Background
In 2000, Microsoft released an initial version of anStandardization process
Microsoft submitted initial material to Ecma International Technical Committee TC45, where it was standardized to become ECMA-376, approved in December 2006. This standard was then fast-tracked in the Joint Technical Committee 1 of ISO and IEC. After initially failing to pass, an amended version of the format received the necessary votes for approval as an ISO/IEC Standard as the result of aLicensing
Under the Ecma International code of conduct in patent matters, participating and approving member organizations of ECMA are required to make available their patent rights on a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) basis. Holders of patents which concern ISO/IEC International Standards may agree to a standardized license governing the terms under which such patents may be licensed, in accord with the ISO/Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification hellip;/blockquote> This is limited to applications which do not deviate from the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 or Ecma-376 standard and to parties that do not "file, maintain or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of such Covered Specification". The Open Specification Promise was included in documents submitted to ISO/IEC in support of the ECMA-376 fast-track submission. Ecma International asserted that, "The OSP enables both open source and commercial software to implement he specification.
Versions
The Office Open XML specification exists in several versions.
ECMA-376 1st edition (2006)
The ECMA standard is structured in five parts to meet the needs of different audiences. ; ;Part 1. Fundamentals :* Vocabulary, notational conventions and abbreviations :* Summary of primary and supporting markup languages :* Conformance conditions and interoperability guidelines :* Constraints within the Open Packaging Conventions that apply to each document type ; ;Part 2. Open Packaging Conventions :* The Open Packaging Conventions (OPC), for the package model and physical package, is defined and used by various document types in various applications from multiple vendors. :* It defines core properties, thumbnails, digital signatures, and authorizations & encryption capabilities for parts or all of the contents in the package. :* XML schemas for the OPC are declared as XML Schema Definitions (XSD) and (non-normatively) using RELAX NG (ISO/IEC 19757-2) ; ;Part 3. Primer :* Informative (non-normative) introduction to WordprocessingML, SpreadsheetML, PresentationML, DrawingML, VML and Shared MLs, providing context and illustrating elements through examples and diagrams :* Describes the custom XML data-storing facility within a package to support integration with business data ; ;Part 4. Markup Language Reference :* Contains the reference material for WordprocessingML, SpreadsheetML, PresentationML, DrawingML, Shared MLs and Custom XML Schema, defining every element and attribute including the element hierarchy (parent/child relationships) :* XML schemas for the markup languages are declared as XSD and (non-normatively) using RELAX NG :* Defines the custom XML data-storing facility ; ;Part 5. Markup Compatibility and Extensibility :* Describes extension facilities of OpenXML documents and specifies elements & attributes through which applications can operate across different extensions. Later versions of the ECMA-376 standard are aligned and technically equivalent to the corresponding ISO standard.
ISO/IEC 29500:2008
The ISO/IEC standard is structured into four parts: Parts 1, 2 and 3 are independent standards; for example, Part 2, specifying Open Packaging Conventions, is used by other file formats including XPS andDesign Web Format Design Web Format (DWF) is a file format developed by Autodesk for the efficient distribution and communication of rich design data to anyone who needs to view, review, or print design files. Because DWF files are highly compressed, they are sm .... Part 4 is to be read as a modification to Part 1, which it requires. A technically equivalent set of texts is also published by Ecma as ECMA-376 2nd edition (2008). ; ;Part 1. Fundamentals & Markup Language Reference :Consisting of 5560 pages, this part contains: :* Conformance definitions :* Reference material for the XML document markup languages defined by the Standard :* XML schemas for the document markup languages declared using XSD and (non-normatively) RELAX NG :* Defines the foreign markup facilities ; ;Part 2. Open Packaging Conventions : Consisting of 129 pages, this part contains: :* A description of the Open Packaging Conventions (package model, physical package) :* Core properties,thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and imag ...s anddigital signature A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature, where the prerequisites are satisfied, gives a recipient very high confidence that the message was created b ...s :* XML schemas for the OPC are declared using XSD and (non-normatively) RELAX NG ; ;Part 3. Markup Compatibility and Extensibility : Consisting of 40 pages, this part contains: :* A description of ''extensions'': elements & attributes which define mechanisms allowing applications to specify alternative means of negotiating content :* Extensibility rules are expressed usingNVDL {{Onesource, date=March 2009 Namespace-based Validation Dispatching Language (NVDL) is an XML schema language for validating XML documents that integrate with multiple namespaces. It is an ISO/IEC standard, and it is Part 4 of the DSDL schema spec ...; ;Part 4. Transitional Migration Features : Consisting of 1464 pages, this part contains: :* Legacy material such as compatibility settings and the graphics markup language VML :* A list of syntactic differences between this text and ECMA-376 1st Edition The standard specifies two levels of document & application conformance, ''strict'' and ''transitional,'' for each of WordprocessingML, PresentationML and SpreadsheetML, and also specifies applications' descriptions of ''base'' and ''full''.
