documents

Andrew Updegrove, an attorney who writes the Standards Blog, talked to representatives from the World Wide Web Consortium this week and found that the Compound Document Format (CDF) is not suitable for Office-style applications.

During the W3C's Technical Plenary Meeting earlier this week, Updegrove spoke to Chris Lilley, the go-to guy on CDF at the W3C. Lilley said the format was not designed for applications like spreadsheets and word processors and that CDF is meant for interoperability between other Web technologies.

The reason Updegrove inquired goes back to a news story, reported first here, and then discussed much on … Read more

When it comes to document standards, it seems that one is never quite good enough.

Adding a twist to a high-stakes conflict over document formats, some advocates for OpenDocument, or ODF, are abandoning the standard in favor of the World Wide Web Consortium's Compound Document Formats standard.

The reason? Technical limitations in sharing ODF files with Microsoft Office applications.

"We can't meet our market requirements with OpenDocument," said Gary Edwards who started the OpenDocument Foundation last year. "The truth is OpenDocument was never designed to meet market requirements."

Edwards and his colleagues started a … Read more

The publisher Hachette Book Group USA, a member of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), has decided to go with the digital publishing organization's recommended standard for distributing books in digital format.

Starting with its December 2007 launch titles, HBG plans to release its bestsellers in the .epub eBook format, the company announced Friday.

The .epub is an XML file format for reflowable digital books that includes Open Publication Structure (OPS), Open Packaging Format (OPF) and Open Container Format (OCF).

Hachette claims to be the first book publisher in the U.S. to adopt the .epub format. It also … Read more

There are so many features listed on Apple's Leopard landing page that it might be easy to overlook this one (which Glyn Moody pointed out): OpenDocument Format, or ODF, support in the new operating system. It's baked right into OS X, and TextEdit will also support both Microsoft Word 2007 and OpenDocument formats.

At some point, Microsoft may also come around to ODF. In the meantime, there's Apple. Innovative as usual.

[UPDATED: As someone pointed out to me in an email, I made a mistake on "OpenDocument" in TextEdit. That appears to be a reference … Read more

Why were US airlines able to stop checking IDs at the gate less than a year after 9/11, while European and Asian airlines still to this day check identity documents. Has this resulted in a lower level of flight security in the US? Do US airlines know something the Europeans don't, or do they just have more lobbying power with their government. This blog post analyzes the economic reasons behind the US airlines decision to stop checking IDs, and exposes the fact that US Passenger Name Record (PNR) data is for the most part, unreliable and worthless.

This … Read more

Docstoc is a document browsing and searching tool for "professional documents." Unlike Scribd, which has been casually called a "YouTube for documents," Docstoc is going for a more business-oriented crowd. At least that's their pitch. The features are very similar, with a communal sense of document sharing and live-viewer for MS Office documents, PDF files, and other popular file types.

One thing that does set it apart is its user profiles and document request system. Each user gets their own profile, complete with as much personal information as their willing to share, along with a link to their LinkedIn profile (if they have one). Underneath that is a full listing of their documents, which can be searched along with everyone else's shared content.

The document request system is a little more interesting. It lets you request a document you're looking for by setting tags or keywords. This basically sets up an alert that will keep an eye on other Docstoc user submissions. When someone uploads a document that matches your criteria, you'll receive an alert. Whether or not it really matches what you were looking for is anyone's guess, but the idea is that there's hope instead of dead ends when it comes to tracking down files.

The service demoed at today's TechCrunch40 conference, although is still in private beta. To get access, you can sign up on their front page. There's also a 6-month old pre-beta walkthrough on YouTube, which I've embedded after the break.… Read more

Ian Howells, Alfresco's Chief Marketing Officer, just shared with me some intriguing data that I thought would be useful for more than just Alfresco. I've long suspected that documentation was a key driver of purchases in open source, and here's some data that confirms this view:… Read more

Microsoft has failed in its initial effort to standardize its Office document file format.

The company was attempting to standardize its Office Open XML document formats through a "fast track" process at the International Organization for Standardization.

The draft standard "has not achieved the required number of votes" according to a statement issued by the ISO on Tuesday. The voting process ended on Sunday.

A tally indicates that Open XML did not get the two-thirds majority needed from "participating" ISO members.

The closely … Read more

Scribd, the document sharing and hosting service, has rebranded and tweaked its Facebook application this morning. Its new name is Share Homework, and the goal, according to Scribd, is to use it as a go-between for students and teachers to share documents with each other, and to help students do something about the documents that have been sitting unused for years on their hard drives.

There's no real changes, besides a tweaked user interface and a new name (from the previous moniker of "Facebook Apps"). The tool is still a super-simple way to share documents and little … Read more