Last Friday, after four years of deliberation, representatives of all parties in the Danish parliament (Folketing) reached an agreement to adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as their official format for saving documents from April 2011. Initially, the decision will not affect any regional or communal authorities; a decision in this respect is to follow at a later stage.

Although Microsoft publicly testifies from every available pulpit of their deep longing for multiple document formats, a quick glance at reality shows that this love remains unrequited in their products. For example, what new formats does Office 2007 include out of the box?

Danish minister with history of Microsoft affinity is suspending a move to make OpenDocument Format the only national standard

Following criticism from the Open Source Industry Association (OSIA) over its ambition to have the Office Open XML (Open XML or OOXML) format accepted as an international (ISO) standard, Microsoft's group product manager for Microsoft Office, Gray Knowlton, spoke with Computerworld about why the world needs two standard document formats.

In a resounding victory for Microsoft Corp., bills seeking to mandate the use of open document formats by government agencies have been defeated in five states, and only a much-watered-down version of such legislation was signed into law in a sixth state.

Sun has released the final version of its Open Document Format (ODF) plug-in for Microsoft Office, designed to allow the ODF standard to better compete with Microsoft's dominant Office formats.

For years Microsoft has had the de facto "standard" everything simpy because the majority of people use it and think it is the standard. Microsoft never did anything about this. It enjoyed the de facto standard position and never actually sought to makes it formats actual standards. But in 2006 something happened.

"update: Massachusetts has proposed changing its standards policy to make room for Microsoft Office document formats."

OpenOffice and Symphony are compatible with the Open Document Format, an industry standard that allows programs from different developers to read each other's documents and preserve typefaces, paragraphs, indents, tabs, bullets, numbering and so forth. Both free suites also support the proprietary but widely copied formats that Microsoft used in its basic Office products until the 2007 version.