Document architecture standards in Ecma

Isabelle Valet-Harper

Ecma TC45 Chairman

History in the 80s

• Documents architecture standards have been a classical Ecma standardization area:

• Ecma standardized in the 1980th ODA (Office Document Architecture) asECMA-101 “Open Document Architecture (ODA) and Interchange Format, 1st edition (September 1985) - 2nd edition (December 1988)” - about 600 pages

• The core was successfully "fast-tracked" to JTC1 (IS 8613) and to CCITT (ITU-T) where it was approved and further developed by SC18 and CCITT SGVIII (ITU-T T.400-T.429 : “Open document architecture” Series and ITU-T T.500-T.509 : “Document application profile” Series) – several thousand pages

• They were technically brilliant standards, but too complex to implement at that point in time. They were just too early.

History in the 80s (cont.)

• Therefore the industry was rather reluctant to implement it. So it failed in practice (at least so far…).

• Ecma withdrew ECMA-101

• ISO/IEC JTC1 has kept ISO 8613 (1989): "Information Processing - Test and office systems – Office Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format - Parts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9".

• ITU-T has kept the ITU-T T.400 / T.500 Series alive

• Even ETSI took it over

• In practice de-facto standards emerged and ruled (like, MS Office, Wordstar, Wordperfect, PDF, ODF,…).

History in the 2000s

• Time has come and also pressure from industry, users (incl. governmental bodies) to standardize some of the major de-facto standards as de-jure standards - e.g. because of their widespread, dominant use position, to ensure openness and SDO standards control (incl. maintenance).

• Such request was picked up in Ecma International in 2005 when starting work on OOXML (“Office Open XML File formats”) that became ECMA-376.

• The same process went on e.g. with ODF (“Open Document Format”) of OASIS as JTC1 PAS (ISO/IEC 26300) or with PDF (“Portable Document Format”) as ISO Fast Track (ISO 32000).

Some facts about ECMA-376 Office Open XML Document Formats

TC45 created on December 9, 2005

One year

14 companies

6 meetings

35 teleconferences

2 weddings

One baby

6000 pages of documentation

A white paper

And a standard which is 1 meter high of paper !

Ecma TC45

Members : Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, The Gnome Foundation, Intel, The Library of Congress, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell,

Statoil, Toshiba.

Ecma TC45, London, UK

The requirement of long-term preservation has created an imperative to define an open XML format. The British Library and the US Library of Congress are members.

The British Library shows us what document formats used to look like in 1215.

Ecma TC45, Trondheim, Norway

Corporations (BP, Barclays Capital, Essilor, Statoil) have heavy investments in existing content, including mission-critical transaction systems

Statoil hosts the meeting and the boat trip ! Ecma brings the Armagnac.

Ecma TC45, the members

Vendors (Apple, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, and Toshiba) have multiple operating systems (Linux, MacOS, and Windows) and multiple intended uses of Office Open XML

Ecma TC45

ECMA-376 Edition 1 was approved by the Ecma GA on December 7, 2006

It was fast-tracked as ISO/IEC 29500

Maintenance is still ongoing, and going well, with Ecma TC45 closely involved. As a result a harmonized ECMA-376 Edition 3 is being approved by the June 2011 Ecma GA.

We all learned a lot …