A question of momentum

One library which is unlikely to ever change its ways is the British Library [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] (even the Library of Congress [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11), but the Canadian Library Association seems to have just made the right choice and picked ODF. [via Bob Sutor]

Whereas the preservation of and long-term access to government information are vital in a democratic society;

And whereas in order for libraries to fulfill their role of preserving and providing access to information, it is essential that governments and other public bodies take steps to ensure that future generations can access information created today;

And whereas open, interoperable, vendor-neutral file format standards play a key role in ensuring preservation and future access;

And whereas the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is such a standard;

A careful look at this short new article seems to also reveal another case of ODF support. This time it's from Ruport.

You can even produce PDF and OpenDocument files, making it possible for the reports to be sent via e-mail and opened by non-programmers.

ODF and PDF both seem acceptable as formats for dynamic and static text, respectively. Microsoft will undoubtedly try to replace ODF with its own broken OOXML, and also to replace PDF with XPS, which is can control, 'extend', and exploit to leave competitors behind -- always to be playing in catch-up mode. ⬆

From the Campaign for Document Freedom