OpenDocument

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OpenDocument or ODF, short for the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications, is a document file format used for describing electronic documents such as memos, reports, books, spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. This standard was developed by a Technical Committee under the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards consortium and based upon the XML format originally created and implemented by the OpenOffice.org office suite. OpenDocument is an OASIS Standard and a published ISO and IEC International Standard referred to as ISO/IEC 26300:2006.^[1]

The OpenDocument standard meets the common definitions of an Open Standard, meaning the specification is freely available and implementable.

Contents 1 Specifications 2 Standardization 3 Application support 3.1 Software 3.2 Accessibility 4 Licensing 5 Promotion 6 Adoption 7 Criticism 7.1 No digital signature 7.2 Representation of mathematical formulæ 7.3 Spreadsheet formula description 7.4 Use of tables in presentations 7.5 Lack of standard macro/scripting 7.6 Native Java applets 7.7 Forces excessive application specific namespace extensions 7.8 Sun's OpenDocument Patent Statement 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Specifications

Main article: OpenDocument technical specification

The most common file extensions used for OpenDocument documents are:

• .odt for word processing (text) documents
• .ods for spreadsheets
• .odp for presentations
• .odg for graphics
• .odf for formulae, mathematical equations

An OpenDocument file can be either a simple XML file that uses <office:document> as the root element, or a ZIP compressed archive containing a number of files and directories. The ZIP-based format is used almost exclusively, since it can contain binary content and tends to be significantly smaller. OpenDocument also has the benefit of separating the content, styles, metadata and application settings into four separate XML files. This is a good example of the architectural principle of Separation of concerns.

There is a comprehensive set of sample documents in OpenDocument Format^[2] available. The whole test suite is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.

[edit] 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.

Italian standardization organization UNI, adopt it since January 25, 2007

Further standardization work with OpenDocument includes:

• OpenDocument 1.0 (second edition) 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 the final text from the ISO/IEC project editor.
• 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 formulas 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] However, upon learning that many of its activities will be completed far before then (e.g., the formula subcommittee expects to complete in December 2006), the group has agreed to develop a newer accelerated schedule.^[10]

[edit] Application support

[edit] Software

Main article: OpenDocument software

A number of existing applications and programs (both free and proprietary) support OpenDocument. Three of the most prominent office suites supporting OpenDocument are OpenOffice.org and KOffice, both free software, and StarOffice, a proprietary software.

Since there are a number of independent implementations of the ODF standard, of various degrees of maturity and completeness, it is not surprising that interoperability testing is needed. The OpenDocument Fellowship has performed some tests and scored the various implementations.^[11]

The OpenDocument Foundation and other third parties have also announced development of plugins and filters to support OpenDocument on Microsoft's products.^[12][13]

Although Microsoft Office does not support OpenDocument, Microsoft has created the Open XML translator ^[14] project to create technical bridge 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 early 2007 and plans versions later in 2007 for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.^[15]. The covenant is limited to versions of the OpenDocument specification on which Sun has participated to the point of incurring an obligation.

[edit] 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 USA-based 501c(3) non profit organisation 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.

[edit] 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^[16]. 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, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States, have been examining the ramifications of selecting a document format. Other governments around the world are also considering the adoption of the format. In October 2006, a report commissioned by the French prime minister Dominique de Villepin recommended that all French government publications be made available in OpenDocument Format.^[17]

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. [1]

[edit] Criticism

[edit] No digital signature

Even though OpenOffice allows digital signatures and stores them in ODF files according to XML-DSig, the OpenDocument Format 1.0-1.1 itself has no reference to the digital signature. Digital signature is application-specific feature of OpenOffice and not part of the document standard and other applications implementing ODF (e.g. KOffice) do not implement digital signature.

[edit] Representation of mathematical formulæ

Some mathematicians do not think that the choice of the MathML W3C standard for use in OpenDocument is a good choice^{[citation needed]}. MathML ^[18] is a W3C recommendation for the "inclusion of mathematical expressions in Web pages" and "machine to machine communication" that has been around since about 1999. However, most mathematicians continue to use the (much older) TeX format as their main method for typesetting complex mathematical formulæ. TeX is not an ISO standard, but is the de facto standard for typesetting mathematical expressions. OpenDocument is also criticized for not using the ISO 12083:1994 standard for mathematical formulæ, which is not used within MathML either. MathML has a few issues^[19] with representing mathematical formulæ correctly compared to other methods like TeX.

[edit] Spreadsheet formula description

The OpenDocument ISO specification does not contain a defined formula language. This means that ISO conforming files do not have to be compatible ^[20]. OASIS is working on creating a standard formula language for use in future versions of the format.

[edit] Use of tables in presentations

The OpenDocument ISO specification does not allow for tables in presentations. This is being worked on for a later version of the OpenDocument specification, but was not included in the ISO submission version ^[21]. A current recommendation or workaround is to embed a spreadsheet into the presentation to provide the required functionality.

[edit] Lack of standard macro/scripting

Different applications using ODF as a standard document format have different methods of providing macro/scripting capabilities. There is no macro language specified in ODF. It is arguable whether there should be or not ^[22].

[edit] Native Java applets

Java applets are described as native objects in the OpenDocument specification (§9.3.4). This means any full implementations will require a Java Virtual Machine present from within the application. However, conformance to the standard does not require a full implementation.

[edit] Forces excessive application specific namespace extensions

The ODF standard is insufficiently detailed, requiring excessive application specific namespace extensions to record document features. These application specific namespace extensions are not necessarily interoperable between ODF compliant applications. ^[23]

[edit] Sun's OpenDocument Patent Statement

The Sun OpenDocument Patent Statement ^[24] applies to a future version of ODF only if Sun participates in development of that version. If Sun does not participate, then the assurance not to seek to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation will not apply.

[edit] See also

• List of document markup languages
• Comparison of document markup languages
• OpenDocument software comparison
• Comparison of OpenDocument and Office Open XML formats
• Comparison of OpenDocument and Office Open XML licensing

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee coordinates the OpenDocument development and is the official source for specifications, schemas, etc.
• OASIS Specifications
• OASIS ODF Adoption Committee works to increase the demand for and availability of products that conform to the OpenDocument Format
• OpenDocument Format Alliance "works globally to educate policymakers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of the OpenDocument Format"
• OpenDocument XML.org Official community gathering place and information resource for OpenDocument
• spreadopendocument.org advocates OpenDocument
• Friends of OpenDocument advocates OpenDocument
• OASIS OpenDocument Essentials Using OASIS OpenDocument XML shows you how to take advantage of this format.
• List of Applications that support the OpenDocument file format