The Massachusetts Office XML File Formats saga, that is. The latest news is that the Microsoft announcements last week are playing well in Boston. Commonwealth secretary Thomas Trimarco stated “we are optimistic that Office Open XML will meet our new standards”, and I’m optimistic too. Obviously the key word is “will”, since we haven’t seen what’s getting submitted to ECMA and nobody’s seen what will come out of ECMA. Our own chief standards geek Carl Cargill wrote Mr. Trimarco a letter, which you can read over at Piper Cole’s weblog.