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This is an overview of software support for the OpenDocument format, an open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents.


Current support

A number of applications support the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications; listed alphabetically they include:


Text documents (.odt)


Word processors

*
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 Ant ...
2.4+ (import from 2.4.0, export from 2.4.2;Abiword 2.4.2 Release Notes
/ref> used to require separate download and installation of plugins – up to version 2.6.8). * Adobe Buzzword beta, a web-based word processor with limited ODF support owing to its beta status. *
Atlantis Word Processor Atlantis Word Processor is a stand-alone word processor for Microsoft Windows. It used to be known as "Atlantis Ocean Mind". Features Atlantis offers many features standard in other word processors. But it lacks some important features like col ...
1.6.5+ can import ODT documents.Atlantis Word Processor 1.6.5 Release Notes
* Calligra Words uses ODT as its native file format. * Collabora Office Writer for Mobile and Desktop apps uses ODT as its native file format. * Collabora Online Writer uses ODT as its native file format. * eyeOS Cloud computing operating system with eyeDocs Word Processor has basic support for ODF text documents. * EasiWriter (for RISC OS) Version 9.1 can import/save ODT files on RISC OS. * FileApp allows viewing OpenDocument files on iPhone and iPad. * FocusWriter, a distraction-free word processor. * Google Docs, a web-based word processor and spreadsheet application derived from the application ''Writely''.
https://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/tour3.html Google Docs Tour]
* Gwennel, a WYSIWYG word processor written in assembly language, under 200 KB.
http://gwennel.com/]
*
IBM Lotus Notes HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server, respectively, of a collaborative client-server software platform formerly sold by IBM, now by HC ...
8.0+ includes an office suite for creating text, spreadsheet and presentation files.IBM Ships Lotus Notes and Domino 8, 17 August 200

New features in Lotus Notes 8 softwar

/ref> * IBM Lotus Symphony Viewer allows viewing OpenDocument texts, spreadsheets and presentations on iPad and iPhone. * JustSystems Ichitaro (Japanese), read/write support via plug-in from version 2006, full built-in support from 2007.Ichitaro 2007 OpenDocument format suppor

http://www.justsystems.com/jp/justsuite/taro/opendoc/index.html], Ichitaro 200

/ref> * LibreOffice Writer (an
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) an ...
fork) uses ODT as its native file format. ** Go-oo, an OpenOffice.org fork which was later merged with Libreoffice (Development discontinued). * Microsoft Word native support since Office 2007 SP2 (support for previous versions are available through several plugins). ** Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office. ** Microsoft OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office. ** Currently no ODF support on the Mac OS X version of Microsoft Office. *
Mobile Office A mobile office is an office built within a truck, motorhome, trailer or purpose built shipping container. Most common are towable offices built on an axled iron frame for easy relocation. The term "mobile office" is also used for the workspac ...
, an office package for
Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian ...
mobile phones. * Microsoft WordPad included with Windows 7 has limited support for opening and saving in the ODT format. * Nisus Writer Pro 1.2+ for Mac OS X. *
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, both online and offline suites support ODT for opening, editing and exporting. * OpenDocument Viewer, a free Android app for reading ODT, released under
GPLv3 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...
(also available from F-Droid). * OpenOffice Writer – full support from 2.0,
http://marketing.openoffice.org/2.0/featureguide.html OpenOffice.org 2.0 features]
import-only in 1.1.5. ** IBM Lotus Symphony Documents 1.0+ (OpenOffice.org 1.0 derivative;IBM Lotus Symphony -
Development discontinued). ** NeoOffice Writer – full support from 2.0NeoOffice 2.0 Aqua Beta Release notes
/ref> (OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 derivative), import only in 1.2.2NeoOffice 1.2.2 Release notes
/ref> (OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 derivative).NeoOffice file formats
/ref> ** StarOffice 8+ Writer (OpenOffice.org 2.0 derivative;
http://www.linux.com/feature/48392 StarOffice 8 reviews]
Development discontinued). ** RomanianOffice, a proprietary word processor based on
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) an ...
. * Open Word Processor allows editing OpenDocument text files (.odt) on iPad. * ownCloud Documents, a plugin for
ownCloud ownCloud is an open-source software product for sharing and syncing of files in distributed and federated enterprise scenarios. It allows companies and remote end-users to organize their documents on servers, computers and mobile devices and w ...
, allows creation and collaborative editing of ODT files stored in ownCloud. * TechWriter (for RISC OS) Version 9.1 of TechWriter can import/save ODT files on RISC OS. * TextEdit, (In Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard) can read/write ODT format but does not retain all formatting.Mac OS X Leopard features – TextEdit
**
Bean A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes thr ...
1.1.0+, basic word processor with limited ODT support implemented in Mac OS X.http://www.bean-osx.com/Changelog.html, http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html *
TextMaker TextMaker is a word processor developed by the German company SoftMaker and available as part of the SoftMaker office suite. TextMaker is available for Windows, MacOS, Linux and Android. Some reduced versions of TextMaker are released as freew ...
starting with version 2008.SoftMaker TextMaker – Window

