The widespread use of both Binary Formats and Office Open XML formats indicates that, at this time, 3^rd party can use both formats and build mappings between them. Nonetheless, Ecma International discussed this subject with Microsoft Corporation, the author of the Binary Formats.  To make it even easier for third party conversion of Binary Format-to-DIS 29500, Microsoft agreed to:

• Initiate a Binary Format-to-ISO/IEC JTC 1 DIS 29500 Translator Project on the open source software development web site SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/) in collaboration with independent software vendors.  The Translator Project will create software tools, plus guidance, showing how a document written using the Binary Formats can be translated to DIS 29500.  The Translator will be available under the open source Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license, and anyone can use the mapping, submit bugs and feedback, or contribute to the Project. The Translator Project will start on February 15, 2008.
• Make it even easier to get access to the Binary Formats documentation by posting it and making it available for a direct download on the Microsoft web site no later than February 15, 2008. The Binary Formats have been under a covenant not to sue and Microsoft will also make them available under its Open Specification Promise (see www.microsoft.com/interop/osp) by the time they are posted.

We will modify DIS 29500 to include an informative reference to the SourceForge project.

I think that both of these items are great news for folks interested in documents and document file formats. There will be a lot more information around both of these pieces of work over the coming weeks, but I wanted to make sure people realized that this was already in the works.