OpenDocument

Not to be confused with Open Document Architecture, OpenDoc, or Office Open XML.
OpenDocument Format
OpenDocument Text
Filename extension .odt
Internet media type application/vnd.
oasis.opendocument.
text
Uniform Type Identifier org.oasis.
opendocument.text[1]
UTI conforms to org.oasis-open.opendocument, public.composite-content
Developed by OASIS
Type of format Document file format
Extended from XML
Standard(s) OASIS OpenDocument Format, ISO/IEC 26300:2006
Open format? Yes
OpenDocument Presentation
Filename extension .odp
Internet media type application/vnd.
oasis.opendocument.
presentation
Uniform Type Identifier org.oasis.
opendocument.
presentation[1]
UTI conforms to org.oasis-open.opendocument, public.composite-content
Developed by OASIS
Type of format Presentation
Extended from XML
Standard(s) ISO/IEC 26300:2006
Open format? Yes
OpenDocument Spreadsheet
Filename extension .ods
Internet media type application/vnd.
oasis.opendocument.
spreadsheet
Uniform Type Identifier org.oasis.
opendocument.
spreadsheet[1]
UTI conforms to org.oasis-open.opendocument, public.composite-content
Developed by OASIS
Type of format Spreadsheet
Extended from XML
Standard(s) OASIS OpenDocument Format, ISO/IEC 26300:2006
Open format? Yes
OpenDocument Graphics
Filename extension .odg
Internet media type application/vnd.
oasis.opendocument.
graphics
Uniform Type Identifier org.oasis.
opendocument.
graphics[1]
UTI conforms to org.oasis-open.opendocument, public.composite-content
Developed by OASIS
Type of format Graphics file format
Extended from XML
Standard(s) ISO/IEC 26300:2006
Open format? Yes

The Open Document Format for Office Applications (also known as OpenDocument or ODF) is an XML-based file format for spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents.

The standard was developed by a technical committee in the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) consortium.[2] The specifications of the standards were originally developed by Sun Microsystems for the XML format originally created and implemented by the OpenOffice.org office suite (see OpenOffice.org XML).

In addition to being an OASIS standard, version 1.0 is published as an ISO/IEC international standard, ISO/IEC 26300:2006 Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0.[3]

Contents

Specifications

Main article: OpenDocument technical specification

The most common filename extensions used for OpenDocument documents are:[4]

The original OpenDocument format consists of an XML document that has <document> as its root element. OpenDocument files can also take the format of a ZIP compressed archive containing a number of files and directories; these can contain binary content and benefit from ZIP's lossless compression to reduce file size. OpenDocument benefits from separation of concerns by separating the content, styles, metadata, and application settings into four separate XML files.

There is a comprehensive set of example documents in OpenDocument format available.[5] The whole test suite is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.

Standardization

Main article: OpenDocument standardization

The OpenDocument standard was developed by a Technical Committee (TC) under the OASIS industry consortium. The ODF-TC has members from a diverse set of companies and individuals. Active TC members have voting rights. Members associated with Sun and IBM have sometimes had a large voting influence.[6] The standardization process involved the developers of many office suites or related document systems. The first official ODF-TC meeting to discuss the standard was December 16, 2002; OASIS approved OpenDocument as an OASIS Standard on May 1, 2005. OASIS submitted the ODF specification to ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) on November 16, 2005, under Publicly Available Specification (PAS) rules.

After a six-month review period, on May 3, 2006, OpenDocument unanimously passed its six-month DIS (Draft International Standard) ballot in JTC 1 (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34), with broad participation,[7] after which the OpenDocument specification was "approved for release as an ISO and IEC International Standard" under the name ISO/IEC 26300:2006.[8]

After responding to all written ballot comments, and a 30-day default ballot, the OpenDocument International standard went to publication in ISO, officially published November 30, 2006.

Further standardization work with OpenDocument includes:

Application support

Software

Main article: OpenDocument software

The OpenDocument format is used in free software and in proprietary software. This includes office suites (both stand-alone and web-based) and individual applications such as word-processors, spreadsheets, presentation, and data management applications. Prominent office suites supporting OpenDocument fully or partially include:

The OpenDocument Fellowship[28] maintains a list of software and services that support the OpenDocument format. The list also provides information on the status of support for the format.[29]

Various organizations have announced development of conversion software (including plugins and filters) to support OpenDocument on Microsoft's products.[30][31] As of July 2007, there are nine packages of conversion software.[29] Microsoft first released support for the OpenDocument Format in Office 2007 SP2.[32] However, the implementation faced substantial criticism and the ODF Alliance and others claimed that the third party plugins provided better support.[33] Microsoft Office 2010 can open and save OpenDocument Format documents natively, although not all features are fully supported.[34]

Mac OS X 10.5 offers both a new TextEdit version and Quick Look feature supporting the OpenDocument Text format (albeit with some formatting loss).

