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Mass. warms to Microsoft Office standard
Posted by: Tweaker
Date added: 23:13, 28th November 2005 GMT
Source: ZDNet News
The governor's office of Massachusetts said Microsoft's effort to standardize Office document formats could meet the commonwealth's procurement guidelines.
The state is "optimistic" that Microsoft's Office Open XML document formats will meet the standard for an "open format" set by Massachusetts, according to a statement issued Wednesday by Gov. Mitt Romney. In a closely watched case, Massachusetts in September issued a set of technical standards designed to convert the state's internal systems to nonproprietary formats.
As part of the process, the state IT Division's reference architecture defined Microsoft Office products as proprietary, rather than an "open format." Instead, Massachusetts decided that desktop productivity applications used by executive branch agencies would have to adhere to OpenDocument, a standard Microsoft does not support. The state also considers Adobe's PDF format "open."
Last Monday, Microsoft announced a plan to standardize Office document formats, called Office Open XML, in a separate process from the OpenDocument standard. Microsoft intends to submit the XML-based document formats in Office 12 to standards bodies Ecma International and ISO, the International Organization for Standardization. The company hopes that a committee can complete the standards process in about a year, which is when Office 12 is due for release.
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