Linu

SoftMaker Office 2006 revie

/ref> * Visioo Writer 0.6.1 (in development) — document viewer, incomplete support.Visioo changelog
/ref> * WordPerfect Office (import-only in X4).Corel WordPerfect Office to Support Open Document Format and Microsoft Office Open XM

/ref> * Zoho Writer, an online word processor, allows reading and writing of ODT .Zoho Writer – supported file formats


Other applications

*
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...
's
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 ...
, the built-in quick preview feature of Mac OS X, supports OpenDocument format files starting with
Mac OS X v10.5 Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5) is the sixth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and is available in t ...
. Support is limited to basic ODF implementation in Mac OS X. * Oxygen XML Editor 9.3+ allows users to extract, validate, edit, transform (using XSLT or XQuery) to other file formats, compare and process the XML data stored in OpenDocument files. Validation uses the latest ODF Documents version 1.1 Relax NG Schemas.Oxygen XML Editor 9.3 features, 2 July 200

OpenDocument format suppor

/ref> *
IBM WebSphere IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of proprietary computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create and integrate applications ...
Portal 6.0.1+ can preview texts from ODT files as HTML documents.6.0.1: WebSphere Portal version 6.0 refresh pack 1, 17 May 200

, File formats supported for HTML previe

/ref> *
IBM Lotus Domino HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server, respectively, of a collaborative client-server software platform formerly sold by IBM, now by H ...
8.0+ KeyView (10.4.0.0) filter supports ODT, ODS, ODP for viewing files.KeyView filter formats supporte

LotusNotes, Domino, Domino DesignerRelease Notes Version 8.0.2
* FreeViewer ODT File Viewer, can read/write ODT files, can convert ODT files to HTML documents.


Data management

*
phpMyAdmin phpMyAdmin is a free and open source administration tool for MySQL and MariaDB. As a portable web application written primarily in PHP, it has become one of the most popular MySQL administration tools, especially for web hosting services. His ...
2.9.0+ – database manager, exports to ODT. phpMyAdmin exports data to ODT and OD


Text management

*
Dokuwiki DokuWiki is a wiki application licensed under GPLv2 and written in the PHP programming language. It works on plain text files and thus does not need a database. Its syntax is similar to the one used by MediaWiki. It is often recommended as a mo ...
wiki software Wiki software (also known as a wiki engine or a wiki application), is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows the users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web applicat ...
, exports to ODT with the odt plugin. *
Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwid ...
ODF Import – a Drupal module allows importing ODT files into CMS nodes. *
eZ publish eZ Publish (pronounced "easy publish") is an open-source enterprise PHP content management system that was developed by the Norwegian company Ibexa. eZ Publish is freely available under the GNU GPL version 2 license, as well as under proprietar ...
content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...
, supports import and export of writer documents via extension.eZ Publish – ODF Import / Export extension
/ref>OASIS Open Document extension, September 19, 2005
/ref> * Scribus 1.2.2+ — desktop publishing suite, imports ODT.Scribus – Change Log 1.2.2, 200

Support for OpenDocument (OASIS) Standard, 5 June 200

/ref>


Translation support

* OmegaT — computer-assisted translation tool, can import ODF files. * Translate Toolkit — converts OpenDocument into
XLIFF XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) is an XML-based bitext format created to standardize the way localizable data are passed between and among tools during a localization process and a common format for CAT tool exchange. The XLIFF ...
1.2 for localisation in any
XLIFF XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) is an XML-based bitext format created to standardize the way localizable data are passed between and among tools during a localization process and a common format for CAT tool exchange. The XLIFF ...
aware CAT tool.


Bibliographic

* RefWorks – Web-based commercial citation manager, supports uploading ODT files for citation formatting.


Spreadsheet documents (.ods)


Spreadsheets

*
Calligra Sheets Calligra Sheets (formerly ''KSpread'' and ''Calligra Tables'') is a free software spreadsheet application that is part of Calligra Suite, an integrated graphic art and office suite developed by KDE. Among Sheets’ features are multiple sheets p ...
uses ODS as default file format. * Collabora Office Calc for Mobile and Desktop apps uses ODS as its native file format. * Collabora Online Calc uses ODS as its native file format. *
EditGrid EditGrid was a Web 2.0 spreadsheet service, operated via Internet access (web-based application). It offered both a free-of-charge service to personal users and a subscription service to organizations and was available on a number of partner sit ...
, a web-based (online) spreadsheet service – full support.EditGrid featur

EditGrid changelog/blog 200

http://www.editgrid.com/changelog]
* FileApp allows viewing OpenDocument files on iPhone and iPad. * Gnumeric can both open and save files in this format and plans to continue to support this format in the future.OpenOffice.org XML File Format (aka ODF or OASIS)
/ref> * Google Docs, a web-based word processor and spreadsheet application which can read and save OpenDocument files. *
IBM Lotus Notes HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server, respectively, of a collaborative client-server software platform formerly sold by IBM, now by HC ...
8.0+ includes an office suite for creating text, spreadsheet and presentation files. * IBM Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets 1.0+ (OpenOffice.org 1.0 derivative; Development discontinued). * IBM Lotus Symphony Viewer allows viewing OpenDocument texts, spreadsheets and presentations on iPad and iPhone. * JustSystems JUST Suite 2009 Sanshiro (Japanese).JUST Suite 2009 Sanshir

JUST Suite 200

/ref> * LibreOffice Calc (an
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) an ...
fork) uses ODS as its native file format. * Microsoft Excel has native support for ODF since Excel 2007 Service Pack 2. When writing formulas Excel uses the spreadsheet formula language specified in ISO/IEC 29500 ( Office Open XML) which differs from the draft OpenFormula format used in other ODF implementations. ** Earlier versions of Microsoft Excel support OpenDocument with Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office. ** Partial support also with Microsoft OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office. *
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, both online and offline suites support ODF for opening, editing and exporting. * OpenOffice Calc – full support from 2.0, import-only in 1.1.5. ** NeoOffice – native support from 2.0 (OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 derivative), import only in 1.2.2 (OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 derivative). ** StarOffice 8+ Calc (OpenOffice 2.0 derivative; Development discontinued). * Zoho Sheet, an online spreadsheet application, can import and export ODS format.Zoho Sheet features
/ref>


Other applications

* Oxygen XML Editor 9.3+ allows users to extract, validate, edit, transform (using XSLT or XQuery) to other file formats, compare and process the XML data stored in OpenDocument files. Validation uses the latest ODF Documents version 1.1 Relax NG Schemas. *
IBM WebSphere IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of proprietary computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create and integrate applications ...
Portal 6.0.1+ can preview texts from ODS files as HTML documents. * odsgenerator v1.4.5+ allows generation of ODS files from JSON or YAML files.


Data management

*
phpMyAdmin phpMyAdmin is a free and open source administration tool for MySQL and MariaDB. As a portable web application written primarily in PHP, it has become one of the most popular MySQL administration tools, especially for web hosting services. His ...
2.9.0+ – database manager, exports to ODS, exports to system32\windows.


Knowledge management

* Knomos 1.0 – Law office management application. * EndNote X 1.0.1 – Reference management software.


Statistics

*
gretl gretl is an open-source statistical package, mainly for econometrics. The name is an acronym for ''G''nu ''R''egression, ''E''conometrics and ''T''ime-series ''L''ibrary. It has both a graphical user interface (GUI) and a command-line inter ...
1.7.0 – Statistical analysis software (import only).


Translation support

* OmegaT — Allows translation of comments and sheet names.


Presentation documents (.odp)


Presentation

* Calligra Stage uses ODP as default file format. * Collabora Office Impress for Mobile and Desktop apps uses ODP as its native file format. * Collabora Online Impress uses ODP as its native file format. * FileApp allows viewing OpenDocument files on iPhone and iPad. *
IBM Lotus Notes HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server, respectively, of a collaborative client-server software platform formerly sold by IBM, now by HC ...
8.0+ includes an office suite for creating text, spreadsheet and presentation files. * IBM Lotus Symphony Presentations 1.0+ (OpenOffice.org 1.0 derivative; Development discontinued). * IBM Lotus Symphony Viewer allows viewing OpenDocument texts, spreadsheets and presentations on iPad and iPhone. * JustSystems JUST Suite 2009 Agree (Japanese).JUST Suite 2009 Agre

JUST Suite 200

/ref> * LibreOffice Impress uses ODP as its native file format. * LibreOffice Online Impress uses ODP as its native file format. * Microsoft PowerPoint native support since Office 2007 SP2 (support for previous versions is available through several plugins). *
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, where both online and offline suites support ODF for opening, editing and exporting. * OpenOffice Impress – native support from 2.0, import-only in 1.1.5. ** NeoOffice 1.2 Impress (OpenOffice 1.1.5 derivative). ** NeoOffice 2.0 Impress (OpenOffice 2.0.3 derivative). ** StarOffice 8 Impress (OpenOffice 2.0 derivative; Development discontinued). *
WPS Office WPS Office (an acronym for Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheets, previously known as Kingsoft Office) is an office suite for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and HarmonyOS developed by Zhuhai-based Chinese software developer Kings ...
WPS Presentation support ppt, pot, pps, dps, dpt, pptx, potx, ppsx, pptm, potm, ppsm, dpss. * Zoho Show, an online presentation program, can import/export ODP format files.


Other applications

* Oxygen XML Editor 9.3+ allows users to extract, validate, edit, transform (using XSLT or XQuery) to other file formats, compare and process the XML data stored in OpenDocument files. Validation uses the latest ODF Documents version 1.1 Relax NG Schemas. *
IBM WebSphere IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of proprietary computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create and integrate applications ...
Portal 6.0.1+ can preview texts from ODP files as HTML documents.


Database documents (.odb)


Database

* LibreOffice Base (an
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) an ...
fork)


Graphics documents (.odg)

* Collabora Office Draw allows read/write of ODG files. * Collabora Online Draw can read/write ODG files. * Karbon, vector graphics editor, part of Calligra Suite — OpenDocument support since 1.5+ (import and export).Karbon ODG support – KOffice 1.4 Changelo

, KOffice 1.5 Changelo

* LibreOffice Draw uses ODG as its native file format. * JustSystems JUST Suite 2008+ Hanako (Japanese).JUST Suite 200

JUST Suite 2009 Hanak

JUST Suite 200

/ref> * OpenOffice.org, OpenOffice Draw – full support from 2.0, import-only in 1.1.5. ** NeoOffice Draw – full support from 2.0 (OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 derivative), import only in 1.2.2 (OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 derivative). ** StarOffice 8 Draw (OpenOffice 2.0 derivative; Development discontinued). * Scribus 1.2.2+ (import only) — Desktop publishing application. * Inkscape 0.44+ (export only) — vector graphics editor.Inkscape 0.4.4 Release notes, 22 June 200

Inkscape News Archiv


Other applications

*
IBM WebSphere IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of proprietary computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create and integrate applications ...
Portal 6.0.1+ can preview texts from ODG files as HTML documents.


Formula documents (.odf)

* KFormula 1.5+ (full native support). * LibreOffice Math — Allows read/write of ODF files. * Collabora Office for Desktop apps uses ODF as its native file format. *Math uses ODF as its native file format. * OpenOffice Math (full support from 2.0). ** NeoOffice 2.0 Math (OpenOffice 2.0.3 derivative).


Search tools

* Google supports searching in content of ODT, ODS, and ODP files and also searching for these filetypes. Found files can be viewed directly in a converted HTML view. *
Beagle The beagle is a breed of small scent hound, similar in appearance to the much larger foxhound. The beagle was developed primarily for hunting hare, known as beagling. Possessing a great sense of smell and superior tracking instincts, the ...
, Linux desktop search engine. Indexes and searches multiple file formats, including OpenDocument files. *
Google Desktop Search Google Desktop was a computer program with desktop search capabilities, created by Google for Linux, Apple Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows systems. It allowed text searches of a user's email messages, computer files, music, photos, chats, Web pag ...
has an unofficial OpenDocument plug-in available, supporting ODT, OTT, ODG, OTG, ODP, OTP, ODS, OTS, and ODF OpenDocument formats. The plug-in does not correctly handle Unicode characters. * Apple Spotlight (built into OS X 10.4 and later) supports indexed searching of OpenDocument files using a third-party plug-in from the NeoOffice team. * Copernic Desktop Search (Windows).


Other planned support

* Ability Office developers declared planned ODF support for the next major version of their office suite. * Evermore Integrated Office –
EIOffice EIOffice, also known as Evermore Integrated Office, is a proprietary Office suite by Evermore Software. In 2010, Evermore changed their name to Yozosoft. Supported operating systems include Microsoft Windows and Linux. It is marketed internatio ...
2009 will support ODF in the update.EIOffice 2009 support for ODF
As stated on Evermore Software website: "Work is underway to both read and write to this new format as well as *.pdf and *.odf file formats in the update." Last version of EIOffice 2009 (5.0.1272.101EN.L1) cannot open or save ODF files. * Haansoft's Hangul Word Processor will support OpenDocument format documents in its next version for Windows, which is planned for the end of 2009. * An extension for
Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current an ...
has been proposed by a developer named Talin, according to Mozilla hacker Gervase Markha
(source)
it has since been further modified by Alex Hudson. and was hosted in the official Firefox extension repository. * Wikipedia announced that it will use ODF for printing wikis. *
BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy of ...
smartphones are going to support ODF in their embedded office suites, starting mid-2009.
* The WordPad editor in
Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
includes support for ODF.


Programmatic support, filters, converters

There are OpenDocument-oriented libraries available for languages such as Java,
Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pr ...
, Ruby,
C++ C, or c, is the third letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''cee'' (pronounced ), plural ''cees''. History "C" ...
and C#. OpenDoc Society maintains an extensive list of ODF software libraries for
OpenDocument Format 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 developed w ...
. OpenDocument packages are ordinary zip files. There is an OpenDocument format which is just a single XML file, but most applications use the
package format A package format is a type of archive containing computer programs and additional metadata needed by package managers. While the archive file format itself may be unchanged, package formats bear additional metadata, such as a manifest file or cert ...
. Thus, any of the vast number of tools for handling zip files and XML data can be used to handle OpenDocument. Nearly all programming languages have libraries (built-in or available) for processing XML files and zip files.


Microsoft

Microsoft has been offering native support for ODF since Office 2007 Service Pack 2. Microsoft is hosting the 8th
ODF Plugfest 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 developed w ...
in Brussels in 2012. In October 2005, one year before the Microsoft Office 2007 suite was released, Microsoft declared that there is not sufficient demand from Microsoft customers for international standard OpenDocument format support and therefore it will not be included in Microsoft Office 2007. This statement was repeated also in next months.Office 12 to support PDF creation, 03 Oct 2005
/ref>
/ref>23 March 2006, Gates: Office 2007 will enable a new class of application As an answer, on 20 October 2005 an online petition was created to demand ODF support from Microsoft. The petition was signed by circa 12000 people. In May 2006, ODF plugin for Microsoft Office was released by OpenDocument Foundation.
/ref> Microsoft declared that the company did not work with the developers of the plug-in.
/ref> In July 2006 Microsoft announced the creation of the Open XML Translator project—tools to build a technical bridge between the Microsoft Office Open XML Formats and the OpenDocument Format (ODF). This work was started in response to government requests for interoperability with ODF. The goal of project is not to implement ODF direct to Microsoft Office, but only to create plugin and external tools. In February 2007, this project released first version of ODF plug-in for Microsoft Word. In February 2007 SUN released initial version of SUN ODF plugin for Microsoft Office. Version 1.0 was released in July 2007. Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 was released on 28 April 2009. It added native support of OpenDocument 1.1 as well as other formats like XPS and
PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems ...
.Microsoft Expands List of Formats Supported in Microsoft Office: Move enhances customer choice and interoperability with Microsoft's flagship productivity suite.
/ref> In April 2012, Microsoft announced support for ODF 1.2 in Microsoft Office 2013. Microsoft has financed the creation of an Open XML translator, to enable the conversion of documents between Office Open XML and OpenDocument. The project, hosted on SourceForge, 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 BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...
. By December 2007, plugins had been released for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. Independent analysis has, however, reported several concerns with these plugins, including lack of support for Office 2007.


Third party support: Plug-ins for Microsoft Office

''Sun Microsystems' ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office users'' (download link no longer available as of 30 March 2013)— was a plugin that allowed users to read and edit ISO-standard Open Document Format (ODF) files in Microsoft Office. It works with Microsoft Office 2007 (with service pack 1 or higher), Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office XP, and even Microsoft Office 2000. ''ooo-word-filter'' was a plugin that allowed users to open ODF files in Microsoft Office 2003. OpenOpenOffice (O3), is apparently inactive. ''OpenOpenOffice'' was developed by Phase-n, a free and
open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...
plug-in to enable Microsoft Office to read and write OpenDocument files (and any other formats supported by
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) an ...
). Instead of installing a complete office application or even a large plug-in, O3 intended to install a tiny plug-in to the Microsoft Office system. This tiny plug-in intended to automatically send the file to some server, which would then do the conversion, returning the converted file. The server could be local to an organization (so private information doesn't go over the Internet) or accessed via the Internet (for those who do not want to set up a server). A beta of the server half has been completed, and further expected announcements have not occurred. Phase-n argued that the main advantage of their approach is simplicity. Their website announces that O3 "requires no new concepts to be explored, no significant development, and leverages the huge existing body of work already created by the OpenOffice developers, the
CPAN The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is a repository of over 250,000 software modules and accompanying documentation for 39,000 distributions, written in the Perl programming language by over 12,000 contributors. ''CPAN'' can denote ei ...
module authors, and the
Microsoft .NET The Microsoft .NET strategy is a marketing plan that Microsoft followed in the early 2000s. Steve Ballmer described it as the company's "most ambitious undertaking since Internet Strategy Day in 1995". In support of this strategy, between 2000 and ...
and Office teams. They also argue that this approach significantly simplifies maintenance; when a new version of OpenOffice is released, only the server needs to be upgraded. The OpenDocument Foundation announced plans to develop a plugin for Microsoft Office in May 2006 but development was stopped in October 2007.


Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 support controversy

Microsoft supports OpenDocument format in Office 2007 SP2. The current implementation faces criticism for not supporting encrypted documents and formula format in the same way as other OpenDocument compatible software, as well as for stripping out formulas in imported spreadsheets created by other OpenDocument compatible software. Critics say that with this conflict of standards Microsoft actually managed to reduce interoperability between office productivity software. The company had previously reportedly stated that "where ODF 1.1 is ambiguous or incomplete, the Office implementation can be guided by current practice in OpenOffice.org, mainly, and other implementations including KOffice and AbiWord. Peter Amstein and the Microsoft Office team are reluctant to make liberal use of extension mechanisms, even though provided in ODF 1.1. They want to avoid all appearance of an embrace-extend attempt." However, according to the ODF Alliance, "ODF spreadsheets created in Excel 2007 SP2 do not in fact conform to ODF 1.1 because Excel 2007 incorrectly encodes formulas with cell addresses. Section 8.3.1 of ODF 1.1 says that addresses in formulas "start with a " and end with a "." In Excel 2007 cell addresses were not enclosed with the necessary square brackets, which could be easily corrected." This however has been contested as the ISO/IEC 26300 specification states that the semantics and the syntax is dependent on the used namespace which is implementation dependent leaving the syntax implementation defined as well. Before SP2, Microsoft had sponsored the creation of the Open XML translator project to allow the conversion of documents between OOXML and OpenDocument. As a result of this project, Microsoft financed 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 BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...
. The project released version 1.0 for Microsoft Word of this software in January 2007 followed by versions for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint in December of the same year. Sun Microsystems has created the competing OpenDocument plugin for Microsoft Office 2007 (Service Pack 1 or higher), 2000, XP, and 2003 that supports Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. The ODF Alliance has claimed that third-party plug-ins "provide better support for ODF than the recently released Microsoft Office 2007 SP2".


