India and Brazil joined South Africa and filed last-minute appeals with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) regarding the adoption of Microsoft’s interchangeable Web documents format Office Open XML (OOXML) as an international standard.

In a letter, members of a Brazilian technical committee said the process that led to OOXML’s ISO ratification was flawed, in part because not all participants were given enough time to make their views heard. South Africa and India filed similar protests this week.

Brazil’s objections fall under two main headings, the second of which was also raised by South Africa. That objection relates to the fact that the reconciliation draft of DIS 29500 that was delivered to ISO on March 29 still has not been released, even to the National Bodies. Despite the fact that this release has been requested by many different parties representing multiple viewpoints, no public or private explanation has thus far been given for the failure to follow rules calling for the releasee of the draft within 30 days of the close of the BRM.

Microsoft officials have said OOXML’s ISO ratification makes it easier for developers and end users to work with the format and documents created with it. It also makes Microsoft Office products eligible for government procurement initiatives that require open standards.

OOXML competes in the document marketplace with the Open Document Format, which previously won ISO approval. ODF is used in open source office productivity suites such as OpenOffice.org and IBM’s Lotus Symphony package.

Source: Informationweek

Open Office rolled out 3.0 beta version. This version of the popular software suite will support the forthcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard as well as being able to open files created with Microsoft Office 2007 or Office 2008 for Mac including .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx alongside the traditional Office binary file formats such as .doc, .xls and .ppt. It is also the first version of OpenOffice that will run on Mac OS X without X11. You can download the free software from here.

New Core Features:

* 1.1 Mac OS X Support
* 1.2 ODF 1.2 support
* 1.3 Microsoft Office 2007 Import Filters
* 1.4 Solver
* 1.5 Chart Enhancements
* 1.6 Improved Crop Feature in Draw and Impress
* 1.7 Spreadsheet Collaboration Through Workbook Sharing
* 1.8 1024 Columns Per Calc Sheet (Instead of 256)
* 1.9 Display of Multiple Writer Pages While Editing
* 1.10 Improved Notes Feature in Writer
* 1.11 New, Fresh-Looking Icons
* 1.12 Start Center

PCs and Macs will now be able to run OpenOffice 3.0 (beta) on their machines, as Sun Microsystems yesterday released the public beta of the same, compatible with the two operating systems. With this new version, developers are aiming to offer users significant improvements in the much-loved open-source office application suite.

Source: PC World

It is according to IT BLOGWATCH which predicts that the Microsoft sponsored OOXML format has passed the ISO vote. Of course, a final vote will not be tallied until Monday … so hold on.

According to Consortium.org, Microsoft got a boost from Norway, Ireland, Czech Republic, Denmark and South Korea, which changed their respective ‘No’ votes to ‘Yes’ votes for Office Open XML, while Finland, which abstained from the last vote, gave OOXML the thumbs up.

Microsoft began its battle to get ISO approval in early December of 2006. On December 7 of that year, ECMA International approved Office Open XML Formats as an ECMA standard and voted to submit the new standard to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for consideration as an ISO standard.

Microsoft needs to bag two thirds of the votes to see OOXML recognized as a standard alongside competing file format Open Document Format (ODF) which was endorsed by the ISO last year.

Meanwhile, the British Standards Institute (BSI) is another high profile national standards body that has changed its position and agreed to approve OOXML, or DIS 29500 after voting against it in September last year.