MCAD Tech News #195
13 Dec, 2006 By: Jeffrey RoweToday's edition of MCAD Tech News is the last of 2006. We'll take a break for the holiday season, returning in the New Year with the January 4, 2007, edition. We thank our authors and all our loyal readers for another successful year and wish you all the happiest of holidays. STANDARDS ORGANIZATIONS AND SOFTWARE VENDORS BACK VARIOUS CONTENDERS Last week was an interesting time for XML as an open format. A standards organization known as Ecma International approved Microsoft's Open XML, the default document format in Office 2007, as an international data standard -- despite objections from IBM. Ecma, a nonprofit industry association of technology developers, vendors and users, is responsible for future development of Open XML. In approving the specification, Ecma's General Assembly meeting in Geneva also agreed to submit the standard for adoption by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO approval would greatly increase the new standard's use by a myriad of organizations. Theoretically, standardizing Open XML will aid interoperability between Office and other competing software, such as Corel's WordPerfect and OpenOffice, an open source suite. Approval of the specification, however, was not unanimous. IBM voted against Open XML, saying OpenDocument (having already earned ISO approval), which is the default format in OpenOffice, is a "vastly superior" format, and another standard was unnecessary. IBM, not surprisingly, was the only Ecma member to vote against Open XML's approval. Sounds like this could devolve into a battle of dueling document standards -- and XML could be the basis on which the battle is fought. Read more>> By Sara Ferris Following closely on Microsoft's debut yesterday of the long-awaited Windows Vista, Autodesk announced that DWF technology has been incorporated into the new operating system using XPS (XML paper specification). This will allow Vista users to view DWF files without requiring plug-ins or other additional software tools. DWF files published to the XPS specification can be automatically opened and viewed using the XPS viewer built into Windows Vista, Autodesk reports. We spoke with Amar Hanspal, vice-president, Autodesk Collaboration Solutions, for details about this significant announcement, which we reported initially in the Cadalyst Daily newsletter. Read more >> Mark Your Calendar: MCAD Events Institute of Industrial Engineers Courses UGS Connection User Conferences For Cadalyst's full calendar of events, click here>> what's new at cadalyst.com New! Hot Tip Harry Newsletter from Cadalyst Get the Code! Cadalyst's December Web Exclusives Now Live Online! My Monitor's Bigger Than Your Monitor Time for a New Job? Cadalyst Daily Update • AutoCAD Tips: Time-Saving Toggle Routines: Personalize your software with code to quickly switch a variety of variables. 
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