OpenDocument

Information about OpenDocument

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Semi-official ODF logo


Not to be confused with Open Document Architecture, an unrelated, earlier standard document file format.


The OpenDocument format (ODF, ISO/IEC 26300, full name: OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications) is a file format for electronic office documents, such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents.

The standard was developed by the Open Office XML technical committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) consortium and based on the XML format originally created and implemented by the OpenOffice.org office suite (see OpenOffice.org XML). As well as an OASIS Standard, it is a published ISO and IEC International Standard, ISO/IEC 26300:2006.[1] The OpenDocument standard meets the common definitions of an open standard, meaning the specification is freely available and implementable.

Specifications

Main article: OpenDocument technical specification


The most common filename extensions used for OpenDocument documents are: A basic OpenDocument file consists of an XML document that uses <office:document> as the 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 sample documents in OpenDocument Format available.[2] 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 each with an equal vote. 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 ballot in JTC1, with broad participation,[3] after which the OpenDocument specification was "approved for release as an ISO and IEC International Standard" under the name ISO/IEC 26300:2006.[4]

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.

The Italian standardization organization UNI adopted OpenDocument on January 26, 2007.

Further standardization work with OpenDocument includes:
  • OpenDocument 1.0 (second edition) is the published ISO/IEC 26300:2006 standard. It also has the status of a Committee Specification in OASIS. It includes all the editorial changes made to address JTC1 ballot comments, and as such it reflects the approved ISO/IEC 26300:2006 standard, as published by ISO and IEC. It is available in ODT, HTML and PDF formats.
  • OpenDocument 1.1 was approved by OASIS on October 19, 2006. It includes additional features to address accessibility concerns.[5] The Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) Specification v1.1 was approved as an OASIS Standard on 2007-02-01 following a call for vote issued on 2007-01-16.[6][7] The public announcement was made on 2007-02-13.[8]
  • OpenDocument 1.2 is currently being written by the ODF TC. It will include additional accessibility features, metadata enhancements, spreadsheet formula specification based on the OpenFormula work (ODF 1.0 did not specify spreadsheet formulae in detail, leaving many aspects implementation-defined) as well as any errata submitted by the public. Originally OpenDocument 1.2 was expected by October 2007.[9]

Application support

Software

Main article: OpenDocument software


A number of applications and programs (both free and proprietary) already support the OpenDocument format. This includes traditional office suites, web-based office suites and individual applications such as word-processors and spreadsheets. Two of the most prominent office suites supporting OpenDocument are OpenOffice.org and KOffice, both Free Software.

The OpenDocument Fellowship[10] 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.[11]

The OpenDocument Foundation and other third parties have also announced development of conversion software (including plugins and filters) to support OpenDocument on Microsoft's products.[12][13] Currently there are nine packages of conversion software.[14]

Aside from the OpenDocument Foundation's plug-in, Microsoft Office does not support OpenDocument. Microsoft has created the Open XML translator[15] project to allow the conversion of documents between Office Open XML and OpenDocument. As a result of this project Microsoft finances the ODF add-in for Word project on SourceForge. This project is an effort by several of Microsoft's partners to create a plugin for Microsoft Office that will be freely available under a BSD license. The project has released version 1.0 for Microsoft Word of this software in early 2007 and plans versions later in 2007 for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. Sun Microsystems has also created a OpenDocument plugin for Microsoft Office 2000, XP, and 2003 that supports Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents.[16]

Accessibility

Further information: OpenDocument software - Accessibility
The specification of OpenDocument has undergone an extensive 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

The OpenDocument specification is available for free download and use.

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. This Statement is not an assurance that an OpenDocument Implementation would not infringe patents or other intellectual property rights of any third party.[17] The covenant is limited to versions of the OpenDocument specification on which Sun has participated to the point of incurring an obligation.

Promotion

The work of OASIS includes promoting the OpenDocument Format through the OASIS OpenDocument Adoption Technical Committee.

There is a set of OpenDocument icons which can be used for services and systems that use the OpenDocument format.

The OpenOffice.org Suite and the KOffice Suite promote the OpenDocument Format, as it is used as their default file format. Several groups and companies support the OpenDocument Format. For example:
  • Companies like Sun Microsystems, IBM, Novell promote the OpenDocument Format actively, as well as other companies who may or may not be working inside the OpenDocument Format's Technical Committee of the OASIS.
  • The OpenDocument Format Alliance was founded in March 2006 by the 35 founding members. In July 2006 the foundation already had more than 280 members.
  • The OpenDocument Fellowship was founded to support and promote these formats.
  • SpreadOpenDocument.org was the first one to promote the OpenDocument Format to the public in August 2005.
  • 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.
  • The OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. is a US-based 501c(3) non profit organization chartered to work in the public interest to support, promote and develop the OASIS OpenDocument File Format
  • The OIDI.org (Open Interoperative Document Initiative) is committed to encouraging efforts by governments at all levels, around the globe, to implement changes necessary to ensure public documents are open and interoperable and thus available to all citizens/residents without the need for specific vendor software.
  • Google Docs can import and export OpenDocument text files.

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. OpenDocument is intended to be an alternative to proprietary formats, including the commonly used DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office and other applications. These latter formats do not have documentation available for download, but documentation may be received by writing directly to Microsoft Corporation and signing an agreement.[18] Microsoft is supporting the creation of a plugin for Office to allow it to use OpenDocument. The OpenDocument Foundation has created a similar plug-in that will allow continued use of Microsoft Office.