Accessibility

Further information: OpenDocument software - Accessibility

The specification of OpenDocument has undergone an accessibility review, and a few additions were made to version 1.1 of the specification to improve accessibility. Many of the components it is built on, such as Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language and Scalable Vector Graphics, have already gone through the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative processes.

Licensing

Public access to the standard

Versions of the OpenDocument Format approved by OASIS are available for free download and use.[35] The ITTF has added ISO/IEC 26300 to its "list of freely available standards"; anyone may download and use this standard free-of-charge under the terms of a click-through license.[36]

Additional royalty-free licensing

Obligated members of the OASIS ODF TC have agreed to make deliverables available to implementors under the OASIS Royalty Free with Limited Terms policy.

Key contributor Sun Microsystems made an irrevocable intellectual property covenant, providing all implementers with the guarantee that Sun will not seek to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the OpenDocument specification in which development Sun participates to the point of incurring an obligation.[37]

A second contributor to ODF development, IBM — which, for instance, has contributed Lotus spreadsheet documentation[38] — has made their patent rights available through their Interoperability Specifications Pledge in which "IBM irrevocably covenants to you that it will not assert any Necessary Claims against you for your making, using, importing, selling, or offering for sale Covered Implementations."[39]

The Software Freedom Law Center has examined whether there are any legal barriers to the use of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) in free and open source software arising from the standardization process. In their opinion ODF is free of legal encumbrances that would prevent its use in free and open source software, as distributed under licenses authored by Apache and the FSF.

Response

Support for OpenDocument

Several governments, companies, organizations and software products support the OpenDocument format. For example:

On November 4, 2005, IBM and Sun Microsystems convened the "OpenDocument (ODF) Summit" in Armonk, New York, to discuss how to boost OpenDocument adoption. The ODF Summit brought together representatives from several industry groups and technology companies, including Oracle, Google, Adobe, Novell, Red Hat, Computer Associates, Corel, Nokia, Intel, and Linux e-mail company Scalix. (LaMonica, November 10, 2005). The providers committed resources to technically improve OpenDocument through existing standards bodies and to promote its usage in the marketplace, possibly through a stand-alone foundation.[44] Scholars have suggested that the "OpenDocument standard is the wedge that can hold open the door for competition . . . particularly with regard to the specific concerns of the public sector."[45] Indeed, adoption by the public sector has risen considerably since the promulgation of the OpenDocument format initiated the 2005/2006 time period.[46]

Criticism

Worldwide adoption

Main article: OpenDocument adoption

One objective of open formats like OpenDocument is to guarantee long-term access to data without legal or technical barriers, and some governments have come to view open formats as a public policy issue. Several governments around the world have introduced policies of partial or complete adoption.[45] What this means varies from case to case; in some cases, it means that the ODF standard has a national standard identifier; in some cases, it means that the ODF standard is permitted to be used where national regulation says that non-proprietary formats must be used, and in still other cases, it means that some government body has actually decided that ODF will be used in some specific context. The following is an incomplete list:

