To my shame, Peter Murray-Rust put up a reply to my post below in just a few hours, where it had taken me days to answer his original posting. So with this reply to his reply, I'm trying to do better.

Most people are content to let their word processor determine hyphenation and text breaks for them. And, most of the time, the result is acceptable if they do. However, just as the default justification can be improved if you want to take the time, so can the text flow.

I shall not complain that much about what happened with OOXML. In fact, the act of standardizing OOXML has not really brought any significant advantages to OOXML. ODF is an ISO standard and so is OOXML.

Paul Murphy, over at blogs.zdnet.com, has written a completely unimpressive blog entry entitled “I’d suggest Linux - but…”
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Paul, I have to tell you, this simply is not true. Apart from the fact that you don’t back your statements up with any facts, what you wrote there is arrant nonsense

HP and MIT have formed an independent organization to support the work of digital archivists who use the DSpace open source archiving software.

Late last month, evidence emerged indicating that Microsoft has used financial incentives to influence the outcome of Office Open XML (OOXML) fast-track approval in various national standards bodies. Although ISO ended up voting against fast-track approval for OOXML, the company's efforts have created doubts about the reliability of the standards process.

Back in August we warned that Microsoft had just made a very suspicious donation at a very strategic time. It only days before the September vote on OOXML. The article which was cited at the time has vanished, but you can find a copy here...

This takes the cake. Alex Brown has just admitted on his Griffin Brown blog and further to ZDNET UK's Peter Judge that Microsoft Office 2007 has failed two OOXML conformance tests he ran. First ZDNET:
In a blog posting this week, Alex Brown, revealed that Microsoft Office 2007 documents do not meet the latest specifications of the ISO OOXML draft standard.

After Hillary Clinton spoke last night I listened closely for what the loudspeakers would play.

It was Tom Petty’s hit “I Won’t Back Down.” (UPDATE: Clinton did back down Wednesday, with the official announcement now expected in two stages Friday and Saturday. OOXML opponents, meanwhile, fight on.)