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Brazil, India and South Africa have appealed International Organization for Standardization (ISO) against adopting Microsoft sponsored Office Open XML (OOXML) file format as international standard.

Office Open XML (also referred to as OOXML or OpenXML) is an electronic document format, and a proposed ISO standard for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents.

The Joint Technical Committee 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electro-technical Commission (IEC) approved ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (OOXML) as an ISO/IEC Standard after receiving 75 percent of ISO member nation votes in April 2008. 14 percent voted against the format and the rest abstained.

National bodies of South Africa, Brazil, India, and Denmark, filed formal protest in May 2008 meaning that ISO/IEC 29500 will not be published until these appeals are resolved.

The group from these countries showed disappointment over the fast track process which resulted in format being adopted. According to Jonathan Buck, spokesman for IEC:

By the deadline last night, we had received three appeals, from Brazil, India and South Africa.

Some of the OOXML points criticized by member countries are as follows:(thanks to Wikipedia)

• Use of DrawingML and the transitional-use-only VML instead of W3C recommendation SVG.[82] VML did not become a W3C recommendation.
• Use of Office Math ML instead of W3C recommendation MathML.
• Office Open XML does not define a macro language, leaving this aspect to be application-defined.
• The standard is long, with the version submitted to ISO comprising 6546 pages. Google alleges that this length is unnecessary, saying that the OpenDocument specification is 867 pages in length and achieves the same goals. That coupled with the fast track standardization process, Google claims, reduces the review time per page ratio.
• A comparison of some specific items in the format specification documents of Office Open XML and OpenDocument formats is used to claim disharmony within the Office Open XML format.

Both ISO and the IEC have one month each to examine the appeals and try and reach a consensus with the national standards bodies. In case of no consensus, the appeals will be passed on to the Standards Management Board at IEC, and the Technical Management Board at ISO for resolution.

Open Document Format which has already won ISO approval and is widely used in open source office productivity, is a rival of OOXML in the document marketplace.