[A2k] ODF Alliance Newsletter - May 2008

Wed May 14 03:43:11 2008

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: ODF Alliance Newsletter - May 2008
Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 15:07:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Marino Marcich <mmarcich@odfalliance.org>

You can sign up to receive the free newsletter or download a PDF version:
http://www.odfalliance.org/mail_list.php

-----------------------------------------------------------------

ODF BECOMES NATIONAL STANDARD IN BRAZIL, SOUTH AFRICA, & CROATIA

Standards bodies in South Africa, Brazil, and Croatia formally approved
ODF as national standards. The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS)
approved ODF as a national standard in April following the government's
announcement late last year that ODF will be the standard for document
exchange between government agencies and the public. The final
translated version of ODF was approved by the Brazilian national
standards body, ABNT, paving the way for ODF's adoption as a national
standard (ABNT NBR ISO/IEC 26300:2008) following the government's
decision to adopt ODF as the recommended format for document exchange.
The Croatian Standards Institute (Hrvatski zavod za norme, HZN)
confirmed that it approved ODF as a national standard, with the official
decision expected to be published in the institute's bi-monthly journal
later this month.

Brazil -
http://homembit.com/2008/04/odf-is-now-a-brazilian-standard-nbr-isoiec-26300.html

South Africa - http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2365

Croatia - http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7563/469

-----------------------------------------------------------------

EU INSTITUTIONS CALLED ON TO OPEN DOORS TO INTEROPERABILITY, OPEN STANDARDS

Seventy representatives from government, the software industry, and
scientific and consumer groups participated in the April 17th conference
held in the European Parliament in support of the launch of the Open
Parliament Petition. The petition calls on governments to ensure that
citizens and stakeholder groups should not have to use the software of a
single company in order to communicate with their elected officials or
participate in the legislative process. The conference was organized by
MEP David Hammerstein and his colleagues with the support of Open Forum
Europe.

http://www.openparliament.eu

-----------------------------------------------------------------

UK GOVERNMENT EDUCATIONAL ADVISORY BODY REFERS OOXML COMPLAINT TO
EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Becta, the United Kingdom Government's lead agency for Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) in education, raised concerns last year
regarding the interoperability difficulties caused by Microsoft's
decision to offer native "out of the box" support for its own OOXML
format, while refusing to offer equivalent support for the ISO-approved
Open Document Format (ODF). Becta filed a complaint with the UK
competition authorities last year and has now referred its
interoperability complaint and supporting evidence to the European
Commission. Following ISO's vote on OOXML, Becta had advised educational
institutions in the UK against widespread deployment of Office 2007
until schools and colleges are sure that they have in place mechanisms
to deal with interoperability and potential digital divide issues, and
to avoid saving any files in OOXML. Due to limitations in Microsoft's
implementation of ODF, Becta also advised Microsoft Office users to
continue to save files in the
  more widely adopted .doc, .xls and .ppt formats.

http://news.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=36594&page=1657&catID=1632

-----------------------------------------------------------------

ODF ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES APPROVED BY OASIS

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards
(OASIS), which maintains and improves the ODF specification, approved
guidelines for ODF v1.1 implementation that will help people with
disabilities gain access to computers and information. The guidelines
describes the things that an ODF 1.1 implementation must do in order to
ensure that users with disabilities are equally able to read, create,
and edit documents - with full access to all of the meaning and intent -
as their mainstream colleagues.

http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/office-accessibility/v1.0/cs01/

-----------------------------------------------------------------

NEW OR IMPROVED ODF APPLICATIONS SUPPORT

KOffice 2.0 Alpha 7, a technology preview of the upcoming version 2.0,
offers improved support for ODF and is the first to see results from the
ODF test suite being imported into KOffice.
http://dot.kde.org/1210273570/

OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta is now available and ready for testing. OOo 3.0
beta will support the upcoming ODF v1.2 standard, which will include
support for extensible metadata, formula, and digital signatures, among
other enhancements. It also provides interoperability with the
Macintosh's VoiceOver screen reader, providing blind users of the Mac
with access to an office suite that enables them to read and write
office documents and spreadsheets in ODF.
http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/announcementbeta.html

Corel's WordPerfect Office X4 allows you to open and view ODF files.
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1153321430604?pressId=1208292544667

IBM's aDesigner, a disability simulator that helps web designers ensure
that their content and applications are accessible and usable by the
visually impaired, has added support for ODF.
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/adesigner?open&S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP=GRsite-lnxw07&ca=dgr-lnxw07awadesigner

ODFTrans 0.7.2, free software which can be used as a central service for
bi-directional conversion between proprietary office formats and ODF,
now supports the conversion of spreadsheets and presentations, in
addition to text documents.
http://www.hwd-online.de/ODFTrans_EN.html

