OpenDocument

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The OpenDocument format (ODF), short for the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications, is an open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents such as text documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, databases, charts, and presentations. This standard was developed by the OASIS industry consortium, based upon the XML-based file format originally created by OpenOffice.org, and ODF was approved as an OASIS standard on May 1, 2005. It became an ISO standard, ISO/IEC 26300, on May 3, 2006.

The standard was publicly developed by a variety of organizations, is publicly accessible, and can be implemented by anyone without restriction. The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats including the popular but undocumented DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office, as well as Microsoft Office Open XML format (this latter format has various licensing requirements that prevent some competitors from using it). Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format such as OpenDocument avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business, raises its prices, changes its software, or changes its licensing terms to something less favorable.

OpenDocument is the only standard for editable office documents that has been vetted by an independent recognized standards body, has been implemented by multiple vendors, and can be implemented by any supplier (including proprietary software vendors as well as developers using open source software licenses such as the GNU LGPL or GNU GPL).

Public policy implications

Since one objective of open formats like OpenDocument is to guarantee long-term access to data without legal or technical barriers, governments have become increasingly aware of open formats as a public policy issue. For example, in 2002, Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nuñes, a lawyer and Congressman of the Republic of Perú, wrote a letter to Microsoft Peru raising questions about free and permanent document access with proprietary formats. European countries and the US State of Massachusetts in particular have been examining the ramifications of selecting a document format.

Europe

Main article: Adoption of ODF in Europe

European governments have, since at least 2003, been investigating various options for storing documents in an XML-based format, commissioning technical studies such as the "Valoris Report" (Valoris). In March 2004, European governments asked an OpenOffice team and a Microsoft team to present on the relative merits of their XML-based office document formats (Bray, September 29 2004).

Massachusetts

Main article: Adoption of ODF in Massachusetts

Massachusetts has also been examining its options for implementing XML-based document processing. In early 2005, Eric Kriss, Secretary of Administration and Finance in Massachusetts, was the first government official in the United States to publicly connect open formats to a public policy purpose: "It is an overriding imperative of the American democratic system that we cannot have our public documents locked up in some kind of proprietary format, perhaps unreadable in the future, or subject to a proprietary system license that restricts access." [1]

Other governments

According to OASIS' OpenDocument datasheet, "Singapore's Ministry of Defence, France's Ministry of Finance and its Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Industry, Brazil's Ministry of Health, the City of Munich, Germany, UK's Bristol City Council, and the City of Vienna in Austria are all adopting applications that support OpenDocument." (OASIS, 2005b).

In November, 2005, James Gallt, associate director for the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, said that a number of other state agencies are also exploring the use of OpenDocument (LaMonica, November 10, 2005).

BECTA (British Education Communication Technology Agency) is the UK agency in charge of defining information technology (IT) policy for all schools in the United Kingdom, including standards for all the schools' infrastructure. In 2005 they published a comprehensive document describing the policy for infrastructure in schools. This document requires the use of OpenDocument or a few other formats for office document data, and in particular it does not allow the use of Microsoft's binary (.doc/.xls/.ppt) or XML formats. BECTA explains this as follows: "Any office application used by institutions must be able to be saved to (and so viewed by others) using a commonly agreed format that ensures an institution is not locked into using specific software. The main aim is for all office based applications to provide functionality to meet the specifications described here (whether licensed software, open source or unlicensed freeware) and thus many application providers could supply the educational institution ICT market." (Lynch, 2005).

In April, 2006, a bill was introduced in the Minnesota state legislature to require all state agencies to use open data formats. It is expected that the OpenDocument Format will be advanced as a way of meeting the proposed requirement. (Gardner, April 7, 2006).

Standardization

Main article: Standardization of OpenDocument

The OpenDocument standard was developed by the OASIS industry consortium. The standardization process included the developers of many office suites or related document systems, including (in alphabetical order):

Application support

A number of applications and programs support OpenDocument.

Further information: [[:List of applications supporting OpenDocument]]

Microsoft refuses for the moment to support the OpenDocument format, claiming that it lacks independent implementations and important functionality, although it has hinted that it may change its position in the future.

