continue to improve and expand the capability of translation tools for Open XML and ODF.

Interoperability, Choice and Open XML – An Open Letter

craigkitterman — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:50:39 GMT

This morning Microsoft has released an open letter from Tom Robertson and Jean Paoli (GMs co-leading interoperability at MS) at http://www.microsoft.com/interop/letters/choice.mspx.

The letter demonstrates with specifics IBMs attempt to limit customer choice and engage in hypocrisy around open standards. Despite calling on Microsoft to open our Office file formats and bring them to an international standards body, IBM is behind the scenes doing everything in their power to block adoption of Open XML as an ISO standard (despite already achieving Ecma standardization). In addition to this, they have deployed a worldwide campaign to influence government to mandate the use of ODF exclusively, thereby limiting customer choice in xml based document file formats.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: customers want choice, not politics.

Please take a moment to read the letter. I look forward to your comments.

Ecma Office Open XML added to the OSP

craigkitterman — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 01:54:26 GMT

Today we added Ecma Office Open XML final draft to the list of specifications covered by the OSP. Now users who implement solutions based on the Open XML format can choose to use either the language of the Covenant Not to Sue (CNS) or the language provided by the recently announced Open Specification Promise (OSP). The rights assigned both agreements are substantially the same, but since legal language can be very detailed, we wanted to be sure that users have both options. A number of industry legal experts have expressed their satisfaction with both approaches to the language so the result is that implementers should be comfortable leveraging these formats without fear of any future patent claim assertion by MS.