Decision taken in Berlin on OOXML
Germany votes in favour of the adoption of Office Open XML as an International Standard – but with numerous recommendations for improvements
(2007-08-22) In international standardization, so-called "mirror committees" are set up to form the national standpoint on current standardization projects: in this case on the initiative of Ecma International for the fast-track adoption of the standard ECMA-376 "Office Open XML (OOXML)" as an International Standard, ISO/IEC 29500. All 103 full members of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) are entitled to vote on this proposal until 2 September 2007 – with one vote per country.
The 6,000 page ECMA-376 standard, published in December 2006, documents an XML file format for office applications originally developed by Microsoft. This is the second such format proposed for standardization at the international level: The Open Document Format developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is the subject of ISO/IEC 26300 "Information technology - Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) ", already published at the end of last year.
After months of intensive deliberation on the OOXML specification, the responsible German committee in the Standards Committee on Information Technology and Selected IT Applications (NIA) at DIN met on 21 August 2007 in Berlin. Representatives of software providers, application developers, research institutes, federal ministries and government agencies discussed the various viewpoints which had been submitted, finally deciding to approve the draft version of ISO/IEC 29500, albeit with extensive comments containing proposed technical improvements to the ECMA standard. The German comments – which take up dozens of pages - will be submitted to ISO.
Queries on this subject should be addressed to:
Mr. Jan Dittberner
Standards Committee on Information Technology and selected IT Applications
Tel. +49 30 2601 2017
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