I was one of the lucky US visitors to assist in the OASIS Open Standards conference in Sydney. This two-day event organized by Allette Systems (well done guys!) gave a great perspective on topics such as Open Office Standards (ODF and Microsoft Open XML), best practices to integrate and benefit from standards, and how one can use standards to save Australia from terrible droughts - like the one they had in 2007.

Rick Jelliffe did a great job at explaining the incompatibility between ODF and Open XML. ODF is built to manage individual documents when Open XML is Microsoft’s solution to get rid of their Office legacy documents.

The linking mechanism provides a great example on how these standards diverge. ODF uses a direct pointer to the target resource when Open XML introduces an extra-level of indirection, in the same vein than Content Management systems.

The bottom line: don’t expect a universal Open Office industry standard for tomorrow!

Fabrice Talbot - fabrice.talbot@livetechdocs.com