The word is more or less official that OOXML, the specification that Microsoft Office 2007 uses to write documents, has been approved as an ISO standard (the same body that approved ODF, the specification used by OpenOffice). The standardization process was very controversial, largely because (i) many felt that Microsoft was bucking the already approved standard (ODF) in order to compete with OpenOffice and other products, and, to a lesser extent, (ii) some felt that the format was unsatisfactory, in some cases because of its complexity. That being said, Microsoft and ECMA (another standards organization) worked closely to bring the OOXML specification up to the standards of the ISO, and Microsoft has made a pledge to work towards interoperability, adding the OOXML specifications to their open-specification promise.
What does standardization mean for you?
- For most people, it means (i) that it will be easier to share documents between applications, and (ii) that you can create OOXML documents without worrying that you will not be able to access them in the future.
- For people that prefer ODF to OOXML, it means that you will not be able to count on OpenOffice overtaking Microsoft Office on standards-compliance grounds alone (though price and performance competition, as always, will remain fair game).
- For people that write mathematical documents, it means that you can add Microsoft Word to the list of applications/formats that make it easy to create such documents and save them in a standardized, interoperable format [i.e., LaTeX (and LyX, Scientific Word, etc.) and ODF (and OpenOffice, KOffice, etc.)].
I hope I don’t sound like a Microsoft shill — as it happens, I just really like the way Office 2007 handles math; it combines LaTeX’s powerful ability to encode math with the convenience of WYSIWYG editing. And now you get that combination with the comfort of knowing that your documents are saved in an industry-standard format (at least, you will once Microsoft rolls out the next update to Office).
