France Adopting ODF in Massachusetts’ Footsteps?
Erwin Tenhumberg translates some French documents discussing the gradual standardization around ODF for French governmental documents.
He quotes:
“RIT0025 Il est RECOMMANDÉ d’utiliser le format Open Document pour les échanges de documents bureautiques semi-structurés (traitement de texte, tableur, présentation).
RIT0026 Il est OBLIGATOIRE d accepter tout document au format Open Document pour les échanges de documents bureautiques semi-structurés (traitement de texte, tableur, présentation).
RIT0027 Il est INTERDIT de faire une migration depuis le format bureautique couramment utilisé par une organisation, vers un format autre que le format ouvert Open Document.”
Roughly translated, these read:
Use of OpenDocument format is recommended for the exchange of semi-structured office documents (word processing, spreadsheets and presentations).
Accepting any office document in OpenDocument format… is required.
Migrating from an organization’s current office document format to anything other than OpenDocument is forbidden.
The last sentence is particularly interesting, because it prevents the use of Microsoft’s new XML file formats. They don’t exist yet, so they cannot be the current format for any organization. This means that any French government agency that wants to use MS Office 2007 will have to use the ODF plugin (that isn’t in the wild yet), or save files to the old MS Office formats, or just keep it simple and straightforward, and migrate wholly to an ODF-native suite like OpenOffice.org.
Tenhumberg links to a collection of official French documents on this new regulation.