Further information: [[:Microsoft position on OpenDocument support]]

Lastly claimed position of Microsoft was that they will support the OpenDocument format in MS Office if there is customer demand.[2]

OpenDocument Fellowship has been founded to support this format. One of its activity is showing "customer demand" to Microsoft in petition [3], where you can ask Microsoft for supporting ODF in MS Office.

Specifications

Main article: OpenDocument technical specifications

, including file types and extensions.

The most common file extensions used for OpenDocument documents are .odt for text documents, .ods for spreadsheets, .odp for presentations, .odg for graphics, and .odb for databases. An OpenDocument file can be either a simple XML file which uses <office:document> as the root element, or a Jar (Zip) compressed archive containing a number of files and directories. The Jar-based format is used almost exclusively, since it can embed binary content and tends to be significantly smaller.

Accessibility

Main article: Accessibility in OpenDocument

One important issue raised in the discussion of OpenDocument is whether or not the format is accessible to those with disabilities. There are two issues: does the specification support accessibility, and are implementations accessible?

While the specification of OpenDocument is going through an extensive accessibility review, it is known that many of the components it is built on (such as SMIL for audio and multimedia and SVG for vector graphics) have already gone through the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative processes.

There are already applications that currently read/write OpenDocument that export Tagged PDF files (in support of PDF accessibility); this suggests that much or all of the necessary data for accessibility is already included in the OpenDocument format.

In contrast, Microsoft Office's proprietary file formats have had no public peer review of accessibility issues, and in fact the widely-used binary formats are not even published for review, so the OpenDocument specification is being held to a higher standard than either set of Microsoft formats.

Many argue that open formats like OpenDocument are necessary for true accessibility. Proprietary formats cannot be implemented by all parties, and thus create unnecessary barriers in creating accessibility technologies. In contrast, OpenDocument is fully specified in a public document without any implementation barriers, allowing anyone to create the software necessary for those with disabilities. However, having an accessible specification is not enough; what is also needed are accessible implementations, which is not and should not be a concern about the format.

Technical Comparison with Microsoft XML Formats

Main article: Comparison of OpenDocument with Microsoft XML formats

Licensing

Main article: OpenDocument vs. Microsoft Office Open XML licensing

The OpenDocument specification is available for free download and use. An irrevocable intellectual property covenant made by key contributor Sun Microsystems [4] is the only IPR Statement connected with the specification, providing all implementers with the guarantee that it contains no material that necessitates licensing from any author. Reciprocal, royalty-free licensing terms are being promoted by some standards developing organizations, such as the W3C and OASIS, as a method for avoiding conflict over intellectual property concerns while still promoting innovation. See also software patent debate. In short, anyone can implement OpenDocument, without restraint, and as shown in List of applications supporting OpenDocument both proprietary and open source software programs implement the format.

Promotion

OASIS promotes the OpenDocument Format (since it is their work).

The OpenOffice.org Project promotes the OpenDocument Format, as it is used as the default file format in the Open Source office suite. 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 Open Document Fellowship was founded in October 2005 with the aim of "[supporting] the work of community volunteers in promoting, improving and providing user assistance for the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) and software designed to operate on data in this format." It was founded by Inc.Friends of OpenDocument, an incorporated association in the State of Queensland, Australia. Some early reports incorrectly stated that it was founded by OASIS . Other promotional websites include [5].
  • 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.
  • 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.

See also

References

  1. ^ Marson, Ingrid (June 2 2005). Possible prior art for Microsoft XML patent found. ZDNet UK.
  2. ^ Farber, Dan (October 25 2005). Ray Ozzie: Support for ODF is a 'support issue,' not a matter of principle. ZDNet.

The following references were used to justify the article text above, but not all of them are specifically cited. Please help us modify the text above to identify which statements are supported by which references. Note also that the documents has now been splitted in many parts, see category:OpenDocument and document history, please help put the correct references in the corret Entry

General:

Organizations
Deployment in Europe
Debate
  • Forum Debate a lively and informative ongoing debate over whether or not a word processor application should adopt the OpenDocument format
Software
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