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
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
files. It was developed with the aim of providing an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications.
It is also the default format for documents in typical
Linux distributions.
The standard is developed and maintained by a technical committee in the
(OASIS) consortium. It was based on the
Sun Microsystems specification for
OpenOffice.org XML, the default format for
OpenOffice.org and
LibreOffice. It was originally developed for
StarOffice "to provide an open standard for office documents."
In addition to being an OASIS standard, it is published as an
ISO/
IEC
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...
international standard ISO/IEC 26300 Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument).
In 2021 the current version is 1.3.
Specifications
The most common
filename extensions used for OpenDocument documents are:
*
.odt
and
.fodt
for
word processing (text) documents
*
.ods
and
.fods
for
spreadsheets
*
.odp
and
.fodp
for
presentations
*
.odg
and
.fodg
for
graphics
*
.odf
for
formula, mathematical equations
The original OpenDocument format consists of an
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
document that has
as its
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 example documents in OpenDocument format available. The whole test suite is available under the
Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.
History
Conception
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. Active TC members have voting rights. Members associated with Sun and IBM have sometimes had a large voting influence. 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 16 December 2002. OASIS approved OpenDocument as an OASIS standard on 1 May 2005. OASIS submitted the ODF specification to
ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) on 16 November 2005, under Publicly Available Specification (PAS) rules. ISO/IEC standardization for an open document standard including text, spreadsheet and presentation was proposed for the first time in
DKUUG 28 August 2001.
After a six-month review period, on 3 May 2006, OpenDocument unanimously passed its six-month DIS (Draft International Standard) ballot in
JTC 1
ISO/IEC JTC 1, entitled "Information technology", is a joint technical committee (JTC) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Its purpose is to develop, maintain and pr ...
(
ISO/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 ...
), with broad participation, after which the OpenDocument specification was "approved for release as an ISO and IEC International Standard" under the name ISO/IEC 26300:2006.
After responding to all written ballot comments, and a 30-day default ballot, the OpenDocument
international standard went to publication in ISO, officially published 30 November 2006.
In 2006,
Garry Edwards, a member of OASIS TC since 2002,
along with Sam Hiser, and Paul "Marbux" E. Merrell
founded the OpenDocument Foundation. The aim of this project was to be open-source representative of the format in OASIS.
The immediate aim of this project was to develop software that would convert legacy
Microsoft Office documents to ODF. By October 2007 the project was a failure: Conversion of Microsoft Office documents could not be achieved.
By this time, The foundation was convinced that ODF was not moving in a direction that they supported.
As a result, it announced the decision to abandon its namesake format in favor of
W3C's
Compound Document Format (CDF), which was in early stages of its development.
The foundation, however, never acted on this decision and was soon dissolved. The CDF was never designed for this purpose either.
Further standardization
Further standardization work with OpenDocument includes:
* The
OASIS Committee Specificatio
OpenDocument 1.0 (second edition)corresponds to the published ISO/IEC 26300:2006 standard. The content of ISO/IEC 26300 and OASIS OpenDocument v1.0 2nd ed. is identical.
It includes the editorial changes made to address JTC1 ballot comments. It is available in ODF, HTML and PDF formats.
* '
OpenDocument 1.1'' includes additional features to address accessibility concerns. It was approved as an OASIS Standard on 2007-02-01 following a call for vote issued on 2007-01-16. The public announcement was made on 2007-02-13. This version was not initially submitted to ISO/IEC, because it is considered to be a minor update to ODF 1.0 only, and OASIS were working already on ODF 1.2 at the time ODF 1.1 was approved. However it was later submitted to ISO/IEC (as of March 2011, it was in "enquiry stage" as Draft Amendment 1 ISO/IEC 26300:2006/DAM 1) and published in March 2012 as "ISO/IEC 26300:2006/Amd 1:2012 – Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.1".
* '
OpenDocument 1.2'' includes additional accessibility features,
RDF-based metadata,
a spreadsheet formula specification based on
OpenFormula
OpenFormula is an open standard for exchanging recalculated formulae in spreadsheets. OpenFormula is included in version 1.2 of the OpenDocument standard. OpenFormula was proposed and initially drafted by David A. Wheeler.
