[odf-discuss] EU Body Issues Recommendations On Open Document Formats

[Jean Hollis Weber]

Apologies if this has been posted here before. I just picked it 
up from the ODF Alliance's newsletter.

PEGCSO Conclusions and Recommendations on Open Document Exchange 
Formats  http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/3439

At its meeting on 6 December 2006, the IDABC's Pan-European 
eGovernment Services Committee (PEGSCO) endorsed a number of 
recommendations directed both to public administrations in Europe 
and to industry, including a call "to work together towards one 
international open document standard, acceptable to all."

Noting several favorable developments, the authors were concerned 
that European public administrations would face compatibility 
problems between the dominant commercial applications for office 
productivity today and the increasing number of ODF-supporting 
applications in the future - these problems pose the main barrier 
for the uptake of open document exchange and storage formats.

It concludes that "the potential arrival of a second 
international standard for revisable documents may mean that 
administrations will be required to support multiple formats 
leading to more complexity and increased costs. Although filters, 
translators and plug-ins may theoretically enable 
interoperability, experience shows that multiple transformations 
of formats may lead to problems, especially as there is no 
complete mapping between all features of each of the different 
standards."