Microsoft to standardize Office formats

Iria · Nov 21, 2005, 11:10 PM

Microsoft intends to submit Office file formats to the European standards body ECMA International, a move the company hopes will allay concerns over the company's level of control over document formats.

The company, which dominates the market for desktop productivity software, plans to hand over the technical specifications of Office 12 file formats to ECMA early next month. The technical committee is also being sponsored by Intel, Apple, NextPage and some European customers, including BP and the British Library.

The creation of a fully documented standard submission derived from the formats, called Microsoft Office Open XML, will likely take about a year, Microsoft executives said. Once Microsoft Office Open XML is recognized as an ECMA standard, the group of companies then intends to pursue standardization at ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, which is particularly influential among government customers.

"Moving to standard as an open standard will place a level of trust on the technology that will give people the confidence to get behind it," said Alan Yates, general manager of Microsoft's information worker strategy. "We look forward to the day when people look at this as a milestone, as the beginning of the end for closed documents."

ECMA is a Geneva, Switzerland-based standards organization which issues standards and recommendations. Microsoft has submitted other software to ECMA for standardization, including programming languages ECMAScript and C#.
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Nov 21, 2005, 11:10 PM	#1
Iria DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 7,275 Rep Power: 89	Microsoft to standardize Office formats Microsoft intends to submit Office file formats to the European standards body ECMA International, a move the company hopes will allay concerns over the company's level of control over document formats. The company, which dominates the market for desktop productivity software, plans to hand over the technical specifications of Office 12 file formats to ECMA early next month. The technical committee is also being sponsored by Intel, Apple, NextPage and some European customers, including BP and the British Library. The creation of a fully documented standard submission derived from the formats, called Microsoft Office Open XML, will likely take about a year, Microsoft executives said. Once Microsoft Office Open XML is recognized as an ECMA standard, the group of companies then intends to pursue standardization at ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, which is particularly influential among government customers. "Moving to standard as an open standard will place a level of trust on the technology that will give people the confidence to get behind it," said Alan Yates, general manager of Microsoft's information worker strategy. "We look forward to the day when people look at this as a milestone, as the beginning of the end for closed documents." ECMA is a Geneva, Switzerland-based standards organization which issues standards and recommendations. Microsoft has submitted other software to ECMA for standardization, including programming languages ECMAScript and C#. ___________ Read More / Source: News.com