History Discussion ...
,
support for
digital signatures and some features suggested by the public. It consists of three parts: Part 1: OpenDocument Schema, Part 2: Recalculated Formula (OpenFormula) Format and Part 3: Packages. Version 1.2 of the specification was approved as an OASIS Standard on 29 September 2011.
It was submitted to the relevant ISO committee under the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) procedure in March 2014. As of October 2014, it has been unanimously approved as a Draft International Standard, some comments have been raised in process that need to be addressed before OpenDocument 1.2 can proceed to become an International Standard. OpenDocument 1.2 was published as ISO/IEC standard on 17 June 2015.
* '
OpenDocument 1.3 Committee Specification'': Version 1.3 of the OpenDocument specification was approved as an OASIS Committee Specification at the end of December 2019, permitting implementation of the new proposed standard. The specification was completed as the result of the COSM crowdfunding project seeded by
The Document Foundation. In January 2020 Version 1.3 was approved.
* The OASIS Advanced Document Collaboration subcommittee (created in December, 2010) is working on an update of OpenDocument change-tracking that will not only enhance the existing change-tracking feature set, but also lay the foundation for the standardization of
real-time collaboration by making change tracking compatible with real-time collaboration.
Application support
Software
The OpenDocument format is used in
free software and in
proprietary software. This includes
office suites
Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintin ...
(both stand-alone and web-based) and individual applications such as word-processors, spreadsheets, presentation, and data management applications. Prominent text editors, word processors and office suites supporting OpenDocument fully or partially include:
*
AbiWord
*
Adobe Buzzword
*
Apache OpenOffice
*
Bean (software)
*
Calibre ebook viewer, converter, editor, and manager
*
Calligra Suite
*
Collabora Office and
Collabora Online
*
Corel
Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo (pronounced like "all you do"), is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation ( ; from the abbreviat ...
WordPerfect Office X6
*
Dropbox
*
Evince
Evince (), also known as GNOME Document Viewer, is a free and open source document viewer supporting many document file formats including PDF, PostScript, DjVu, TIFF, XPS and DVI. It is designed for the GNOME desktop environment.
The deve ...
*
Gnumeric
*
Google Docs
*
IBM Lotus Symphony
*
Inkscape exports
.odg
*
KOffice
*
LibreOffice
*
Microsoft Office 2003 and
Office XP (with the Open Source OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office)
*
Microsoft Office 2007 (with Service Pack 2 or 3) supports ODF 1.1 (Windows only)
*
Microsoft Office 2010 supports ODF 1.1 (Windows only)
*
Microsoft Office 2013
Microsoft Office 2013 (codenamed Office 15) is a version of Microsoft Office, a productivity suite for Microsoft Windows. It is the successor to Microsoft Office 2010 and the predecessor to Microsoft Office 2016. Unlike with Office 2010, no OS X ...
supports ODF 1.2 (Windows only)
*
Microsoft Office 2016
Microsoft Office 2016 (First perpetual release of Office 16) is a version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite, succeeding both Office 2013 and Office for Mac 2011 and preceding Office 2019, which in turn was succeeded by Office 2021 f ...
and
2019 support ODF 1.2 (Windows: read/write; OS X: read-only after online conversion)
*
Microsoft Office 2021 supports ODF 1.3 (Windows and MacOS)
*
Microsoft OneDrive /
Office Web Apps
*
NeoOffice
*
Okular
Okular is a multiplatform document viewer developed by the KDE community and based on Qt and KDE Frameworks libraries. It is distributed as part of the KDE Applications bundle. Its origins are from KPDF and it replaces KPDF, KGhostView, KFax, ...
*
ONLYOFFICE
*
OpenOffice.org
*
Scribus imports
.odt
and
.odg
*
SoftMaker Office
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 ...
