whew we can all delete ms office now
Oasis announced that the OpenDocument format is now an "offical" standard. Tim Bray says anyone who's putting anything in "other" document formats is stupid. So I guess he's talking to basically everyone in the world.
OK you say, but now there's a standard! Oh boy great. So now I can put my data in this great format that 99.9% of the world probably can't open.
But now new applications will spring up around this format you say! Really? It's a revolution you say? I say no.
Go ahead and download the 706 page spec doc. Just a little light reading. Got any great ideas on how to implement it in your app? Any guesses at the number of years it would take to build an app that supports it?
Microsoft isn't going to blink an eye at something like this. No single company (or organization) can compete with them in the office document world and with a format like this only large companies can even afford to build to it.
I still say the office document revolution either IS RSS or needs to be something simple like RSS. A simply format like that would let an entire community of apps be developed and that would have a chance, maybe, of beating Microsoft.
So after you download the PDF above, take a look at the RSS spec. You can build a useful app with that spec in an afternoon.