DIS29500 appears to be competing and incompatible with OASIS sourced ISO/IEC 26300 "Open Document Format for Office Applications."

In order to secure interoperability between the International Standards, Japan believes that JTC 1 should play a leading role in the future in collaboration with Ecma and OASIS. Thus Japan would like to confirm Ecma and its core members’ collaborative stance with JTC 1 for the maintenance and the future evolution of DIS29500 upon its approval under the JTC 1 process. In particular, JTC1 rather than Ecma should maintain OOXML.

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Proposed Disposition of DIS 29500 Comment JP-0001 (Modified: 2007-11-14) Regarding the maintenance and future evolution of DIS 29500 upon its approval under the JTC 1 process, Clause 13.13 of the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives states, “If the proposed standard is accepted and published, its maintenance will be handled by JTC 1 and/or a JTC 1 designated maintenance group in accordance with the JTC 1 rules.” Ecma has a long history of submitting Fast-Tracks to JTC 1, and does so with full knowledge of the JTC 1 Directives. As a Category A liaison to JTC 1, Ecma has established close collaboration with JTC 1, including in the area of procedures. In the specific case of DIS 29500, Ecma TC45 has made a contribution to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 proposing the creation of a “JTC 1 designated maintenance group”; this item is on the agenda for the up-coming SC 34 plenary in Kyoto, Japan, in December 2007. Regarding interoperability, it is worth noting that the German national standards body, DIN, has a committee, NIA-01-34, working on a Technical Report on the translation of documents between the IS 26300 and DIS 29500 formats (see http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/fokus/fokus/presse/meldungen_fokus/2007/05/DIN-E.pdf ).