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For over a year, ODF has been duking it out with Microsoft's OpenOfficeXML. Now there's a new kid on the block from China: the Uniform Open Format, with GUI, format and API specifications for work processing, spreadsheet and presentation modules, and plans for "related standards, such as physical storage format, application integration, etc."
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The standard has been in development in China since January of 2002, and represents another "XML in a zip file" approach to office suite format standardization. The standard was developed with government encouragement by domestic office software vendors, application integration vendors, end users and research institutes with the goal of helping domestic office application vendors compete more successfully, and to provide greater competition, choices, and freedom from lock in for government, industry and private users. The developers have already voted to seek to "harmonize" their standard with ODF. This new standard marks yet another step in the global trend away from proprietary, "lock in" products, and towards an environment based on open standards and open source software. Full Story |
