Microsoft is trying to allay fears about its control
over document formats by sharing the technology behind some new
ones.
While the company’s Office suite of applications are still
dominant in the market, Microsoft is facing greater
document-formatting competition from the likes of Adobe and the
emerging OpenDocument standard.
To try to convince users that they will not be locked into
strict document formats once they buy its products, Microsoft plans
to submit the file formats of its forthcoming Office 12 suite to
European standards body ECMA International.
Microsoft said the standardisation process will be matched by
its support for developers wanting to use Open XML, the technology
behind the new formats, to develop other applications, with free
Open XML licences being issued.
It is expected that Microsoft will provide technical
specifications of the Office 12 file formats to ECMA early in
December. As part of the initiative, a technical committee to
consider the formats is being supported by Intel and Apple
Computer, plus major users BP and the British Library.
Once the Microsoft Office Open XML technology is recognised as
an ECMA standard, Microsoft is then expected to standardise the
product with the International Organisation for Standardisation
(ISO).
The ISO standardisation would be particularly significant as ISO
standards are widely followed by public sector customers, an area
which Microsoft has already experienced difficulty with in the
US.
Office 12, which will be launched towards the end of 2006, will
save documents by default in the Open XML format.
Office 12 will however offer native support for Adobe’s PDF
format. Microsoft said that adding support for PDF creation in
Office 12 to existing HTML- and Open XML-based native file creation
will provide companies with more file and data management
options.