ODFDOM 0.6 is the name of the upcoming free ODF framework designed to
provide an API for easily reading, writing and manipulating ODF documents.
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/ODFDOM

EuroOffice Dictionary Professional 1.6 was released adding several new
features and was updated for compatibility with OpenOffice.org 2.4.
http://www.multiracio.com/eurooffice/news/eurooffice-dictionary-professional-1.6-released

UDNdigital's U-Portable-Platform 2.0 (UPP2.0), a mobile, ODF-supporting
open source platform popular in Taiwan, was officially released.
http://www.5680.tw/

-----------------------------------------------------------------

NEW ALLIANCE MEMBERS

Please welcome the following new members: National HPCC Software
Exchange (USA); Students for Free Culture (USA); Activesoft Ltd
(Hungary); and Drumev Development Studio (Bulgaria).

-----------------------------------------------------------------

EVENTS CALENDAR

ODF Workshop [14 May 2008 - Utrecht, The Netherlands]
http://www.odfworkshop.nl/

ODF Seminar for Municipalities [19 May 2008 - Schoten, Belgium]
http://www.v-ict-or.be/content/events/record.php?ID=125

IDABC Common Assessment Method for Standards and Specifications Info Day
[28 May 2008 - Brussels, Belgium]
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7572

Red Hat Summit [18-20 June 2008 - Boston, MA]
http://www.redhat.com/promo/summit/2008/

OpenOffice.org Conference (OOoCon 2008)[5-7 Nov 2008 - Beijing, China]
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/

------------------------------------------------------------------

ODF IN THE NEWS

OpenOffice 3.0 beta natively supports Mac OS X [Tim Conneally, BetaNews]
http://www.betanews.com/article/OpenOffice_30_beta_natively_supports_Mac_OS_X/1210261432

Is Office the new Netscape? [Nicholas Carr, Rough Type]
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/05/one_of_the_corn.php

British IT watchdog complains to EU about Microsoft's OOXML format [The
Economic Times-India]
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/British_IT_watchdog_complains_to_EU_about_Microsofts_OOXML_format/articleshow/3036501.cms

BE, NL: governments will not use ISO OOXML [IDABC Open Source News]
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7562

Office Open XML: Sounds Great, Less Fulfilling [Dave Methvin,
Information Week]
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/04/office_open_xml.html

Norwegians protest OOXML, quote SA minister [tectonic]
http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2340

Geeks take to the street against Microsoft standard [Catherine Stein,
Aftenposten, Norway]
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/article2360806.ece

Microsoft's Great Besmirching [Glyn Moody, Linux Journal]
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsofts-great-besmirching

OOXML a No-No for Some Countries, Anyway [Glyn Moody]
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/04/ooxml-no-no-for-some-countries-anyway.html

Unix beardies get legal over OOXML [Mark Ballard, The Inquirer]
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/09/unix-beardies-legal-ooxml

EC Investigates OOXML 'Process' [Stuart J. Johnston, InternetNews.com]
http://www.internetnews.com/government/article.php/3739206/EC+Investigates+OOXML+Process.htm

The Dueling Interoperability Standards Dilemma [Loraine Lawson,
ITBusinessEdge]
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/mia/?p=352

Emerging markets reject OOXML [Candice Jones, ITWeb]
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/software/2008/0804041100.asp?A=LIN&S=Open%20Source&O=FPLEAD

Ars tests Microsoft's ODF add-in for Office [Ryan Paul, Ars Technica]
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080307-microsofts-odf-add-in-for-office-still-not-good-enough.html

Microsoft Office 2007 fails OOXML conformance test [Peter Judge, ZDNet]
http://news.zdnet.com/2424-3515_22-198109.html

Microsoft confirms testing of 'Albany' low-cost Office suite [Elizabeth
Montalbano, InfoWorld]
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/18/Microsoft-confirms-testing-of-Albany-low-cost-Office-suite_1.html

ISO Fantasy [Tim Bray]
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/04/15/OOXML

Kenya: Microsoft Denies Threatening to Withdraw Funding [Rebecca
Wanjiku, IDG News Service]
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144898/microsoft_denies_threatening_to_withdraw_funding.html

Eurocrats study Microsoft OOXML under procurement rules [Mark Ballard,
The Inquirer]
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/24/eurocrats-study-microsoft-ooxml

Immature file formats should be kept inside [Tim Anderson, IT Week]
http://www.whatpc.co.uk/itweek/comment/2215287/immature-file-formats-should-3964416

When is a Standard Not a Standard? [Glyn Moody, ComputerWorld UK]
http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=756&blogid=14

Marino Marcich
ODF Alliance
1090 Vermont Ave., NW - Suite 600
Washington, DC 20005
(O) 202.789.4450
(F) 202.289.7097
mmarcich@odfalliance.org
www.odfalliance.org