OSNews

Remember the bit about standards and how they are developed? I would draw your attention to the bit about independent member organizations making informed decisions. Whilst we have agreed standards for publishing on the net with HTML and XHML for example, standards that are open for all of those who care to look, no such standard exist for coding a document to adhere to the Microsoft Word "standard". Why? Because by its very nature MS Word is not a standard, it is merely a common form of word processing.

The very good people at Microsoft (and others) might disagree with me here, and just as likely point to a variety of standards that do apply to Microsoft products, which is good because I will certainly sleep better knowing that Microsoft adheres to other peoples rules as much as it would like the rest of the world to adhere to the rules of Microsoft. But I digress.

Standards have a definite benefit for the end user. Having standards for making nuts and bolts, benefits almost all of us, particularly if we happen to flying across the world, thousands of meters up in the sky. But tangible items like nuts and bolts and mundane tasks like book keeping are fairly straightforward. How would we go about defining a standard for word processing, or any other common piece of computer software? Can we define a standard for something that seems to undergo almost daily transformation or should we just accept that real standards do not apply here, and the defacto standards are the best we can get?

If we want to able to take our nuts and bolts and build a better airplane, then we need standards. If we want to take the tools that computers provide us and build a better tomorrow, then we need standards. And if we continue to allow defacto standards that are propagated by powerful vested interests to supplant real and measurable standards, then opportunities for future development will defined by closed boardroom decisions and their market strategies.

Governments can play a key role is this process, one which does NOT seek to tell the software business what to do, merely how they should do it. Standards are a big deal for democratic governments and rightly so. By demanding and then adhering to standards in software applications, the existing closed shop situation is turned on its head, without the need to proscriptive legislation. Sure you can continue to use the old product, provided it meets the standard, but then you are also free to use a competing product because it also meets the required standard. If governments adopt standards based formats, this in turn will drive business and so on.

Unfortunately, standardization of computer documents has not achieved the uniformity that is hallmark of web publishing. The lack of an agreed format is conspicuous, the void is filled by a the dominant format (.doc) with clear financial benefit to its vendor. Microsoft can clearly afford to ignore calls for an open standard, just as clearly, it has by far the most to lose from an open document standard.

The subject of closed formats is a part of the overall discussion on open source software. The importance of a suitable document format, which sounds simple, cannot be understated. Consider the Internet with its profusion of content, and users who can access an array of services based on common protocols. The success of the Internet is directly related to wholesale adoption of standards. The widespread adoption of a suite of open standards for computer documents would create a software environment that encourages innovation rather than current monopolistic regime.

In the next article I will explore some of the current developments in computer document standards.