Letter to Tech&U Editor on Article “No one document format fits all”
On 23rd October 2006, an article was printed in Tech&U by Izwan Ismail entitled “No one document format fits all” made some incorrect points against the OpenDocument Format. My letter to editor is as follows:
I read the article by “No one document format fits all” by Izwan Ismail on 23rd October 2006 and was dismayed by several inaccuracies in the article regarding ODF (Open Document Format) and the OpenXML document format.
The article stated that ODF usage is low. This is certainly not correct as ODF is widely used across the world in many different applications. At last count, there were at least 10 different applications with ODF support[1], including the widely used OpenOffice (with at least 50 million users), Lotus Notes, Corel Wordperfect, Google Writely and several other proprietary and open source applications.
In addition, practically all users of open source platforms such as Linux use ODF by default for Office document exchange. For reference, the market share of the Linux operating system worldwide on the desktop was comparable to Apple’s. This, by any account, certainly adds up to significant usage of ODF.
The article also noted that the OpenXML document format is widely used today. The only recognized software with known support for OpenXML is Microsoft Office 2007 and it should be noted that Microsoft Office 2007 has not even been released yet! As no prior version of Microsoft Office has support for OpenXML and given that Microsoft Office 2007 has yet to be released, it would logically be impossible to arrive at the conclusion that the OpenXML document format is being widely used today.
It should also be noted that OpenXML has not yet been approved as a document format standard by any independent standards body worldwide. In comparison, ODF has been standardized as ISO/IEC 26300 and as has received broad industry support worldwide. The ODF Alliance, an international organization with over 325 members, has even attracted several key Malaysian organizations to participate as active members in Malaysia.
A number of countries and local governments have also indicated their support and adoption of ODF including the state of Massachusetts, Belgium, Denmark, Spain’s region of Extramadura and France. This clearly shows the support for ODF and ISO 26300 by the global ICT community of technology providers and users.
I would appreciate that this letter is printed as soon as possible as the article may mislead readers into drawing incorrect conclusions regarding ODF and OpenXML.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_software_comparison
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenXML