OASIS OpenDocument Format

Release: 2009-12-18
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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, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Corel, Red Hat and Novell.

The OpenDocument Format (ODF) was approved by the Organisation of the Advancement of Structural Information Standards (OASIS) on May 1st 2005 and is also a global standard from the Organisation of International Standards (ISO) as of May 3^rd 2006 and published November 30^th 2006 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, 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, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Oracle, IBM, Opera Software and Apple are amongst many who actively support this standard.

OpenDocument 1.1, as of 1st February 2007, provided more accessibility support and is used by at least OpenOffice.org 2.4.

These days it is OpenDocument 1.2, as of 13^th October 2008 and is being reviewd by the ISO hopefully to be a global Standard. This version adds further accessibility, security integration, metadata and OpenFormula equation support and 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 Workplace;
• IBM Lotus Symphony (OpenDocument Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation only);
• Google Docs (OpenDocument Text & OpenDocument Spreadsheet);
• 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);
• MS Office 2008 Service Pack 2 and higher for Mac (OpenDocument Text in Word, OpenDocument Spreadsheet in Excel and OpenDocument Presentation in PowerPoint);
• Corel WordPerfect Office X4 (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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