Friday, February 08, 2008
A plea for standardization
"Open XML" sounds like something which has to do with XML as such, and is too easy to confuse with any number of other open XML-based projects.
"Open Office XML" is even more confusing, since it's similar in name to OpenOffice.org XML, which was the predecessor of ODF and thus actually its competitor.
In the past I've been inconsistent in my terminology, but I pledge henceforth to call Microsoft's XML-based format for its Office products Office Open XML or OOXML, and to eschew those other names, and I ask everyone else to do the same. Not that it would make a dent in the world if everybody reading this blog immediately agrees, but every little step helps.
If you look closely at the blogroll in the sidebar, you'll notice I've made a little annotation to one blog name in the spirit of this pledge.