International level

National level

Africa

Asia

Europe

South America

Subnational levels

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Huw Alexander Ogilvie. "Filetypes". http://www.huw.id.au/filetypes.html#OpenDocument. Retrieved 2008-06-20. 
  2. ^ "OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC". Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office. 
  3. ^ "ISO/IEC 26300:2006 Information technology -- Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0". International Organization for Standardization. http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=43485. 
  4. ^ (Spanish) UA.es
  5. ^ sample documents in OpenDocument Format
  6. ^ "OpenDocument TC's publicly-visible membership roster". http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/membership.php?wg_abbrev=office. Retrieved 2007-11-03. 
  7. ^ ISO/IEC SC34 Secretariat (2006-06-13). "Summary of Voting on DIS ISO/IEC 26300 - Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0". ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 Document Repository. Archived from the original on 2006-10-01. http://web.archive.org/web/20061001180333/http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0728revc.htm. Retrieved 2006-08-24. 
  8. ^ "ISO and IEC approve OpenDocument OASIS standard for data interoperability of office applications". ISO Press Releases. ISO. 2006-05-08. http://www.iso.org/iso/en/commcentre/pressreleases/2006/Ref1004.html. Retrieved 2006-08-24. 
  9. ^ (ZIP, PDF) ISO/IEC 26300:2006, ISO, http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c043485_ISO_IEC_26300_2006(E).zip, retrieved 2009-11-22 
  10. ^ "OpenDocument 1.1 Specifications". OASIS. 2006. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office#odf11. Retrieved 2006-10-31. 
  11. ^ "Approval of OpenDocument v1.1 as OASIS Standard". OASIS. http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200702/msg00003.html. Retrieved 2007-02-06. 
  12. ^ "Members Approve OpenDocument Version 1.1 as OASIS Standard". OASIS. http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2007-02-14.php. Retrieved 2007-02-15. 
  13. ^ ZDnet.co.uk
  14. ^ "ISO/IEC 26300:2006/DAM 1 - OpenDocument v1.1". http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=59302. Retrieved 2011-03-29. 
  15. ^ OASIS office message: Ballot for CS approval of ODF Version 1.2 has passed
  16. ^ Abisource.com
  17. ^ Abiword 2.4.2 Release Notes. Retrieved 2009-03-03
  18. ^ "Adobe Buzzword online word processor from Acrobat.com". Labs.adobe.com. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/buzzword/. Retrieved 2009-05-19. 
  19. ^ Atlantis Word Processor 1.6.5 release notes. Retrieved 2010-01-28
  20. ^ http://www.calligra-suite.org/words/
  21. ^ "Corel WordPerfect Office X4 - Standard Edition - Compatible". http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1207851977074/. Retrieved 2008-05-03. 
  22. ^ Google.com
  23. ^ Gnumeric.org
  24. ^ Blogs.MSDN.com
  25. ^ Symphony.lotus.com
  26. ^ Koffice.org
  27. ^ Microsoft Expands List of Formats Supported in Microsoft Office
  28. ^ "OpenDocument Fellowship". OpenDocument Fellowship. http://opendocumentfellowship.com/. Retrieved 2007-07-27. 
  29. ^ a b "Application support for the OpenDocument format". OpenDocument Fellowship. http://opendocumentfellowship.com/applications. Retrieved 2007-07-27. 
  30. ^ "OpenDocument Foundation to MA: We Have a Plugin". Groklaw. 2006-05-04. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060504015438308. Retrieved 2006-08-23. 
  31. ^ "Microsoft Office to get a dose of OpenDocument". CNet. 2006-05-05. http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Microsoft_Office_to_get_a_dose_of_OpenDocument/0,130061733,139255766,00.htm. Retrieved 2006-12-06. 
  32. ^ "Office 2007 SP2 Supports ODF". PC World. April 28, 2009. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/164015/office_2007_sp2_supports_odf.html. 
  33. ^ "Fact-sheet Microsoft ODF support". odfalliance. http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/fact-sheet-Microsoft-ODF-support.pdf. Retrieved 2009-05-24. "MS Excel 2007 will process ODF spreadsheet documents when loaded via the Sun Plug-In 3.0 for MS Office or the SourceForge “OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office,” but will fail when using the “built-in” support provided by Office 2007 SP2." 
  34. ^ Differences between the OpenDocument Text (.odt) format and the Word (.docx) format
  35. ^ OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC
  36. ^ "Freely Available Standards". http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html. Retrieved 22 September 2009. 
  37. ^ Sun Microsystems, Inc.. "Sun OpenDocument Patent Statement". OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC. OASIS foundation. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php. 
  38. ^ Lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200607/msg00076.html
  39. ^ Interoperability Specifications Pledge
  40. ^ "ODF Alliance members". ODF Alliance. http://www.odfalliance.org/members.php. Retrieved 2009-05-24. 
  41. ^ H-online.com
  42. ^ a b IDA promotes the use of open document formats for e-government interoperability
  43. ^ "Wikis Go Printable". Wikimedia Foundation. 13 December 2007. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikis_Go_Printable. Retrieved 2007-12-31. 
  44. ^ News.Cnet.com
  45. ^ a b Casson and Ryan, Open Standards, Open Source Adoption in the Public Sector, and Their Relationship to Microsoft’s Market Dominance
  46. ^ Id.
  47. ^ Marco Fioretti. "Macros an obstacle to office suite compatibility". http://www.linux.com/articles/47935. Retrieved 2008-05-11. 
  48. ^ Doug Mahugh (Microsoft) (2009-05-13). "Tracked Changes". http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/13/tracked-changes.aspx. 
  49. ^ a b Jesper Lund Stocholm (Danish ISO/IEC representative) (2008-12-12). "Do your math - OOXML and OMML (Updated 2008-02-12)". http://idippedut.dk/post/2008/01/29/Do-your-math-OOXML-and-OMML.aspx. 
  50. ^ Stefan Krempl (2010-01-05). "Munich administration switches to OpenDocument Format". http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Munich-administration-switches-to-OpenDocument-Format-895415.html. ""Open source OpenDocument Format (ODF) is now the main document exchange standard, with PDF being used for non-editable files."" 

External links

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