Sun announced today that it would make a "preview" version of its Office to ODF plugin in "mid February," with the full version to follow "later this spring."  Plugins will be available for use with both Sun's StarOffice as well as the open source OpenOffice.org office suite.  The announcement comes five days after Microsoft announced the immediate availability of its Office to ODF plugin at SourceForge.   

At this time, neither plugin will work with all versions of Office.  According to the press release issued by Sun just now (the full text appears below), the Sun plugin will only work with Office 2003 text documents, while the Microsoft plugin will (according to Martin LaMonica) apparently be usable in connection with Office 2003, Office XP and Office 2007 (Elizabeth Montalbano, on the other hand, says that it will only assist users that upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007; I'll give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, and go with Martin's report).   Initially, that means that most Office users will be able to use either one, the other, or both alternatives. 

Most of the attention this week relating to open document standards is focused on what responses ISO/IEC JTC 1 will have received before the February 5 deadline for submission of  "contradictions" involving the Microsoft OOXML formats.  I just posted this entry on that score, reporting that a total of nineteen national bodies have filed contradictions, complaints or other comments as part of the contradictions process.

But while this global drama has been playing out, I've learned that a third US state is considering requiring use of open document formats by government agencies (Massachusetts and Minnesota are the other two to date).  That state is Texas, where a bill has been introduced to require that only "open document formats" should be permitted.  The bill is designated SB 446, and was filed on February 5 (the full text is reproduced at the end of this blog entry).

How does the Texas bill define an open document format?  As stated in the bill, such a format would need to be based upon Extensible Markup Language, would need to have been previously approved, and would be required to meet the following criteria:

Last week I reported that the United States body reviewing OOXML had decided to take a conservative approach to defining what  "contradiction" should mean under the ISO/IEC process.  Since then, a few stories have appeared indicating that Great Britain and Malaysia would each identify at least one contradiction in their response.  The actual results would only become known after the deadline had passed on February 5.

In that first blog entry, I concluded that Microsoft had won the first point in the contest over whether its document format would become a global standard or not.  With the deadline past, who would be found to have won the next?

Well the results are in, and an unprecedented nineteen* countries have responded during the contradictions phase - most or all lodging formal contradictions with Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC), the ISO/IEC body that is managing the Fast Track process under which OOXML (now Ecma 376) has been submitted.  This may not only be the largest number of countries that have ever submitted contradictions in the ISO/IEC process, but nineteen responses is greater than the total number of national bodies that often bother to vote on a proposed standard at all. 

[*Update:  make that twenty]

When it is recalled that any national body responding would first have had to wade through the entire 6,039 pages of the specification itself, and then compose, debate and approve its response in only 30 days, this result is nothing less than astonishing.  Truly, I think that this demonstrates the degree to which the world has come to appreciate the importance of ensuring the long-term accessibility of its historical record, as well as the inadvisability of entrusting that heritage to a single vendor or software program.

The countries that chose to respond on this expedited schedule are as follows:

Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Hungary
India
Italy [later added]
Japan
Kenya
Malaysia
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Romania
Singapore
Sweden
UK

In all (to quote Monty Python once again), "Rather a lot, actually."

As those who are following Microsoft's OOXML formats through the standardization process will know, those formats (now officially known as Ecma 376, following the favorable adoption vote in Ecma on December 7 of last year) are now in the "contradiction" phase in JTC 1 at ISO/IEC.  Or, so it would seem, they are in the "so, what is a contradiction, anyway?" phase. 

Microsoft has won the first point in this match (on which more below), as national bodies around the world wrestle with this question.  But first, some context on what's going on, and why it matters.

The question of what a "contradiction" may be under the ISO/IEC rules is of more than passing interest.  On the most basic level, the question is legitimate, since ISO/IEC apparently do not supply a precise definition, even though one out of the six months in the ISO/IEC Fast Track process is allocated to the submission of contradictions by the 60-odd Principal and Observer members of these global standards organizations that are entitled to respond during this phase.

