Oliver Bell’s Weblog

A press release from Ecma International, the organization who submitted DIS29500 to ISO, is now up on the web all but confirming the information that was widely leaked on the Internet yesterday.

You’ll find the full statement by following this link;

IS 29500 marks the culmination of joint development efforts over the past two years by the members of Ecma Technical Committee 45 (TC45) and through its subsequent submission of the Ecma International specification to the ISO/IEC process for additional input from the global standards community.

“ISO/IEC approval maximizes the ability of independent software vendors such as NextPage to deliver solutions to customers who have existing binary documents,” said Tom Ngo, CTO of NextPage and member of Ecma TC45. “As the sole representative of ISVs on TC45, we worked hard to foster interoperability and conformance conditions that help to level the competitive playing field. This approval puts control of Open XML in the hands of the international community.”

“Just as we have worked to establish and steward our print collections, the British Library is committed to preserving and providing access to the U.K.’s digital heritage,” said Adam Farquhar, head of   Digital Library Technology at the British Library, and vice-chair of Ecma TC45. “Establishing Office Open XML as an open standard substantially enhances our ability to achieve this. It’s an important step forward for digital preservation and will help us fulfill the British Library’s core responsibility of making our digital collections accessible for generations to come.”

“The U.S. Library of Congress believes that the preservation of digital content for future generations will be much easier if widely used software applications use formats with full public specifications that will be maintained by the global community going forward,” said Martha Anderson, Director of Program Management, National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. “The approval of Office Open XML as an international standard has important benefits for libraries and other archival institutions for generations to come.”

All that remains now is to wait for an official announcement from ISO which I’m told we should expect to see later today.