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The Future Is Open: The OpenDocument Format

Posted by michael on from the backward-compatible dept.

Daniel Carrera writes "I've written an article for Groklaw describing the OpenDocument format: 'I asked Daniel Carrera, an OpenOffice.org volunteer, if he'd please explain the OpenDocument format. How does a format get chosen? And is OpenDocument on the list of acceptable formats for governments like the State of Massachusetts? We are all concerned about proprietary formats and standards, and more and more governments are adopting policies requiring open standards, it's a very important subject.' It's currently being considered by the EU Commission as a candidate for an official format."

15 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Death to PDF..?? by sewagemaster · · Score: 2, Informative

    on windows, stay away from any adobe readers above version 4. i have no problems with version 4 on my pentium 2.

    on linux, acrobat's *ok*, but gpdf and xpdf are pretty decent and very fast. the new version of kpdf in kde 3.4 is going to be great as well.

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    my blog
  2. To speed up the loading time... by elid · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...follow these instructions

  3. From a user's perspective by bigberk · · Score: 3, Informative

    For a similar discussion, but from the perspective of an OpenOffice.org user, check out this article (even though it's really talking about OO.org, there is a section where it goes into the advantages of open formats for data interchange and longevity/archival). The XML format discussed there is I believe the same as OpenDocument

  4. Re:.txt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Probably you are confused between .txt and .tex. You can use just notepad or wordpad for the first. Only the second one refers usually to LaTeX. But even for that second one you can try, for example, the nice (and free) LyX (there is a standalone version for windows) and there are much other for windows (of course for the free operating systems there are much many).

  5. It seems the Irish Government has copped on by Milton+Waddams · · Score: 5, Informative

    They release their documents in OpenOffice, PDF and .doc format.

  6. Re:OpenOffice by doj8 · · Score: 2, Informative

    It does depend on the version of Word which created the .DOC file, the method of saving (fast save vs. normal) and how heavily edited the document.

    I just searched several hundred .DOC files for human-readable strings. Twelve documents had any significant human-readable text in them, barring phrases such as "Word.Document.8", "Dan Jenkins", etc. - document metadata, in other words.

    Some others had phrases or occaisional paragraphs which were human-readable, the rest was not.

    Years ago I wrote document conversion software (back when dedicated word processors were still common). One of the last conversions I was involved in was Microsoft Word. Their format was extremely complicated compared to the majority of word processors of the time. The format was also not linear. You had to follow binary pointers from section to section of the document. So, the contents of paragraph 23 might preceed paragraph 5. Also, deleted material could well be retained in the document.

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    -- Dan Jenkins, Rastech Inc.
  7. Re:It has always baffled me... by doj8 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, I used to write document conversion programs many years ago (back when dedicated word processors were still common). There were a couple of document formats which did support forward compatibility. It's been 25 years, but I believe IBM was one. The other escapes me (maybe Aquarius?). (I guess you can count SGML as supporting forward compatibility too.)

    Basically, an older program could read any version of the document format. When it encountered elements it did not recognize, it retained them, but ignored them for rendering purposes. So, when the document was saved, the ignored elements were saved with it. A newer version of the word processor could then use them, even after the older version had edited the document.

    You are mixing programs and document formats. The two do not have to have the same behavior.

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    -- Dan Jenkins, Rastech Inc.
  8. Re:Not true. Move on. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    WordPerfect is loosing ground in law offices. Word is just so common that even lawyers are switching. WordPerfect allows much better control of the document layout, but if no one ever takes the time to learn there isn't much difference from Word. The main benifit is backward compatibilty of the file format all the way back to 6. But many don't even care about that.

    I like that WordPerfect is now comming pre-installed on a lot of computers because its cheaper than the MS option. That at least gets some people to realize there are other word processors out there.

    Older versions of Word do have problems opening documents saved in new versions. It may not be always, it could depend on using features that were not available in older versions. This really confuses people that start work at home on an old version and bring it to work, save in new version, and then can't work on it at home anymore.

    I use mostly WordPerfect, but I also use Word when I know I may need to edit or print the document at school. But I never save in the current version of Word. I always save it as Word97 or RTF so I can use WordPad if I have to.

  9. Massachusetts is a Commonwealth by ptimmons · · Score: 2, Informative

    Semantics or no, Massachusetts is a one of four commonwealths. It should not be referred to as the "State of Massachusetts".

    1. Re:Massachusetts is a Commonwealth by iggymanz · · Score: 2, Informative

      "Commonwealth" sounds vaguely socialistic and pinko; Maybe Bush should liberate it.

    2. Re:Massachusetts is a Commonwealth by RmanB17499 · · Score: 3, Informative

      You're correct and it's not socialistic or communistic or anything else.
      Commonwealths "States" of this country are Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Virginia. VA doesn't have a Secretary of State -- they have a Secretary of Commonwealth.

      Curious why some states are commonwealths? Read the FAQ -- Why is VA a Commonwealth?
      Starts with: There is no such entity as the "State" of Virginia. While generally categorized as a state, Virginia has been the "Commonwealth" since independence from Great Britain. Virginia is first of four states that are Commonwealths, to include our daughter Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was formed from Virginia in 1792.
      Finally, Puerto Rico is technically a commonwealth, but that's under a different situation, since it is not a State of the Union. It's just the name and form of its local government.

      Each State of the Union is guaranteed sovereignty and a repulican form of government: thus they really are like 50 mini-countries.
      However, they each agreed by compact upon admission or ratification of the Constitution for the original 13-states that they would have a Government of the United States of America (USG) to operate in certain areas and that this government would also be a sovereign, too.

      How each state wants to operate in its sovereign form is up to the people as long as its republic in nature. If New Jersey would like to call itself the "Free and Independent Peoples Democratic Place of the Principality of New Jersey, formerly known as the State of New Jersey." That's up to itself.

      However, from the point of view of the USG each state is just like any other state. That's why we just call them the fifty states. From the national point of view: All states are equal in that they have two senators, elect the president via the electoral college through whatever selection process the state would like to select, and can't be destroyed by Congress.

  10. Re:Not true. Move on. by civilizedINTENSITY · · Score: 3, Informative

    The biggest problem our campus printing shop has is incompatibilies of versions of MS Word due to different computer labs running different versions (97 thru 2000 Pro). Mostly this seems to relate to embedded graphics and the formating of text around said emedded object. This isn't anecdote perpetuated by people who don't like Microsoft, this is historical fact related to using the campus printing shop, acknowledged by them as well as students.

    Some classes required bound reports (Software Engineering did...), and your only hope is PDF. Crappy formatting isn't an option in a "professional" report.

  11. Not a state by robogymnast · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hate to be nit-picking, but it is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Don't ask me explain how that works or what the difference is, but IIRC there are 3 others.

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    unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; find ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; fsck ; umount ; sleep
  12. How about the National File Format? by beetle496 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The U.S. Government has been pursing an XML based National File Format (NFF) for some time. This has currently morphed to the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS 1.0), a subset of ANSi/NISO Z39.86 (DAISY 3).

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    I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
  13. Re:Not true. Move on. by oliverthered · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Help compiler that came with visuial basic 3 wouldn't work with RTF documents created using word 97.

    I had to write something to reprocess the RTF documents and remove the crap that word 97 had put in there.

    Oh, try opening a text document written on a Mac or Linux on windows, sometimes it forgets that crlf isn't the only form of line termination in the world.

    And for the count, I've had lots of problems with word files of different versions, but word files with different fonts are even more annoying.

    And I wish that I could save spellings with a document, but that's a differnt story.

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    thank God the internet isn't a human right.