Publication of ISO/IEC 29500 (Office Open XML)

It's official: ISO announced today the publication of the final text of ISO/IEC 29500, the Office Open XML specification. This includes all of the changes agreed to at the BRM, including the strict-vs-transitional structure and many others from the various national bodies involved.

This has been a global process, with participation from dozens of countries and hundreds of individuals. The final text, reflecting all of those contributions, was prepared by project editor Rex Jaeschke and his BRM assistant Tristan Davis in recent months. Great work, guys!

Going forward, the IS29500 standard will be maintained by Working Group 4 (WG4) of SC 34. This working group was formed at the SC 34 plenary in Jeju (Korea), based on the planning work that has been done in last spring's SC 34 plenary in Oslo, and the two-day meeting of AHG1 in London in July. AHG1 is an "ad-hoc group" that was formed to create WG4, led by Alex Brown of the UK. Murata Makoto is the chair of WG4.

I'm really excited to be involved in WG4 going forward, and looking forward to working with all of the technical experts worldwide who will be contributing to the process. The first face-to-face meeting of WG4 will be in Okinawa in January.