ISO Approves OOXML, Offers Two Months to Appeal

Morshad published 02 Apr 2008, 18:15 in main - 255 views

Fav

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) announced that its members have approved adoption of a draft standard based on Microsoft's Office Open XML document format, a day after the company itself declared victory.

But Microsoft will have to wait at least until June before it can lay its hands on a copy of a formal ISO standard for the format, as it waits for ISO's formal appeals process to run its course.

"Subject to there being no formal appeals from ISO/IEC national bodies in the next two months," the text of the standard will be published as ISO/IEC 29500, ISO said Wednesday.

If any national standards organizations do make appeals to JTC1, the Joint Technical Committee of ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) that worked on the draft, then Microsoft may have to wait several months longer while the appeal is heard, according to Section 11 of the ISO/IEC JTC1 Directives.

Only so-called P-members of JTC1 -- in this case, the 41 countries who participated in development of the standard -- can appeal against the committee's actions. They must show that an action is either not in accordance with the JTC1 directives, or not in the best interests of international trade and commerce, or such public factors as safety, health or environment.

News source: PC World

Tags: ISO, OOXML, Office Open XML, Microsoft

Digg this

Prev Article: Coming soon: superfast internet Next Article: Intel discloses pricing for Centrino Atom

No Comments!

It's quiet in here... can you hear the echo?

Login or register to add a comment

Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on NewXwin.net. You'll also be able to NewXwin.net stories to help promote things you like.

Random Technology News

Fav

Wikia search engine now lets users add their own results