*
Sun Microsystems StarOffice
*
TextEdit
*
WordPad
WordPad is the basic word processor that has been included with almost all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onwards. It is more advanced than Windows Notepad, and simpler than Microsoft Word and Microsoft Works (last updated in 2007 ...
(Windows 7 and later, Windows Server 2008 R2 and later) supports ODF 1.1
*
Zoho Office Suite
Various organizations have announced development of conversion software (including ''plugins'' and ''filters'') to support OpenDocument on
Microsoft's products. , there are nine packages of conversion software. Microsoft first released support for the OpenDocument Format in Office 2007 SP2. However, the implementation faced
substantial criticism and the
ODF Alliance and others claimed that the third party plugins provided better support.
Microsoft Office 2010 can open and save OpenDocument Format documents natively, although not all features are supported.
Starting with
Mac OS X 10.5
Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5) is the sixth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X Tig ...
, the
TextEdit application and
Quick Look
Quick Look is a quick preview feature developed by Apple Inc. which was introduced in its operating system Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The feature was announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Jun. 11, 2007.
While macOS's Finder has alway ...
preview feature support the OpenDocument Text format.
Accessibility
Licensing
Public access to the standard
Versions of the OpenDocument Format approved by
OASIS are available for free download and use. The
ITTF has added ISO/IEC 26300 to its "list of freely available standards"; anyone may download and use this standard free-of-charge under the terms of a click-through license.
Additional royalty-free licensing
Obligated members of the OASIS ODF TC have agreed to make deliverables available to implementors under the OASIS Royalty Free with Limited Term
policy
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 in which development Sun participates to the point of incurring an obligation.
A second contributor to ODF development,
IBM – which, for instance, has contributed Lotus spreadsheet documentation – has made their patent rights available through their'' Interoperability Specifications Pledge'' in which "IBM irrevocably covenants to you that it will not assert any Necessary Claims against you for your making, using, importing, selling, or offering for sale Covered Implementations."
The
Software Freedom Law Center
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is an organization that provides '' pro bono'' legal representation and related services to not-for-profit developers of free software/open source software. It was launched in February 2005 with Eben Mogle ...
ha
examinedwhether there are any legal barriers to the use of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) in free and open source software arising from the standardization process. In their opinion ODF is free of legal encumbrances that would prevent its use in free and open source software, as distributed under licenses authored by Apache and the FSF.
Response
Support for OpenDocument
Several governments, companies, organizations and software products support the OpenDocument format. For example:
* The OpenDoc Society runs frequent
ODF Plugfests in association with industry groups and Public Sector organisations. The 10th Plugfest was hosted by the UK
Government Digital Service in conjunction with industry associations including the
OpenForum Europe
OpenForum Europe (OFE) is a European open source software and open standard not-for-profit think tank. Its key objective is to contribute to achieve an open and competitive digital ecosystem in Europe. Based in Brussels, it launched its operatio ...
and
OpenUK (formerly Open Source Consortium).
** An output of the 10th Plugfest was an ODF toolkit which includes "Open Document Format principles for Government Technology" that has the purpose of simply explaining the case for ODF directed at the "average civil servant" and includes an extract from the UK Government policy relating to Open Document Format.
** The toolkit also includes a single page graphical image designed to articulate the consequences of not choosing Open Document Format. The illustration has now been translated into more than 10 languages.
* Information technology companies like
Apple Inc.,
Adobe Systems,
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
,
IBM,
Intel,
Microsoft,
Nokia,
Novell,
Red Hat,
Oracle as well as other companies who may or may not be working inside the OASIS OpenDocument Adoption Technical Committee.
* Over 600 companies and organizations promote OpenDocument format through The
OpenDocument Format Alliance.
*
NATO with its 26 members uses ODF as a mandatory standard for all members.
* The TAC (Telematics between Administrations Committee), composed of e-government policy-makers from the 25
European Union Member States, endorsed a set of recommendations for promoting the use of open document formats in the public sector.
* The free office suites
Apache OpenOffice,
Calligra,
KOffice,
NeoOffice and
LibreOffice all use OpenDocument as their default file format.
