Links 1-23-08

  • Article

A few interesting links out there today:

  • A Closer Look At Those "Single Standard" Policy Mandates – Great post from Oliver Bell, as he provides a look at the actual facts in terms of Policy Mandates around file formats.
  • Altova's Alexander Falk Discusses OOXML and ODF – Great interview with Alexander Falk, a key figure in the XML community. He discusses some of the questions they get from customers around Open XML and ODF.
  • While you're waiting, don't save in OOXML format – in another Fox News style post (an approach that has now been fully adopted by the anti-OpenXML folks), Bob Sutor reaches a new level in FUD. Hey Bob, which version of ODF does Lotus Notes support? ISO? 1.0? 1.1? Are there extensions as well?
  • The Standard Trolls – Bob's sidekick, Rob Weir, goes on the defensive and claims that the Open XML support in IBM products is due to market demand, and is not necessarily a show of "support". Rob also makes an attempt to rip apart the Open XML conformance clause (which by the way has been significantly improved as part of the ISO process). It's a funny complaint though given that he's the head of the ODF committee, and their conformance clause basically says nothing: "There are no rules regarding the elements and attributes that actually have to be supported by conforming applications, except that applications should not use foreign elements and attributes for features defined in the OpenDocument schema." [ODF 1.1]
  • A gadfly's take on IBM's 'support' for Open XML – Eric Lai interviews Sam Hiser from the Open Document Foundation, and has some reactions to Rob Weir's latest defense.