Shane Schick: Will today's text files be tomorrow's stone tablets?
When I started writing this column in Microsoft Word, I was making a choice, whether I wanted to or not. And if you've written anything on a computer today, you've done the same thing.
We usually create electronic documents for two reasons: So that we can store them for future reference and so that others may read them. However, neither of those outcomes are guaranteed. The software we use to create a document might one day become outdated, or a document might become impossible to read by someone who uses a different kind of software on their computer. Most of the world uses Microsoft Word, which means this shouldn't be an issue, but there are a number of companies and organizations working behind the scenes to curb Microsoft's influence over the way documents are formatted.
The next time you click "Save As," you may unconsciously be siding with one or the other.
Last week, for example, Adobe Systems said it would be submitting its Personal Document Format (PDF) technology to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Think of an ISO standard as a sort of seal of approval that would ensure PDF documents meet certain criteria, such as the ability to be read by, or work with, other software programs. Microsoft recently submitted a proposed standard called Office Open XML to the ISO as well, and an open source technology for creating files called Open Document Format (ODF) was declared an ISO standard last year.
Small businesses probably take little notice of these obscure, dry formalities, but they are of great interest to larger organizations, particularly governments. In fact, several U.S. states and European governments are considering, or have already established, policies that mandate the use of the most open, interoperable document formats.
That's why Microsoft, Adobe and the developers of ODF want the ISO label slapped on their products. Without it, many government agencies won't buy from them.
This has a direct impact on the many small businesses that work in the public sector. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for example, decided to adopt ODF as its document format this year. If Microsoft hadn't made sure its Office Suite, including Microsoft Word, worked with ODF, anyone who sent contracts, invoices or other documents to the local government would have had to have written them with ODF.
Much like cost-conscious small businesses, governments are worried about getting locked into software that has to be continually upgraded in order to work properly.
"There's almost a fear that there's a digital Dark Age ahead that's going to befall us because we're not going to be able to read the information that currently resides in our systems," says Richard Loranger, a partner with records management consulting firm InfoMatrix in Toronto....
Read entire article at Toronto Globe and Mail
We usually create electronic documents for two reasons: So that we can store them for future reference and so that others may read them. However, neither of those outcomes are guaranteed. The software we use to create a document might one day become outdated, or a document might become impossible to read by someone who uses a different kind of software on their computer. Most of the world uses Microsoft Word, which means this shouldn't be an issue, but there are a number of companies and organizations working behind the scenes to curb Microsoft's influence over the way documents are formatted.
The next time you click "Save As," you may unconsciously be siding with one or the other.
Last week, for example, Adobe Systems said it would be submitting its Personal Document Format (PDF) technology to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Think of an ISO standard as a sort of seal of approval that would ensure PDF documents meet certain criteria, such as the ability to be read by, or work with, other software programs. Microsoft recently submitted a proposed standard called Office Open XML to the ISO as well, and an open source technology for creating files called Open Document Format (ODF) was declared an ISO standard last year.
Small businesses probably take little notice of these obscure, dry formalities, but they are of great interest to larger organizations, particularly governments. In fact, several U.S. states and European governments are considering, or have already established, policies that mandate the use of the most open, interoperable document formats.
That's why Microsoft, Adobe and the developers of ODF want the ISO label slapped on their products. Without it, many government agencies won't buy from them.
This has a direct impact on the many small businesses that work in the public sector. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for example, decided to adopt ODF as its document format this year. If Microsoft hadn't made sure its Office Suite, including Microsoft Word, worked with ODF, anyone who sent contracts, invoices or other documents to the local government would have had to have written them with ODF.
Much like cost-conscious small businesses, governments are worried about getting locked into software that has to be continually upgraded in order to work properly.
"There's almost a fear that there's a digital Dark Age ahead that's going to befall us because we're not going to be able to read the information that currently resides in our systems," says Richard Loranger, a partner with records management consulting firm InfoMatrix in Toronto....