Specification

The complete OpenDocument v1.0 OASIS Standard specification document is available in ODT and PDF formats.

The specification defines three Relax-NG schemas, which are also available separately:

1. OpenDocument v1.0 Relax-NG Schema, the schema for office documents defined in chapters 1 to 16;
2. OpenDocument v1.0 Manifest Relax-NG Schema, the normative schema for the manifest file defined in chapter 17; and
3. OpenDocument v1.0 Strict Relax-NG Schema, the strict schema for office documents that permits only meta information and formatting properties contained in this specification itself, as defined in appendix A.

The OpenDocument v1.0 (Second Edition) Committee Specification is available in ODT and in PDF formats. This second edition of OpenDocument v1.0 includes a few editorial changes compared to the original OpenDocument v1.0 specification. The schemas defined by this specification are identical to those defined by the OpenDocument v1.0 OASIS Standard. Please see appendix E.3 of the specification document for a detailed list of changes.

OpenDocument v1.0 has been approved as the ISO and IEC International Standard ISO/IEC 26300:2006.

The complete OpenDocument v1.1 OASIS Standard is available in OpenDocument, PDF and XHTML (zipped) formats.  It  was approved as an OASIS Standard on 2 February 2007.

The three schemas defined by the OpenDocument v1.1 specification are also available separately:

1. OpenDocument v1.1 Relax-NG Schema (extracted from chapter 1 to 16 of the specification)
2. OpenDocument v1.1 Manifest Relax-NG Schema (extracted from chapter 17 of the specification)
3. OpenDocument v1.1 Strict Relax-NG Schema (extracted from appendix A of the specification)

All versions of the OpenDocument specification use these open standards:

• Dublin Core
• XSL:FO
• SVG
• MathML
• SMIL
• XForms
• XLink

History of OpenDocument

The OpenDocument format has a long tradition of openness. The first work on the file format started as early as 1999. Right from the beginning ODF was designed as an open and implementation neutral file format.

The open specification process started in 2000 with the foundation of the OpenOffice.org open source project and the community efforts within its XML development project. An even higher level of openness was established in 2002 with the creation of the OASIS Open Office Technical Committee (TC).

Date / Time Frame	Event / Milestone
1999	The Development of an XML default file format begins at StarDivision. Limitations of the old binary format and a need for Unicode support trigger the change. The goal is to create an open interoperable file format that can be used and implemented by other vendors as well.
August 1999	Sun Microsystems, Inc. acquires StarDivision.
13 October 2000	The OpenOffice.org open source project gets founded by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
13 October 2000	The XML community project gets setup on OpenOffice.org with the goal to define the specification of the OpenOffice.org XML file format as on open community effort.
2002	Definitions for CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and complex text layout languages get added to the OpenOffice.org XML file format specification.
2002	The first collaborations with the KOffice project begin.
16 December 2002	OASIS Open Office Technical Committee (TC) holds first conference call
May 2002	OpenOffice.org 1.0 and StarOffice 6 get released, both using the OpenOffice.org XML file format as the default file format.
August 2003	KOffice decides to use ODF as its default file format.
2003 / 2004	The original OpenOffice.org XML file format specification gets modified to reflect recent developments in the XML and office application area, e.g.: * Introduction of XML namespaces that conform to the OASIS naming rules * Switching from XML DTD's to Relax-NG as the schema language * Improvements of the schema to better support the validation of documents * Adaptation of the schema to new versions of standards * Adaptations for additional office applications (KOffice) * Adaptations for new office application versions (OpenOffice.org 2.0) * Removal of inconsistencies in the specification * Error corrections
December 2004	A second committee draft gets approved, and the tile of this draft gets changed from “OASIS Open Office Specification” to “OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument)”
January 2005	TC is renamed to OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC.
February 2005	The third file format specification draft including public review feedback gets approved as a committee draft.
May 2005	OpenDocument Format (ODF) is approved as an OASIS Standard
September 2005	Sun Microsystems releases StarOffice 8 with ODF support.
September 2005	OASIS submits ODF for ISO/IEC approval
September 2005	INdT (research group belonging to Nokia) contributes ODF filters for Abiword and Gnumeric.
October 2005	OpenOffice.org 2.0 is released with ODF support
October 2005	Sun issues a patent covenant statement: “Sun's public non-assertion declaration may be summarized unofficially as an irrevocable covenant not to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the OASIS OpenDocument specification”
December 2005	Softmaker releases Textmaker 2006 with ODF support
January 2006	IBM releases IBM Workplace with ODF support
March 2006	ODF Alliance is founded to promote ODF in the public sector
March 2006	OASIS ODF Adoption TC gets founded
April 2006	KOffice 1.5 which uses ODF as the default file format gets released.
May 2006	ISO and IEC approve OpenDocument OASIS Standard
February 2007	OpenDocument 1.1 is approved as OASIS Standard

Committees

OpenDocument is advanced by three Committees within OASIS:

• The OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) Technical Committee defines the specification as an open, XML-based file format for office applications. For more information, see the Committee charter and member list.

• The OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) Adoption Committee members collaborate to provide expertise and resources to educate the marketplace on the value of OpenDocument. By raising awareness of the benefits offered by OpenDocument, the Committee increases the demand for and availability of OpenDocument-conforming products, resulting in a greater choice of tools and platforms and expanding the OpenDocument community of users, suppliers, and developers. For more information, see the Committee charter and member list.

• The OASIS Open Document Format Interoperability and Conformance (OIC) Committee helps implementors create applications that conform to ODF. The OIC TC works to ensure that the growing number of ODF-compliant applications are able to interoperate. For more information, see the Committee charter and member list.

All three Committees operate under the RF on Limited Terms Mode of the OASIS IPR Policy.

OASIS Sponsor members represented on these Committees include:

• Adobe Systems
• Google
• IBM
• Intel
• Microsoft
• Novell
• Oracle
  
• Sun Microsystems
• U.S. Department of Defense

All Committees invite participation from new members. See Join OASIS for details.