After months of beta testing, IBM (NYSE:IBM) released Lotus Symphony 1, its free productivity suite, earlier this month. Based on an older version of OpenOffice.org (1.1.4, while the suite is currently up to 2.4.1), Lotus Symphony has a slicker interface, uncluttered menus, and a number of user accessibility options that make it a more attractive option than Open Office.

The South African e-documentation workgroup is hosting a number of the world’s most influential XML and open standards activists at the “XML in Government Workshop” next week. One of the key figures behind the event - and indeed behind much of the XML and digital standards work in South Africa - is Bob Jolliffe.

Suncorp's CIO, Jeff Smith, says he would like the banking and insurance giant to use open source software for its 20,000 desktops, which currently run Windows XP. Open source software is set to play an increasingly important role at Australia's sixth largest bank, according to Smith, who said that Suncorp will look to use open source "wherever we can".

"Our real vision is that we're going to use open source wherever we can, unless there's some capability that warrants the premium to buy software," Smith told ZDNet.com.au.

The State IT Agency will host a free workshop to discuss XML standards in government, from 17 to 20 June, at the Tshwane University of Technology.

Public sector adoption has been in the media spotlight over the last few months, with Open Document Format (ODF) becoming a local national standard. SA is also leading the appeal of the ratification of Microsoft Open XML.

ISO Namespace Validation Dispatching Language (NVDL) is a little language for taking an XML documents, sectioning it off into single namespace sections, attaching or detatching these sections in various ways, and then sending the resulting sections to the appropriate validation scripts.