Norway Mandates Government Use of ODF and PDF 187
siDDis writes "Earlier this year Slashdot mentioned that Norway was moving towards mandatory use of ODF and PDF. Now it's official: the Norwegian government has mandated the use of open document formats from January 1st, 2009. There are three formats that have been mandated for all documentation between authorities, users and partners. HTML for all public information on the Web, PDF for all documents where layout needs to be preserved and ODF for all documents that the recipient is supposed to be able to edit. Documents may also be published in other formats, but they must always be available in either ODF or PDF."
What about postscript? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it compress better or something?
what i meant to say (I know use preview) (Score:3, Interesting)
Spot on about speaking better english than Americans though. My first reply is proof positive.
What about Non-Text Documents? (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, many government employees use Excel and are using features not supported by ODF. What happens when they need to send those files to others to edit?
The writing's on the wall (Score:3, Interesting)
A good example would be the Finnish school system, which has consistently scored very highly in the PISA educational ratings. That had a major influence on other European countries, such as Germany, which scored much lower, and Switzerland, making them look at how they could improve their own educational systems. It's the same thing with IT. You could very well see other European countries making similar decisions in the future.
The biggest hurdle will of course be Microsoft, which will do anything it can to stop acceptance of ODF and push in OOXML through the door. They will almost certainly try to get their big business partners to bully local governments into accepting OOXML in place of ODF.
Re:What about postscript? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been 15 years since I've picked up the black-and-white book which defines PDF.
Thanks
Bruce
Highly Competent Engineering (Score:5, Interesting)
Most companies jealously guard their "intellectual property", Norway makes most of theirs freely available.
It ain't the books or documentation that make a project successful, it's the people.