Denmark to implement ODF document standard

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. An official approval of the agreement by the Danish parliament is planned for next Tuesday, although this will apparently only be a formality.

This means that Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format is losing even more ground in the European Union with Belgium, France, Sweden and Lithuania having already implemented ODF as their official document format. However, this doesn't automatically mean adoption of OpenOffice, because since Service Pack 2 Microsoft Office 2007 has supported ODF as well as OOXML.

See also:

• Denmark dumps Microsoft, a report from Politiken.dk.
  
• Munich administration switches to OpenDocument Format, a report from The H.
• Fraunhofer: ODF and OOXML only just compatible, a report from The H.
• ODF Alliance dissatisfied with MS Office 2007, a report from The H.

(crve)