Chalk up another one for Microsoft. Four more to go.

The Czech Republic's delegation to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has decided to reverse its vote from September and will instead vote to approve Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) as a standard.

Now, all that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) the and European standards group Ecma International have left to do is garner four more national delegations to change their votes from "Disapprove" to "Approve." The deadline for that is this weekend.

At the same time, the rift between critics and supporters couldn't get any wider, and a flurry of heated language continues to fly back and forth across the blogosphere over the vote, the standard and, Microsoft. Most recently, the loudest howls have come from two well-known bloggers who were previously comrades in arms.

Each has posted a list of why, or why not, OOXML should be approved. However, the debate is unlikely to end any time soon, no matter what happens come Saturday.

That is the last day that delegations from all of the nations that voted in the so-called "fast track" process to make OOXML an ISO standard can change their votes.

OOXML originated as the default file formats for Microsoft Office 2007 – Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. While there is already a document interchange standard for office productivity applications called OpenDocument Format (ODF), Microsoft has been pushing hard to get OOXML certified by the ISO. For one thing, it needs to ensure that it does not get frozen out of billions in sales to governments and other organizations who require that products support ISO standards in order to participate in bidding.

Microsoft lost in the original balloting. However, that didn't end the proceedings. Ecma, which has already certified OOXML as a standard for document interchange, and Microsoft, had six months to resolve some 3,500 "comments" – i.e., problems – raised by the participants.

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Then last month, ISO held a weeklong meeting in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss Ecma's proposed resolutions. The meeting ended on February 29, starting the 30-day clock for nations to deliberate as to whether or not to change their votes. While the rules for tallying votes are complex, basically OOXML must garner a supermajority in order to achieve ISO certification.

While the ISO does not identify, at least at this point in the process, which nations voted which way, five nations would need to change from disapproval to approval for OOXML to succeed. The Czech Republic, which released a press release to announce its change, becomes the first country to do so. None of the other nations that have disclosed their votes so far have changed their votes.

With just four days to go, it's impossible to predict whether OOXML will fail to change enough votes to qualify or whether some nations are waiting until the last minute to switch their votes. Still, it seems unlikely at this point that, even with high-pressure behind the scenes lobbying by Microsoft and its supporters, OOXML will garner enough changed votes to prevail.

However, that won't stop the salvos and raspberries hurtling between members of the opposing camps.

Patrick Durusau, who is chairperson of the technical committee advising the U.S. delegation's governing board, which just upheld its vote to Approve OOXML, posted a blog entry Monday entitled "Who Loses If OpenXML Loses?" In it, he lists five reasons he thinks the ODF faction should support OOXML standardization.

Ironically, Durusau is also editor within the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) of the ODF standard. Though he says that he strongly supports ODF, he also believes OOXML has a role to play in the standards world.

Meanwhile, Rob Weir, an IBM software architect who co-chairs the OASIS ODF technical committee, published his own blog list Monday titled "Five (Bad) Reasons to Approve OOXML."

While the arguments on both sides are unlikely to change anyone's mind at this late date, the intent appears to be directed towards keeping Saturday's deadline in top of mind for all involved.

For instance, Durusau's arguments range from negative impacts on Microsoft partners and resellers who will lose work if OOXML isn't ratified, to ODF's lack of support for spreadsheet formulas (coming in ODF 1.1, which Durusau is editing), to ODF's lack of ISO-based definitions for existing and legacy Microsoft Office features and formats.

Weir salvoed back.

"[Their argument is that] ODF will be better if OOXML is approved. In OASIS we're too stupid to look up legacy features or Excel spreadsheet formulas in Ecma-376 [OOXML's designation within Ecma]. We would have never thought of that," Weir's post said.

To the rhetorical suggestion that Microsoft will simply walk away from the standards process if OOXML fails, his response was just as acerbic. The fact is, he said, Microsoft has other standards that will come before the ISO so it can't afford to drop out.

"By similar abuses of logic small children hold their breath until their faces turn blue, thinking they can scare adults into giving them what they want," Weir retorted. "It doesn't work there either."

At least one thing is clear. This weekend, the process will end, even if the rhetoric does not. Of course, that doesn't put OOXML in the clear – win or lose.

The European Commission (EC) announced in January that it is investigating whether OOXML is "sufficiently interoperable with competitors' products." Additionally, there are rumors that the EC is also investigating Microsoft's behaviors during the ISO process itself.