...given the approval of the International Standards Organization....

Isn't it International Organization for Standardization ???

I think PDF is the best commonly used print quality page layout format around. 

If it's going to be an ISO standard then I suggest Open Office & co., and MS, settle on PDF for the standard save format for their word processors and presentation software.

Just what we need in the modern computer age:
a format that almost invariably has to be printed out to be read. Just what we need for the paperless office.
I can hear computer historians of the future laughing now:
What did they do with their data at the start of the twentieth century? They encrypted it in things called documents so it would be really hard to utilise later! And then they spent a fortune on wide screens that were completely incompatible with their 'paper' formats.

PDF/X (and its numerous ISO versions, dating back to 2001 at least) is apparently a subset, along with PDF/A (ISO, published in 2005) and many other "flavors" I'd never heard of.

So the news is that the *complete* specification is being handed off to, and published by, ISO.