OASIS OpenDocument Format
Release: 2010-06-21
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OpenDocument
Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) is an open document format providing word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, charts, databasing, formula and drawing regardless of program or operating system. It is a standard developed by a collection of companies including the OpenOffice.org Project, Oracle, IBM, Corel, Red Hat and Novell.
The OpenDocument Format (ODF) was approved by the Organisation of the Advancement of Structural Information Standards (OASIS) on and is also a global standard from the Organisation of International Standards (ISO) as of and published as ISO/IEC 26300:2006.
The format is based on the OpenOffice.org XML format but improved and extended to include databasing. It uses ZIP technology to archive and compress the collection of content, styling, settings, metadata as XML and related files including images that make up the physical documents:
- OpenDocument Text (.odt) – word process,
- OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) – spreadsheet,
- OpenDocument Presentation (.odp) – presentation,
- OpenDocument Drawing (.odg) – drawing (Vector Graphics),
- OpenDocument Database (.odb) – data management.
- OpenDocument Templates (.ott, .ots, .otp, .otg),
- OpenDocument Master Document (.otm),
- OpenDocument Formula (.odf),
- HTML Template (.oth).
Compared to proprietary formats, OpenDocument's file size is half or even a third of the size.
OpenOffice.org, Microsoft, Novell, KOffice, Corel, Adobe, Google, Oracle, Red Hat, IBM, Opera Software and Apple are amongst many who actively support this standard.
OpenDocument 1.1, as of , provided more accessibility support and is used by at least OpenOffice.org 2.4, Lotus Symphony 1.3 and Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 and higher.
These days it is OpenDocument 1.2, as of and is being reviewed by the ISO hopefully to be a global Standard. This version adds further accessibility, digital signatures, RDF metadata and OpenFormula based equation support amongst others. OpenDocument 1.2 is used in at least OpenOffice.org 3.
Applications natively supporting OpenDocument Format
Those that use OpenDocument Format by default:
- OpenOffice.org 2.x and higher;
- NeoOffice 2.2.1 and higher;
- StarOffice/StarSuite 8 and higher;
- KOffice 1.5 and higher;
- IBM Lotus Symphony (OpenDocument Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation only);
- OpenDocument Fellowship ODF Viewer;
- Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office 2000 and higher (Windows only, OpenDocument Text, Spreadsheet and Presentations only);
- Microsoft OpenXML/ODF Translator Plugins for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2002 and higher (Windows only);
- Mobile Office (Open OpenDocument Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation only);
- Aukyla 2.1;
- Firefox ODF Reader extension 0.2.1 (OpenDocument Text only for Mozilla Firefox 1.5+);
- Visioo-writer 0.6.1 (actually it's just a viewer) (OpenDocument Text (& OpenOffice.org Text) only);
- Copernic Desktop Search 2.1.1 (OpenDocument Text, Spreadsheet, Drawing only);
- Beagle Desktop Search 0.2.17 (OpenDocument Text, Spreadsheet, Drawing only).
Other Applications that support OpenDocument
- MS Office 2007 Service Pack 2 and higher (OpenDocument Text in Word, OpenDocument Spreadsheet in Excel and OpenDocument Presentation in PowerPoint);
- Google Docs (OpenDocument Text & OpenDocument Spreadsheet);
- Corel WordPerfect Office X4 and X5 (Imperfect formatting but readable, Opens OpenDocument Text only);
- Plugin (version 1.0.1) for Google Desktop (no database supportf);
- Abiword 2.4.6 (Import and export OpenDocument Text (& OpenOffice.org Text) only);
- Scribus 1.3.3 (Import only, no database support);
- Apple TextEdit 1.5 and higher in Mac OS X.5 Leopard and X.6 Snow Leopard (low formatting support of OpenDocument Text only);
- MS WordPad 6.1 in Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2 (low formatting support of OpenDocument Text only);
- OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 (import only, no database support);
- StarOffice/StarSuite 7.5 (import only, no database support);
- NeoOffice 1.2 (import only, no database support).
More information is available at http://www.opendocumentfellowship.com.
Support continues to increase.
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