Open Document

Open Document is a format for documents created using typical office applications:
word processors, spreadsheets and presentations.

This format became an OASIS standard at the beginning of May 2005, and an ISO standard in May 2006.
It is an “open” format, the technical specification of which can be downloaded free of charge from the OASIS website.
The format is based on XML language, from which it gets its power and flexibility.

Until now, the format most commonly used in office applications has been the one associated with Microsoft’s Office package.
This format can give rise to a number of problems, especially when used for processing documents that need to be translated into different languages:

• Documents created using an earlier version of Office are often not compatible with the most recent version;
• The exporting and subsequent re-importing of texts in applications such as Excel and PowerPoint is very complex.

The Open Document format, on the other hand, has many advantages:

• Documents created using this format can be opened with any application that supports the format (to date, OpenOffice and KOffice, two products from OpenSource), regardless of what version is used;
• Since the format is based on XML, exporting and re-importing text is very simple (text is completely separate from layout);
• The software licence is of the GPL type, which means you do not need to buy it!