Review answers to frequently asked questions on OpenDocument below. Post new questions and additional comments at the FAQ Forum. See also: OpenDocument Accessibility FAQ.
OpenDocument is advanced as an application-independent format by a vendor-neutral OASIS Technical Committee with the participation of multiple office application vendors. The basis for the OASIS OpenDocument TC's work indeed was the OpenOffice.org XML file format, but even the OpenOffice.org XML file format was developed as an application-independent file format that is not usable by the OpenOffice.org application only.
The OpenOffice.org XML specification went through a one-year review phase within OASIS. This review resulted in more than 100 changes to the schema, and additional specification and editorial work. After its approval by the Committee members, OpenDocument also went through a one-month public review phase, and a final approval process by the full OASIS membership, which represents over 600 organizations.
OpenDocument was developed in a completely open, publicly visible, vendor-neutral, royalty-free standards process that allows input from the entire user community
OpenDocument is one schema for text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents. There are no distinct schemas for the different kind of office applications.
OpenDocument is highly interoperable by making use of existing standards like HTML , SVG , XSL , SMIL , XLink , XForms , MathML or Dublin Core wherever possible.
OpenDocument has a package concept and can be used as default file format for office applications without disadvantages in file size or integrity.
There are some standards that address single features of office applications, like SVG for graphic content or HTML and XSL-FO for text content, but none of these covers all features of office applications. The OpenDocument OASIS Standard covers the features required by text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents, but also 'borrows' from similar, existing standards wherever possible and permitted.
OpenDocument version 1.1 is a minor update to the ISO/IEC 26300/OpenDocument v1.0 OASIS Standard. Compared to the version 1.0 specification, v1.1 contains several accessibility-related enhancements, error corrections and clarifications, plus a few other minor enhancements.
OpenDocument is royalty-free. It can be used without charge by anyone.
Yes. The OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee will extend OpenDocument 1.0 to encompass additional areas of applications or users, and also will adapt the specification to recent developments in office applications. The team has also formed the OASIS OpenDocument Accessibility Subcommittee , which gathers feedback from the disability community and from developers and users of accessible applications that implement OpenDocument. All those interested in participating in the further development of OpenDocument through the Technical Committee and/or Subcommittee are encouraged to join this effort. Non-OASIS members are welcome to join the consortium at any time.
The term "custom schema support" frequently is used to describe the possibility to interleave an office application schema with XML tags from some other schema. Because this is a feature of XML and XML Namespaces in general, it is supported by OpenDocument. It is important to distinguish between the OpenDocument format and applications that implement it, however. No applications at this point exploit this feature, but this is inherently supported by the OpenDocument format.
Another definition of "custom schema" support is the possibility to include an instance of a non-office-schema into an office document. This feature is provided by OpenDocument, due to its partial inclusion of the W3C XForms Recommendation.
Absolutely. Several companies that are members of the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee are very much committed to delivering office products that are highly interoperable with Microsoft Office, especially on the file format level. Some of these companies deliver products that have included MS office document filters for more than a decade. The membership of these companies in the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee actually ensures that the requirements of MS Office users are considered within OpenDocument.
No. Backward compatibility with binary documents is technical impossible for an XML file format. However, applications may support legacy binary format as well as OpenDocument, and in this way may provide backward compatibility with binary formats for office application users.