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As a follow up to the document authoring wars (reminiscent of the old emacs versus vi battles), I thought it worth pointing out the FII award to Microsoft for their efforts on behalf of the “no ooxml efforts”.
The key phrase for an open standard really is: “Good standards just don’t need that kind of pressure. “
As some of you know, Adobe presented PDF for consideration as a ISO specification during the last year (see here, and here). Or check out Jim King’s blog for a lot deeper view.
Now, the PDF specification has been available since 1993. It’s gone through a number of updates, with new versions released, also all freely available. The ISO DIS for PDF, based on Adobe PDF 1.7 and errata, is a well understood and tested specification, with lots of independent implementations (including open source ones) and hundreds of millions of existent, compliant files.
The Adobe PDF 1.7 reference is a good specification. The ISO 32000 DIS for PDF is a good standard. It’s certainly open to review, it’s absolutely certain that other people will have ideas for future versions of the standard. And if any national body would like us to clear up anything, just ask. We’re willing to answer questions, discuss views, clarify positions.
But we won’t be “in your face” to the national bodies.
After all, it’s a good standard.
It can stand on its own.