12.10.08

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ODF Alliance Newsletter – 10 December 2008

Posted in America, Asia, Europe, Office Suites, OpenDocument, Standard at 9:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Credit: Marino Marcich, ODF Alliance

GERMANY JOINS GROWING RANKS OF COUNTRIES ADOPTING ODF

Germany has decided to implement use of ODF. According to the announcement made by the federal government’s IT Council, German federal agencies will be able to receive, read, send and edit ODF documents beginning no later than 2010. Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML), which is the default-format for its Office 2007 productivity suite, remains under review. To date, 16 national and 8 provincial governments have now formally recommended or required the use of ODF by government agencies and with the public.

Announcement [in German] -
http://www.bmi.bund.de/Internet/Content/Nachrichten/Pressemitteilungen/2008/12/ODF.html

DUTCH GOVERNMENT’S INSTRUCTIONS ON USE OF OPEN STANDARDS, ODF PUBLISHED

The Dutch government has published instructions in the country’s National Gazette regarding making open standards based procurement the default – a policy which has been in force since 1 April 2008 – now that the European Commission has given its seal of approval. According to the announcement made on November 24, 2008 by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, this means in principle that for public purchases of IT worth more than 50,000 euro, the use of open standards such as ODF is now mandatory for government bodies in the public and semi-public sectors (”comply or explain” why not).

Announcement [in Dutch] -
http://www.ez.nl/Actueel/Pers_en_nieuwsberichten/Nieuwsberichten_2008/November_2008/Instructies_rond_gebruik_open_standaarden

List of Open Standards [in Dutch] -

http://www.forumstandaardisatie.nl/fileadmin/OVOS/Basislijst_OS1.pdf

VENEZUELA ADOPTS ODF FOR GOVERNMENT

Venezuela became the latest country in South America to adopt the Open Document Format (ODF), joining Brazil, Uruguay and several regional governments. Speaking at the 2nd International ODF User Workshop on October 9-10, 2008 in Pretoria, South Africa, Carlos Gonzalez of the National Center of Information Technologies announced that the Venezuelan government had formally adopted ODF as a standard for the “processing, exchange and storage of documents.”

http://www.odfworkshop.com/presentations/Gonzalez-Pretoria-ODF.pdf

ODF TOOLKIT UNION ANNOUNCED

The ODF ecosystem and value proposition continues to expand with IBM and Sun Microsystem’s launch of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) Toolkit Union, which will provide developers an application programming interface (API) for reading, writing and manipulating ODF documents and enable them to easily produce ODF-supporting applications. The open source project is established at http://odftoolkit.org. The founding members Sun and IBM invite and welcome other contributors to join.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/IBM-Sun-Microsystems-Launch-ODF/story.aspx?guid={39DC24F7-9368-4437-92A5-E49FFFDE6AEF}

NEW GROUP CREATED TO IMPROVE INTEROPERABILITY, CONFORMANCE TO ODF

OASIS, the international open standards consortium which maintains ODF, has formed a new group, the OASIS ODF Interoperability and Conformance (OIC) Committee, to help implementors ensure that the growing number of ODF-compliant applications are able to interoperate and conform to the standard. The OIC Committee will analyze the state of ODF interoperability, make recommendations, compile a corpus of ODF interoperability test documents, and host multi-vendor interoperability demonstrations showcasing products that conform, among other activities. All ODF stakeholders, including commercial and open source publishers of ODF applications, testing and certification labs, people responsible for purchasing ODF-related tools, governments and regulators are invited to join.

http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2008-11-03.php

NEW OR IMPROVED ODF APPLICATIONS SUPPORT

OpenOffice.org 3.0 now runs on Mac OS X without the need for X11.

http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.0/#Mac_OS_X_Support

Sun’s StarOffice 9 now runs on the on Mac OS X.
http://news.portalit.net/fullnews_sun-releases-staroffice-9-with-mac-support_1812.html

Lotus Symphony 1.2, IBM’s free office suite, will be based entirely on ODF v1.2 and released for Windows, Ubuntu Linux, and the Mac.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/25912.wss

Zoho Show now exports to .odp.
http://blogs.zoho.com/general/zoho-show-update-export-as-pptpdfodf-ui-in-9-new-languages-undoredo-more/#comment-287542

KDE’s KOffice 2.0 (Beta 3) uses ODF as its native, default format.
http://www.koffice.org/announcements/announce-2.0beta3.php