* Several organisations, such as th
OpenDocument Fellowshipan
OpenDoc Societywere founded to support and promote OpenDocument.
* The UK government has adopted ODF as the standard for all documents in the UK civil service
* The Russian government has recommended adopting ODF as the standard in the public sector as by GOST R ISO/MEK 26300-2010
* The
Wikimedia Foundation supports ODF export from
MediaWiki, which powers
Wikipedia and a number of other Internet
wiki-based sites.
* The default text processing applications in Windows 10 (
WordPad
WordPad is the basic word processor that has been included with almost all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onwards. It is more advanced than Windows Notepad, and simpler than Microsoft Word and Microsoft Works (last updated in 2007 ...
) and Mac OS 10.9 (
TextEdit) support OpenDocument Text.
On 4 November 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, 10 November 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. Scholars have suggested that the "OpenDocument standard is the wedge that can hold open the door for competition, particularly with regard to the specific concerns of the public sector."
Indeed, adoption by the public sector has risen considerably since the promulgation of the OpenDocument format initiated the 2005/2006 time period.
* Different applications using ODF as a standard document format have different methods of providing macro/scripting capabilities. There is no
macro language
In computer programming, a macro (short for "macro instruction"; ) is a rule or pattern that specifies how a certain input should be mapped to a replacement output. Applying a macro to an input is known as macro expansion. The input and outpu ...
specified in ODF. Users and developers differ on whether inclusion of a standard scripting language would be desirable.
* The ODF specification for tracked changes is limited and does not fully specify all cases, resulting in implementation-specific behaviors. In addition, OpenDocument does not support change tracking in elements like tables or
MathML.
* It is not permitted to use generic ODF formatting style elements (like font information) for the MathML elements.
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. Several governments around the world have introduced policies of partial or complete adoption.
What this means varies from case to case; in some cases, it means that the ODF standard has a national standard identifier; in some cases, it means that the ODF standard is permitted to be used where national regulation says that non-proprietary formats must be used, and in still other cases, it means that some government body has actually decided that ODF will be used in some specific context. The following is an incomplete list:
* International
**
NATO
**
European Union
*
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest ...
*
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...
*
Brazil
*
Croatia
*
Finland
*
Denmark
*
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
*
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
*
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...
*
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
*
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
*
Japan
*
Latvia
*
Malaysia
*
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
*
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...
*
Poland
*
Portugal
*
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
*
Slovakia
*
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...
*
Serbia
*
South Africa
*
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...
*
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
*
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...
*
Turkey
*
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
*
Uruguay
*
Venezuela
* Subnational
**
Andalusia, Spain
**
Assam, India
**
Extremadura, Spain
**
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...
, China
**
Kerala, India
**
Massachusetts, United States
**
Misiones, Argentina
**
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...
, Bavaria, Germany
**
Paraná, Brazil
See also
*
OpenDocument technical specification
*
Comparison of Office Open XML and OpenDocument
*
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 ...
*
OpenDocument software
*
Reactions to Microsoft lobbying at ISO
Notes
References
External links
*
OpenDocumentFormat.orgPortal for consumers, business users, and developers with information on OpenDocument format.
OpenDoc SocietyAssociation with members around the world that promote best practices in office productivity such as OpenDocument format.
OpenDocument FellowshipVolunteer organization with members around the world to promote the adoption, use, and development of the OpenDocument format.
OpenDocument XML.orgThe official community gathering place and information resource for the OpenDocument OASIS Standard (ISO/IEC 26300).
OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committeecoordinates the OpenDocument development and is the official source for specifications, schemas, etc.
Microsoft Office (2007, 2010 and 2013), Differences between the OpenDocument Text (.odt) format and the Word (.docx) format* https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/pc-crashes-randomly/b1c93c5f-8733-490f-b681-ad5a08a24623
{{Authority control
Computer file formats
Document-centric XML-based standards
ISO/IEC 26300
Open standards
Open file formats
Office document file formats
Markup languages
OpenOffice