That's ISO not I-S-O

What's in a name? And no, its not an acronym... Anyway, the article is a blog post about one Ken Holman who is stepping down from the ISO subcommittee responsible for SGML. The first part of the post is about the ISO name bit but the second part has to do with how some of the ISO committees operate and some possible changes in the wind especially in regards to our good friends at SC34 (you know, the document format handlers).

Apparently there is talk of setting up another working group to deal specifically with office document formats... it seems "the volume of work required of ODF and OOXML is threatening to overwhelm the members of those [existing] groups".

I seem to recall that the ISO standard ODF was and is being handled very well within the current structure... which means it must be the proposed ECMA-376 draft that is causing all the trouble!

Over 6000 pages long. Rushed through fast track approval. Forced to a worldwide ballot. Allegations of vote buying and ballot stuffing. National Standards bodies discovering voting irregularities. Even the original submitters won't guarantee to support it. Do you think that might be the problem?

Naaa... couldn't be...