Accessibility

One important issue raised in the discussion of OpenDocument is whether the format is
accessible Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i.e ...
to those with disabilities. There are two issues: does the specification support accessibility, and are implementations accessible?


Specification

While the specification of OpenDocument is going through an extensive accessibility review, many of the components it is built on (such as SMIL for audio and multimedia and
SVG Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium s ...
for vector graphics) have already gone through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)'s Web Accessibility Initiative processes. There are already applications that currently read/write OpenDocument that export Tagged
PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems ...
files (to support PDF accessibility); this suggests that much or all of the necessary data for accessibility is already included in the OpenDocument format. The OASIS OpenDocument technical committee released a draft of OpenDocument 1.1 on 2006-07-27, for public comment through 2006-09-25. This is a very minor update to the specification to add accessibility information, mainly soft page break markings, table header markings, presentation navigation markings, alternative text and captions, and specifically stating that spreadsheets may be embedded in presentations. Peter Korn (an accessibility expert) reviewed version 1.1 "to satisfy myself that all of our accessibility concerns have been addressed", and declared "I am so satisfied."


Implementations

Peter Korn gave an in-depth report on OpenDocument accessibility. He noted that there are many kinds of impairments, including visual (minor, major, or blind), physical (minor, major with vocal control, major without vocal control), auditory, and
cognitive Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, though ...
. He then noted that the situation varies, depending on the specific disability. For a vast number of disabilities, there are no known problems, though. * OpenOffice is expected to work well with existing solutions in MS Windows'
on-screen keyboard A virtual keyboard is a software component that allows the input of characters without the need for physical keys. The interaction with the virtual keyboard happens mostly via a touchscreen interface, but can also take place in a different form ...
s (etc.) when driven by single- switch access, head-mouse, and eye-gaze systems. On Unix-like systems, GNOME's "On-screen Keyboard" can be used. Also available on both Linux and Windows systems is Dasher, a text-entry alternative released under the GPL for head-mouse and eye-gaze users (35+ word-per-minute typing speeds using nothing but
eye movement Eye movement includes the voluntary or involuntary movement of the eyes. Eye movements are used by a number of organisms (e.g. primates, rodents, flies, birds, fish, cats, crabs, octopus) to fixate, inspect and track visual objects of intere ...
are possible). * If those with disabilities are already using Microsoft Office, then a plug-in enabling them to load and save OpenDocument files using Microsoft Office may give them the same capabilities they already have (assuming the opening/saving cycle is accessible). So from that perspective, OpenDocument is at least as accessible as Microsoft Office. * For users using alternatives to Microsoft Office there may be problems, not necessarily due to the ODF file format but rather due to the lower investment to date by assistive technology vendors on these platforms, though there is ongoing work. For example, IBM has stated that its "Workplace productivity tools available through Workplace Managed Client including word processing, spreadsheet and presentation editors are currently planned to be fully accessible on a Windows platform by 2007. Additionally, these productivity tools are currently planned to be fully accessible on a Linux platform by 2008" (Sutor, 10 November 2005). It is important to note that since OpenDocument is an Open Standard file format, there is no need for everyone to use the same program to read and write OpenDocument files; someone with a disability is free to use whatever program works best for them.


See also

* Comparison of OpenDocument software * Network effect * Open format *
Office suite 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 paintings ...
* Office Open XML


References

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External links


Application support for ODF
(OpenDocument Fellowship). * Groklaw'
ODF Resources

lpOD-PerlOpenDocument Connector
Perl programming interfaces for ODF.
lpOD-PythonODFpy
Python programming interfaces for ODF. OpenDocument OpenDocument Office suites