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Snoozing at the OASIS

Posted on 28 Jan 2009 at 17:07

This month, Simon Jones looks into the maintenance of the ODF standard, and sizes up the new Outlook add-in Xobni.

A couple of months ago, I mentioned in passing that OASIS - the standards body that oversees OpenOffice's native document format (ODF) - was a little lax in its maintenance of the standard. When the ODF standard (IS 26300) was approved by ISO/IEC, its maintenance was left with OASIS, but it seemed to take a long time to do very little. It fixed reported bugs when it wanted, if it wanted, and didn't refer the amendments to ISO for ratification. OpenOffice 3 now uses ODF 1.2, but neither 1.2 nor 1.1 has been ratified by ISO. ODF 1.2 still isn't ratified by OASIS - it's merely a work in progress. Only ODF 1 is a true ISO standard, but virtually no applications use that format any longer.

Now, at a meeting in Nara, Japan, the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee (JTC1) has requested that OASIS cooperate with its SC34 sub-committee on "joint maintenance procedures" for ODF, which ought to mean that ODF 1.2 and beyond will get ISO standardisation in a far more timely manner. Along with Microsoft's participation in OASIS, this initiative should boost confidence among other application writers that ODF is a viable, evolving file format they can use without fearing that it's going to fragment into a mess of semi-compatible versions as different vendors add their bells and whistles to the base spec.

ODF standards & specifications

OASIS has produced several errata documents that provide corrections for some of the defects that have been reported in ODF 1 and 1.1, but it cannot amend the ISO/IEC standard by itself. The current plan is to amend ODF 1 and 1.1 specs using these errata documents, and encourage ISO/IEC to apply the same fixes to IS 26300, but this would move IS 26300 farther from ODF 1.2 rather than closer. I think it would be better for ODF 1.2, plus any corrections that are relevant, to be submitted to ISO for ratification as a new, 2010 version, of IS 26300.

ISO/IEC JTC1 SC34 meets again in Okinawa in January 2009, and OASIS is likely to be present to discuss progress on maintenance of ODF as well as interoperability with OOXML. I don't expect a final agreement on the maintenance of ODF to be reached before SC34 meets again in March and reports back to JTC1 thereafter. As ever, these committees seem to work on almost geological timescales, so it could be another year before ODF 1.2 gets ISO/IEC approval and it could well be overtaken by a completely new version - perhaps with better compatibility with OOXML - which actually gets standardised, leaving ODF 1.1 and 1.2 in a non-standard backwater.

What's the Tniop of Xobni?

Xobni is inbox spelled backwards, the name of an Outlook add-in that claims to help you organise your email. Bill Gates once called it "the next generation of social networking", and while some people might find it useful I'm not so sure myself. Presented in one vertical pane, like the To Do bar, Xobni offers you a collection of new tools and technologies:

Search

Xobni uses its own indexing scheme to find emails containing a given word or phrase, or which are to or from a particular person. The search results are fast, and while it's a big improvement over Outlook 2003, anyone using Outlook 2007, Windows Vista or Windows XP with Windows Desktop Search will wonder what all the fuss is about. All three use similar indexed searching technology to the same effect, and who wants to maintain two separate sets of indexes for their email? It's just a waste of processor cycles and storage space.