Standard ways to make data go further

I’ve been recommending the use of open file formats for decades, and in 2003 my Guardian column included the original formulation of Schofield’s First Law of Computing, which says: Never put data into a program unless you can see exactly how to get it out. So while I don’t disagree with Henry Law (The right format for preserving our data, Letters, February 18), the reality is more complex. There are some proprietary formats I don’t mind using, including RTF (Rich Text Format), developed by Microsoft, and the WAV audio format, developed by Microsoft and IBM for Windows 3, and Adobe’s PDF (now open) and PSD. As for Microsoft Office, Law should note that it supports ODF formats, and that its default format since 2007 has been Office Open XML. This was standardised as ECMA-376 in 2006 and, in later versions, as ISO/IEC 29500 in 2008. In fact, Microsoft started supporting XML formats in Office in 2002-03, whereas the first official meeting about the XML-based ODF wasn’t held until 16 December 2002. Either way, billions of Microsoft Office documents make this overwhelmingly the de facto standard, and de facto standards could turn out to be more future-proof than de jure standards that have relatively little support.
Jack Schofield
London