Fast Tracking

Microsoft has just had a tough defeat in getting OOXML approved as an ISO/IEC Fast Track standard:
See official results.

Is Adobe facing the same problem in our submission of PDF to ISO on a Fast Track?
See press release.

Has the Microsoft effort given Fast Tracking a bad name and will Adobe suffer for this? The Fast Track was meant to skip over the technology development stage because the technology was already a developed standard of one kind or another. At least a couple of methods have been OK’ed for ISO and ISO/IEC Fast Track processing.

Adobe is relying on one method, adopting an existing de facto standard, where Microsoft is relying on a second method, adopting a standard from a duly recognized other standards group, in this case ECMA.

Fast Tracking seems like a very reasonable approach to making PDF an ISO standard. There is no need to go through the standards development stages since PDF already exists and is well defined by Adobe documentation and has been for 14 years. There are billions of PDF files in existence and thousands of applications. See also. Partnering with AIIM and ANSI, Adobe submitted PDF directly to ISO for Fast Track processing to become ISO Standard 32000. We didn't try to make it some other kind of standard first, but just depended upon the fact that it is a well established de facto standard.

The catch in the Microsoft path seems to be that although OOXML was an existing ECMA -376 standard it had only been so for a short time before it was submitted to ISO. Making it an ECMA standard could appear to have been a ploy to avoid the more rigorous processes of ISO to get it done more quickly. If what I am surmising is anywhere near true, then this does seem like an abuse of the Fast Track idea.

So, my goal is to distance Adobe’s effort from that of Microsoft since they just had a bad flameout and we do not want the same thing to happen to us. The use of Fast Track for PDF seems to be exactly what Fast Tracking was made for. After all, if we want PDF to remain PDF what would the technical development phase of an ISO committee do? It shouldn’t change the current definition. It shouldn’t try to improve it at the same time as transferring ownership. We all know about having too many balls in the air. So there is nothing to do in those first stages, so skip them.

You might be able to argue that OOXML is based upon the old standard (binary and proprietary) Office file formats (.doc, .xls, and .ppt). So why can’t OOXML ride on that de facto-ness? Maybe it should be able to. But the exact representation in OOXML is all new and can and should be subject to extensive technical review, probably more than ECMA was able to give it. Probably not a good candidate for Fast Tracking.

The solution for the future? Let me devise a Fast Tracking rule that would admit PDF but not admit OOXML. What if it had to be a proven de facto standard (same as now) or have been a standard of another standards organization for at least a year or two. That way, if there are standards organizations that do quickie reviews for their standards and are used to move into ISO fast track but avoid a more rigorous ISO development review this might discourage it.

Skipping the standards development steps for PDF makes infinite sense to me. (Of course it would.) And “Fast” and “Track” don’t seem like dirty words. They seem right.

Contact me at: jking@adobe.com