Compatibility between versions
The intent of the changes from ECMA-376 1st Edition to ISO/IEC 29500:2008 was that a valid ECMA-376 document would also be a valid ISO 29500 Transitional document; however, at least one change introduced at the BRM—refusing to allow further values for xsd:boolean—had the effect of breaking backwards-compatibility for most documents. A fix for this had been suggested toISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, Document description and processing languages is a subcommittee of the ISO/IEC JTC 1 joint technical committee, which is a collaborative effort of both the International Organization for Standardization and the International .../WG 4, and was approved in June 2009 as a recommendation for the first revision to Office Open XML. Applications capable of reading documents compliant to ECMA-376 Edition 1 would regard ISO/IEC 29500-4 Transitional documents containing ISO 8601 dates as corrupt.
Application support
Some older versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office are able to read and write.docx
files after installation of the free compatibility pack provided by Microsoft, although some items, such as equations, are converted into images that cannot be edited. Starting with Microsoft Office 2007, the Office Open XML file formats have become the default file format ofMicrosoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin .... However, due to the changes introduced in the Office Open XML standard, Office 2007 is not wholly in compliance with ISO/IEC 29500:2008. Office 2010 includes support for opening documents of the ISO/IEC 29500:2008-compliant version of Office Open XML, but it can only save documents conforming to the ''transitional'', not the ''strict'', schemas of the specification. Note that the intent of the ISO/IEC is to allow the removal of the transitional variant from the ISO/IEC 29500 standard. The ability to read and write Office Open XML format is, however, not limited to Microsoft Office; other office products are also able to read & write this format: * Collabora Online for Online, Mobile and Desktop apps are able to open and save Office Open XML files. * SoftMaker Office 2010 is able to read and writeDOCX
andXLSX
files in its word processor & spreadsheet applications. * LibreOffice is able to open and save Office Open XML files. * OpenOffice.org and Apache OpenOffice from version 3.0 has been able to import Office Open XML files, but not save them. Version 3.2 improved this feature with read support even for password-protected Office Open XML files. * The Go-oo fork of OpenOffice could also write OOXML files. * KOffice from version 2.2 and later was able to import OOXML files. * Calligra Suite is able to import Office Open XML files. * NeoOffice, an OpenOffice.org fork for OS X can import, support to save OOXML started in 2017. *OnlyOffice OnlyOffice (formerly TeamLab), stylized as ONLYOFFICE, is a free software office suite developed by Ascensio System SIA, a subsidiary of "New Communication Technologies", a company from Russia, but headquartered in Riga, Latvia. In Russian mark ..., Online and Desktop editors compatible with OOXML andOpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was develope ...files Other office products that offer import support for the Office Open XML formats include: * TextEdit (included withmacOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...) * iWork * IBM Lotus Notes *Abiword AbiWord () is a free and open-source software word processor. It is written in C++ and since version 3 it is based on GTK+ 3. The name "AbiWord" is derived from the root of the Spanish word "'' abierto''", meaning "open".Project MascoAbi the ...* Gnumeric * WordPerfect * WPS Office *Google Docs Google Docs is an online word processor included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google, which also includes: Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep. Go ...*SoftMaker FreeOffice SoftMaker Office is an office suite developed since 1987 by the German company SoftMaker Software GmbH based in Nuremberg. A freeware version is released as well, under the name of SoftMaker FreeOffice. Components SoftMaker Office include ...
See also
* Comparison of document markup languages *List of document markup languages The following is a list of document markup languages. You may also find the List of markup languages of interest. Well-known document markup languages * HyperText Markup Language (HTML) – the original markup language that was defined as a part ...* Microsoft Word and Excel password protection *Standardization of Office Open XML The Office Open XML file formats were standardised between December 2006 and November 2008, first by the Ecma International consortium (where they became ECMA-376), and subsequently, after a contentious standardization process, by the ISO/ IEC's ...
References
Further reading
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External links
ISO/IEC 29500 standards
{{Authority control Computer file formats Document-centric XML-based standards Ecma standards ISO/IEC 29500 Markup languages Microsoft Office Open formats XML