ZDNet is reporting on the new OpenDocument standard (approved by OASIS) that may "turn the world inside out" (which, frankly, is one of those phrases to use when hyperbole just isn't enough). It does promise great things, as the promise of sharing documents independently of the application that created them may finally become a reality (although, predictably, Microsoft advises it refuses to support an inferior standard and will accordingly go its own way).
I suspect we shouldn't hold our breath in this regard. However, if there is enough momentum to using it, the potential for open source software applications to really become usable (e.g. OpenOffice) would become very high. I personally use OpenOffice at home and for almost everything I do it is perfectly OK. I do remain sceptical of the great and wonderful features that are packed into Office most of the time - I mean, seriously, does anyone ever use the Version Save feature of Word? And if you do, do you hope and pray it won't corrupt your document?
(PS in case you are wondering what the reason is for the gap in publishing my blogs, the gap is due to the birth of my baby daughter, Olivia Grace on 9th September. Parenthood - it's good for family life, bad for blogging).
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