The governments of Belgium, Finland, France and Norway have been evaluating the adoption of the OpenDocument format. Other governments around the world are also considering the adoption of the format. In October 2006, a report commissioned by the then French prime minister Dominique de Villepin recommended that all French government publications be made available in OpenDocument Format. In July 2007, the Norwegian Standards Council recommended to the government the use of the OpenDocument format.[19]

The Belgian federal administration plans to exchange all documents in ODF from September 2008. All federal administrations should be able to read ODF documents one year earlier.[20]

In Japan, on June 29, 2007, the government published a new interoperability framework which gives preference to the procurement of products that follow open standards including the ODF standards.[21][22]

Criticism

Various criticisms have been levelled at the approved standard.
29. ^ Initial proposal for digital signatures in ODF. Michael Brauer - Sun Germany (2007-02-16). Retrieved on 2007-03-29.
30. ^ APPNOTE.TXT - .ZIP File Format Specification

External links

  • OpenDocument Encourages use of OpenDocument.
  • OpenDocument Fellowship Volunteer organisation with members around the world to promote the adoption, use and development of the OpenDocument format.
  • OpenDocument Format Alliance The alliance works globally to educate policymakers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of the OpenDocument Format, to help ensure that government information, records and documents are accessible across platforms and applications, even as technologies change today and in the future.
  • OpenDocument XML.org The official community gathering place and information resource for the OpenDocument OASIS Standard (ISO/IEC 26300).
  • OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee coordinates the OpenDocument development and is the official source for specifications, schemas, etc.
 •  • [ e]
Standards of OASIS
CAP CIQ DocBook DITA OpenDocument SAML SPML UBL WSDM XRI XDI WSRF
The Open Document Architecture (or sometimes referred to as Office Document Architecture or just ODA) is a standard document file format created by the ITU-T to replace all proprietary document file formats.
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A file format is a particular way to encode information for storage in a computer file.

Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa.
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spreadsheet is a rectangular table (or grid) of information, often financial information. The word came from "spread" in its sense of a newspaper or magazine item (text and/or graphics) that covers two facing pages, extending across the center fold and treating the two pages as one
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chart or graph is a type of information graphic or graphic organizer that represents tabular numeric data and/or functions. Charts are often used to make it easier to understand large quantities of data and the relationship between different parts of the data.
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presentation program is a computer software package used to display information, normally in the form of a slide show. It typically includes three major functions: an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted, a method for inserting and manipulating graphic images and a
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A word processor (more formally known as document preparation system) is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of printable material.
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Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards.
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Extensible Markup Language

File extension: .xml
MIME type: application/xml, text/xml (deprecated)
Uniform Type Identifier: public.xml
Developed by: World Wide Web Consortium
Type of format: Markup language
Extended from: SGML
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OpenOffice.org (OO.o or OOo) is an office suite application available free of charge for a number of different computer operating systems. It supports the OpenDocument standard for data interchange as its default file formats, as well as Microsoft Office '97-2003
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In computing, an office suite, sometimes called an office application suite or productivity suite is a software suite intended to be used by typical clerical worker and knowledge workers.
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OpenOffice.org XML was the file format developed from the StarOffice file formats. OpenOffice.org used the format in version 1.

Both StarOffice (since version 8) and OpenOffice.org (since version 2) have switched to OpenDocument as their native format.
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International Organization for Standardization (Organisation internationale de normalisation), widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations.
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The International Electrotechnical Commission[1] (IEC) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental international standards organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies – collectively known
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An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it.

The terms "open" and "standard" have a wide range of meanings associated with their usage.
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This document describes the technical specifications of the OpenDocument office document standard, as developed by the OASIS industry consortium. The standard was publicly developed by a variety of organizations, and is publicly accessible, meaning it can be implemented by anyone
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A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to indicate its type. It is commonly used to infer information about what sort of data might be stored in the file.
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Word processing is the ability to create documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter.
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spreadsheet is a rectangular table (or grid) of information, often financial information. The word came from "spread" in its sense of a newspaper or magazine item (text and/or graphics) that covers two facing pages, extending across the center fold and treating the two pages as one
..... Click the link for more information.
Presentation is the process of presenting the content of a topic to an audience. A presentation program, such as OpenOffice.org Impress, Apple Keynote, i-Ware CD Technologies' PMOS or Microsoft PowerPoint, is often used to generate the presentation content.
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Graphics (from Greek ; see -graphy) are visual presentations on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, computer screen, paper, or stone to brand, inform, illustrate, or entertain.
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formula (plural: formulae, formulæ or formulas) is a concise way of expressing information symbolically (as in a mathematical or chemical formula), or a general relationship between quantities.
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Extensible Markup Language

File extension: .xml
MIME type: application/xml, text/xml (deprecated)
Uniform Type Identifier: public.xml
Developed by: World Wide Web Consortium
Type of format: Markup language
Extended from: SGML
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ZIP

A zip archive icon from the Nuvola icon set.
File extension: .zip
MIME type: application/zip
Uniform Type Identifier: com.pkware.
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Lossless data compression is a class of data compression algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data. This can be contrasted to lossy data compression, which does not allow the exact original data to be reconstructed from the
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In computer science, separation of concerns (SoC) is the process of breaking a computer program into distinct features that overlap in functionality as little as possible. A concern is any piece of interest or focus in a program.
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Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S. non-profit corporation founded in 2001.

Many of the licences, notably all the original licences, grant certain "baseline rights",[1]
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ISO/IEC DIS 26300, Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 draft International Standard (DIS), and it was published November 30 2006 as ISO/IEC 26300:2006 Information technology -- Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.
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Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards.
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