Well - it's as official as we're going to get it before ISO makes its public announcement tomorrow.

According to a Microsoft press release, the standard won support from 75 percent of the P (participating) Members, ahead of the 66.7 percent required, and 14 percent of the O (observing) members objected - less than the 25 percent maximum.

This is slightly hedged: "all publicly available information appears to indicate the proposed Open XML standard received extremely broad support," says the release.

But there's also a press release from ECMA and Andy Updegrove has had confirmation from sources in at least two standards bodies.

And Open Malaysia comes to the same conclusion

"Now the reaction will set in to the manner in which the process was conducted," says Updegrove. "I expect that this chapter will be long and messy, but hopefully ultimately productive. Clearly some changes need to be made in how the process works, so that the next time such an important and commercially strategic standard is processed, the process works better than this."