Members of an industry group called the Open Geospatial Consortium have approved Google's KML technology as an open standard for describing some geographic data.
KML is used to manage the display of geospatial information in Google Earth, the company's software for flying over the surface of a virtual globe. With its 3D coordinate-based system, people can create models of city buildings, draw a line showing where they hiked, or overlay their own custom place names on a generic map.
Google hopes standardizing KML will help mean broader use for the map description language, but already, even rivals such as Microsoft have embraced it. This view shows Microsoft's Live Maps with a KML overly describing Glenn Canyon National Recreation Area.
(Credit: Microsoft)Google already shared its KML format openly, and others had used it in software products, but Google now hopes that its status as an official standard will decrease barriers to further adoption.
"What OGC brings to the table is...everyone has confidence we won't take advantage of the format or change it in a way that will harm anyone," said Michael Weiss-Malik, Google's KML product manager. "The goal is to prevent market fragmentation," in which different technology uses different standards.
File formats may sound mundane, but they can give strategic value to those who control them as a gateway to the data held by people and companies. In one high-profile example, open-source allies launched an attack on Microsoft's Office stronghold with the OpenOffice.org software, which could mostly read Microsoft's file formats.
One front in that war was an effort to set OpenOffice's file formats as an industry standard called ODF (OpenDocument Format), a move Microsoft countered with its own OOMXL effort, which Google opposed.
It didn't seem like there was powerful reluctance to use KML. For example, the latest Virtual Earth and Live Maps technology from Google rival Microsoft can use KML to let users export user information to navigation devices. And the Microsoft site can overlay KML files from the Internet onto its Live Maps--here's a (slow-loading) link to one from the National Resources Defense Council that describes expected effects from global warming to various national parks, along with the park boundaries.
But standardization will make KML more palatable, Weiss-Malik said. "Governments like to say they can publish to OGC KML instead of Google KML," he said.
And he expects to see a new era blossom of personal map publishing, all powered by KML. "We're just starting to see the birth of map publishing," he said.
KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language. It initially was developed by Keyhole, the satellite imagery company Google acquired in 2004. Keyhole's technology was built into the Google Maps site and the Google Earth software.
The standard, which geographic information system (GIS) software specialist Galdos Systems helped bring to the standardization process, is based on KML 2.2. The official KML standard can be downloaded from the OGC Web site.
Checking Web sites by typing in the URL feels like firing up a rickety 56k baud modem and logging on to CompuServe. It gets the job done, but really should only be used under extreme duress or nostalgia. Syndicated feeds bring the Web site to you, and when NewsGator made all its RSS clients free on Wednesday, they suddenly made a top-notch suite with tools for Windows, Mac, mobile, the Web, a podcast manager, and a Microsoft Outlook extension incredibly appealing. And by appealing, I mean you might not be able to imagine feeds the same way afterwards. It's that good.
... Read more
When it comes to document standards, it seems that one is never quite good enough.
Adding a twist to a high-stakes conflict over document formats, some advocates for OpenDocument, or ODF, are abandoning the standard in favor of the World Wide Web Consortium's Compound Document Formats standard.
The reason? Technical limitations in sharing ODF files with Microsoft Office applications.
"We can't meet our market requirements with OpenDocument," said Gary Edwards who started the OpenDocument Foundation last year. "The truth is OpenDocument was never designed to meet market requirements."
Edwards and his colleagues started a project early last year to build a plug-in that would convert between Microsoft's Office document formats and ODF. It was in response to a request for proposals from the state of Massachusetts which mandated the use of ODF.
He started the OpenDocument Foundation in order to get open-source project representation at OASIS, the standards body developing ODF.
Through his work trying to develop that plug-in, Edwards ran into a number of technical problems maintaining "fidelity" of documents when exchanging between Office formats and ODF.
As a result, his group has now set its sites on building a converter between Office and the WC3's Compound Document Formats (CDF), which is still in development. Early implementations of CDF have been designed for reading documents on mobile phones.
"The thing you notice about CDF right away is that you are not working in the confines of how OpenOffice implements lists and tables. ODF directly reflects how OpenOffice does things," Edwards said.
His comments echo what Microsoft executives have long said about ODF--that it's specific to OpenOffice, an open-source desktop application suite backed by Microsoft rivals IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Novell.
Jason Matusow, Microsoft's director of corporate standards, said that the decision by Edwards and his colleague Sam Hiser to pursue CDF reflects how numerous document formats are emerging for different purposes. In another example, the national standards bodies of China are advocating a format called Unified Office Format (UOF).
"All of this seems to make the point stronger than ever that when you are speaking about document formats, you are really speaking about an adjunct technology to the applications which are the real 'solutions' in this discussion," Matusow wrote in his blog.
Hiser said that the Open Document Foundation's position is controversial among advocates of ODF who, in general, want a viable alternative to Microsoft's Office Open XML or a single standard in ODF.
"We feel that if one ignores the 1/2-odd billion desktops out there (with Microsoft Office), then one is not solving anyone's particular pain-points. We kind of like your company's old Embrace & Extend concept," Hiser wrote in the comments of Matusow's blog.
Edwards argued that CDF is better suited than ODF for Web-resident documents from Web 2.0 and other hosted application providers.
"OpenDocument is not an Internet-ready file format. There are lots of reasons why this is not the case. To me, we've been fighting to bring Open Document to the Internet and it means changing the basic charter," he said. "With CDF, it can be done but it's got to have the big vendors supporting it."
Microsoft has failed in its initial effort to standardize its Office document file format.
The company was attempting to standardize its Office Open XML document formats through a "fast track" process at the International Organization for Standardization.
The draft standard "has not achieved the required number of votes" according to a statement issued by the ISO on Tuesday. The voting process ended on Sunday.
A tally indicates that Open XML did not get the two-thirds majority needed from "participating" ISO members.
The closely watched vote has been marked by intense lobbying and politicking among Microsoft supporters and rivals. Microsoft is seeking a standards body's recognition of its document formats in an effort of allay fears among businesses and governments that its products are proprietary.
(Credit:
Microsoft)
Some worry that a document format controlled by Microsoft, as opposed to a standards body, could make it difficult for organizations to exchange data, or to access older data at a later date.
Despite the setback for Microsoft, this is not the end of the line for the Office Open XML standards effort, according to people familiar with the process.
In the next phase of the process, managers of the Office Open XML specification will address technical comments that were attached to the votes. Microsoft can modify and resubmit its proposal. That process is expected to begin in February of next year in Geneva, according to the ISO.
If Microsoft's reworked proposal does not satisfy ISO members on its next submission, "the proposal will have failed and this fast-track procedure will be terminated," according to the ISO.
Microsoft on Tuesday issued a statement saying that 74 percent of participants in the ISO vote "supported" ratification of Open XML.
"This preliminary vote is a milestone for the widespread adoption of the Open XML formats around the world for the benefit of millions of customers. Given how encouraging today's results were, we believe that the final tally in early 2008 will result in the ratification of Open XML as an ISO standard," Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager for standards and interoperabilty, said in a statement.
Attorney Andrew Updegrove, a standards expert and supporter of the rival OpenDocument standard, interpreted Microsoft's statement as an "oblique confirmation" that the vote failed to get the necessary votes to be approved.
The lobbying group Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), which supports Open XML ISO ratification, on Tuesday said the ISO vote tally is a setback but not the final word on the Office Open XML standards effort.
"CompTIA remains disappointed but not disheartened with today's news of Sunday's ISO vote tally," said Hugo Lueders, group director of EU public policy for CompTIA.
- prev
- 1
- next
