Why Not?

OOXML for preservation of older files? Not on your nelly...

If you intend to use Microsoft's proposed pseudo-standard, OOOXML (Office Open XML), as a method of preserving older documents, move fast or be prepared for security problems and complicated workarounds... As of service pack 3, Microsoft Office 2003 will no longer be able to open some of the older file types "for security reasons".

Given that MS Office is one of the only pieces of software that can write OOXML (and even then not the proposed standardised version!), this immediately removes the main justification of OOXML standardisation or adoption, leaving only ODF (ISO 26300) as a sensible preservation and long term access solution. Given further that some poor misguided, PR believing, organisations will have already committed to this Microsoft OOXML path and by definition will tend to be those organisations with least access to competent technical guidance, it is likely to result in a number of older documents being effectively lost in the digital wilderness.

In the immortal words of Jar Jar Binks: how wude!

Posted at 01:16PM Jan 02, 2008 by Chris Puttick in Technology  |  Comments[2]