Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Open XML Approved ISO Standard

As I have promised yesterday, here are the details of the Approval of Open XML ISO standard document format that has been published yesterday:
















Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Open XML ISO Voting Result

Few hours ago, Open XML (OOXML) has been approved as an ISO standard. Today the results have been published by ISO at 14:00 Geneva local time. The approval came with a missive number of P as well as O members that votes yes.

The Open XML has been Approved by the majority of 75% of the P-members and refusal of only 14% of the overall voting countries (10 Countries)
As a member into the Egyptian ISO national body, I had the honor to vote by YES for this distinguished standard. As an Arabic guy I am really happy that today, Arabic normal users are able to write their own Arabic documents using an ISO standard document format. The Arabic governments can exchange their own documents using a standard document format. Moreover, the Arabic scientific conferences will be able to accept Word Arabic documents as a standard document format.
At my subsequent Article, I will begin to talk about how can Open XML ISO standard can affect the VSTS users. As VSTS MVP, During my support for the VSTS users across Middle East Countries, i have faced some challenges that Open XML can solve it now.
I will publish the detailed result tomorrow.
Congratulations for all Arabs, as well as Microsoft People.