The ooxml final documents were to have been published by end of April 2008. It is May 6th and there are no signs of it showing up.
It appears to me that the ISO/IEC/JTC1 has broken their own rules on this. What do national bodies who voted in favour (aka conned into voting in favour) to pass ooxml as it stood (in vacuum at the point of voting), have to say about this? I would encourage all National Bodies to file an objection with ISO on this.
While this is being done, can Microsoft answer these questions? With Jan’s permission, I am reproducing the questions here:
I have a short list of questions that I would like to see answered by Microsoft. If anyone from Microsoft wants to answer them, please do. If you are also interested in answers, please forward these questions to your Microsoft contact of choice and add the answers you receive as comment.
1. When will which versions of Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works will be updated to deliver a native implementation of the ISO standardized version of the OOXML document format?
2. As Microsoft claims to be a big supporter of Open Standards, when will which versions of Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works be updated to deliver a native implementation of the ISO standardized version of the ODF document format?
3. In the Microsoft Open Specification Promise only the old version of OOXML which is not an ISO standard is mentioned. When will the ISO standardized version of OOXML be added to the list?
I am honestly interested in answers to these questions.
Jan Wildeboer
See also Rob Weir’s call for the ooxml final text to be immediately released. This is beginning to look very much like Zimbabwe’s general election fiasco.