As the battle over XML document standards heats up, Microsoft is gearing up its campaign to drive the adoption of its Office Open XML (OOXML) format in the lead up to a crucial ISO ballot resolution meeting scheduled for the end of this month. And Asia could play a significant role in determining the outcome.

Alex Brown, the convenor of the ISO's Office Open XML (OOXML) Ballot Resolution Meeting, has accused Microsoft of failure in its efforts to transform the document format into a genuinely open standard

Or both? ALEX Brown is pretending that all is fine and dandy with OOXML (he even shows a picture of a smiling face), despite all the OOXML corruption which had people protest out in the streets.

The convenor of the OOXML BRM pretends the appeals against his BRM don't count

Microsoft mocks rivals by pretending that office suites are a Microsoft "innovation"; another XML patent sneaks through

So ISO rubberstamped Microsoft's OOXML, a lame excuse for an 'open' format. The promise of ODF was that we could free the information inside office documents, making it available to new innovative programs and web services. Sadly, the real aim of OOXML was to maintain Microsoft's Office Monopoly.

The Australian Government has released a policy that mandates the ECMA-376 version of Microsoft's Office Open XML standard and productivity suites that can 'read and write' the .docx format. If you're not familiar with the OOXML fiasco, take a look at http://noooxml.org/ for the sordid details.

Microsoft’s position is hardening as the ISO vote on OOXML (DIS 29500) in Geneva approaches at the end of this month. We know more clearly now how Microsoft and its proxy group, ECMA, will position Microsoft’s OOXML specification in advance of the vote. In short, Microsoft is betting that its influence with National Bodies will allow it to push through a specification which elevates its own interests over that of truly competitive, open international standards. In the end, it will be Microsoft’s own inflexibility that will be its undoing, and that undoing means knocking the OOXML out of approval for ISO status.

Another new addition to CONSEGI 2008, which openly protests against the OOXML fiasco