ISO News: Ballot Resolution Meeting on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Standard

National delegations from thirty-seven (37) countries will be
participating in a ballot resolution meeting in Geneva, Switzerland,
on 25-29 February 2008 on the draft international standard "ISO/IEC
DIS 29500, Information Technology -- Office Open XML File Formats."
ISO/IEC DIS 29500 is a proposed standard for word-processing documents,
presentations and spreadsheets that is intended to be implemented by
multiple applications on multiple platforms. According to the
submitters of the document, one of its objectives is to ensure the
long-term preservation of documents created over the last two decades
using programmes that are becoming incompatible with continuing
advances in the field of information technology. The objective of the
ballot resolution meeting (BRM) will be to review and seek consensus
on possible modifications to the document in light of the comments
received along with votes cast during a five-month ballot on the draft
which ended on 2 September 2007... No decision on publication will be
taken at the meeting itself. Following the BRM, the 87 national member
bodies that voted in the 2 September ballot will have 30 days (until
29 March 2008) to examine the actions taken in response to the comments
and to reconsider their vote if they wish. If the modifications proposed
are such that national bodies then wish to withdraw their negative
votes, or turn abstentions into positive votes, and the acceptance
criteria are then met, the standard may proceed to publication. The
BRM is being organized by subcommittee SC 34, Document description and
processing languages, of the joint technical committee JTC 1, Information
technology. JTC 1 is one of the most experienced and productive of ISO
and IEC technical committees, having developed some 2 150 widely and
globally used international standards and related documents.
Approximately 4 200 comments were received during last year's ballot.
By grouping and by eliminating redundancies, these have been edited by
SC 34 experts down to 1100 comments for processing during the five
days of the BRM. The task will be carried out by 120 participants who
have registered for the meeting. They comprise members of the 37
national delegations, plus representatives of Ecma International, the
computer manufacturers' association that submitted ISO/IEC DIS 29500
for adoption by JTC 1, plus officers of the ISO/IEC Information
Technology Task Force (ITTF) which is responsible for the planning and
coordination of JTC 1 work. More Information