Nisus Writer Pro 1.2, the latest version of Nisus Software’s word processor, now exports to .odt.
http://www.nisus.com/blogs/?p=208

Evermore Software’s announced that EIOffice 2009 will soon read and write ODF files.
http://www.evermoresw.com/

DeltaXML ODT Compare, a new freeware OpenOffice.org extension, is a comparison tool for .odt files that performs a detailed text comparison and generates a new document with the changes marked.
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/DeltaXMLODTCompare

SILVERCODERS DocToText converts ODF and other formats to plain text, facilitating searching, indexing, and archiving.
http://silvercoders.com/index.php?page=DocToText

SILVERCODERS DocStorage document management utility provides full integration with leading ODF-supporting office software suites.

http://silvercoders.com/index.php?page=Products

ODF Easy 0.2 (pre alpha) provides an easier way to create your ODF files with Java.
http://www.itexto.net/odfeasy/?page_id=2

SeMarket’s ‘VisorODF’ (ODF-viewer), an open source mobile phone application allowing you to display .odt files, has been released in beta.
http://forge.morfeo-project.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=237

NEW ALLIANCE MEMBERS

Please welcome the following new members: Seosmart GmbH (Germany); Community Development Foundation Jacobabad Sindh (Pakistan); FreeCode AS (Norway); ElanceTalk; ITA – Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (Brazil); SeMarket (Spain); Vdesign (Sweden); olonda s.r.o. (Slovakia); DeltaXML Ltd (UK); Sombra Designer Visual (Brazil); Norwegian UNIX User Group (Norway); Webdesign Internetagentur (Germany); Readypeople (Spain); GoGoShopper (USA); Studenski Internet-Dienste Webdesign (Germany); SEO Beratung kruegers.net (Germany); itexto (Brazil); Master it (The Netherlands); Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (Ghana); SEOdesign sökmotoroptimering (Sweden) and ArcheTech Srl (Italy).

EVENTS CALENDAR

Workshop on Development of eProcurement Solutions in Line with the European Directives [14 January 2009 - Vienna, Austria]
http://www.epractice.eu/workshop/37

FOSDEM 2009 [7-8 February 2009 - Brussels, Belgium]
http://www.fosdem.org/2009/

Netherlands Open in Connection (NOIV) Congress [5 March 2009 - The Netherlands]
TBD

Berlin Open 2009 [22-23 June 2009 - Berlin, Germany]
http://www.berlin-open.org/programm.html

ODF IN THE NEWS

OFE calls on EU to crack down on Public Procurement practice for IT software [epractice.eu]
http://www.epractice.eu/document/5154

NL: Government instructs itself to use open standards [Gijs Hillenius, OSOR-news]
http://www.osor.eu/news/nl-government-instructs-itself-to-use-open-standards

Hidden cost of proprietary standards may lead to illegal tenders [Gijs Hillenius, OSOR-news]
http://www.osor.eu/news/hidden-cost-of-proprietary-standards-may-lead-to-illegal-tenders

OpenOffice Skakes Microsoft [David Frith, Australian IT]

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24734388-39525,00.html

IBM launches first Linux-OpenOffice desktop with virtualization features [Paula Rooney, ZDNet]
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=3152Is

Sun, IBM Launch ODF Tools Initiative [Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service]
http://news.iwebtool.com/article_75220.html?mp=1

Interoperability at different levels [CyberTech Rambler]
http://ctrambler.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/interoperability-at-different-levels/

Researcher: IT vendors should fix interoperability mess [Gijs Hillenius, osor.eu]
http://www.osor.eu/news/researcher-it-vendors-should-fix-interoperability-mess

Belgium: ICT advisory body joins group to help ODF developers [Gijs Hillenius, OSOR-news]
http://www.osor.eu/news/be-ict-advisory-body-joins-group-to-help-odf-developers

Who Will Be Obama’s CTO? [Christopher Saunders, InternetNews.com]
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3782861/Who%20Will%20Be%20Obamas%20CTO.htm

10 Standards Recommendations for the Obama Administration [Andrew Updegrove, ConsortiumInfo.org]
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20081207175149736

What’s a Document? [Stephen O’Grady, RedMonk]
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/11/24/whats-a-document/

Microsoft Introduces Windows 7, Ending Vista Brand [John Markoff, New York Times]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/technology/business-computing/29soft.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

MPs hit by Office 2003, Word 2007 incompatibility [Nick Heath, ZDNet]
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39563449,00.htm

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