How does a national body submit what one must first define?  And why should ISO/IEC ask its members to submit contractions until ISO/IEC has taken the trouble to define what they are?  Or perhaps ISO/IEC in fact have provided adequate guidance, and the battle between ODF and OOXML has simply escalated to the point where anything and everything will be taken to the barricades, regardless?

The answer to that last question, it appears, is  "yes - regardless." 

With the full specification in that state, the PDF formats will once and for all abandon the rather confusing, schizophrenic existence that they have maintained to date.  Over time, more and more (but not all) of the specification had …

It's been an unusually active week in the contest between already ISO-adopted ODF and OOXML, as the latter moves through the first step of the ISO the adoption process.  More specifically, Ecma submitted OOXML to the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) on January 5, starting the clock on the traditional one-month "contradictions" period that begins the "fast track" process in the JTC1.  However, OOXML is no traditional specification, weighing in at over 6,000 pages.  During this phase, eligible JTC1 members can note ways in which the proposed standard overlaps other standards, fails to incorporate available ISO standards, or otherwise does not meet ISO rules (a second, five month period will begin on February 5, during which technical and other objections may be raised).  

With OOXML formally launched within the JTC1, both sides have pulled out all the stops to influence the national bodies eligible to participate, as well as the public at large.  Here's a chronology of the principle events of just the last seven days, and how they fit into the overall scheme of things:

Starting with the somewhat silly, OOXML does not conform to ISO 8601:2004 “Representation of Dates and Times.”  Instead, OOXML section 3.17.4.1, “Date Representation,” on page 3305, requires that implementations replicate a Microsoft bug that dictates that 1900 is a …

A year ago, many words were written (including by me) on why Microsoft may have chosen Ecma to package Microsoft's Office Open XML formats as a standard. Now that Ecma has finished that project and adopted the result, there's additional data to examine that sheds some light on that question. That will be my topic today, and for the next several entries.

About two weeks ago I wrote a related entry called Ecma Approves OOXML – What Does it all Mean?  In that entry, I tried to give an even handed overview (admittedly, as I see it) of how the Ecma approval of Microsoft's XML formats fits into the grand scheme of things. The bottom line was that I did not think that the Ecma action was very significant, given the circumstances under which it had been achieved.

That post elicited the following question from a reader:

Maybe I'm a bit naive . . . but does this mean that Microsoft is trying to get the various standards authorities eating out of their hands - i.e. uncritically approving everything pumped out by the behemoth?

I tried to give that question an even handed response as well – because in fact it's common practice for most companies to engage in the equivalent of what a lawyer would call "forum shopping:" looking for the court and judge they think will most likely rule in her favor. My response therefore read as follows:

For those with an interest in how accessibility can be achieved at the technical level, the go-to expert is Peter Korn (you can find a link to his blog in the “Blog’s I read” list in the right column).  Yesterday …

Updated 12:00 ET to include information from the IBM and FSG press releases (both have been appended as well)

Elizabeth Montalbano at ComputerWorld wrote a piece yesterday about a thus far little noticed project with the enigmatic name "Project Missouri."  How little noticed?  I just tried a Google search of "'project Missouri' IBM ODF" and found…just Elizabeth's article.

What is Project Missouri, and why the odd name?  The title of the ComputerWorld article will give a first clue:  IBM project aims to help blind use ODF applications.   As you will recall, ODF accessibility has been a big issue in Massachusetts, with the community of the disabled, as well as ODF opponents, challenging the Commonwealth's decision to convert to ODF-compliant software products until such time as these products become as accessible as Microsoft Office.  

In response, a number of ODF proponents – including IBM – pledged to make ODF not only the equal of, but superior to, Microsoft Office with respect to accessibility.  Opponents scoffed, and hence an accessibility project that puckishly borrows its name from the hard to convince midwestern locale that refers to itself as the "Show Me State."