Frequently Asked Questions

Is the OpenDocument effort still open?

Forum topic: Submitted by carolgeyer on Fri, 2006-09-08 19:55. Last updated on Fri, 2006-09-08 19:57.

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.

Has OpenDocument been tested?

Forum topic: Submitted by carolgeyer on Fri, 2006-09-08 19:54. Last updated on Fri, 2006-09-08 19:55.

OpenDocument has been well tested. The OASIS Standard is already implemented by several office applications, and some of these applications use it as native file format. Furthermore, OpenDocument is based on the OpenOffice.org XML file format, which has been the default file format of the OpenOffice.org application since 2001. This includes the word processor, the spreadsheet, and the presentation applications of OpenOffice.org.

Does OpenDocument support custom schemas?

Forum topic: Submitted by carolgeyer on Fri, 2006-09-08 19:52. Last updated on Fri, 2006-09-08 19:54.

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.

Is OpenDocument backward compatible with Microsoft Office binary documents?

Forum topic: Submitted by carolgeyer on Fri, 2006-09-08 19:51. Last updated on Fri, 2006-09-08 19:51.

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 pro

Does OpenDocument take the requirements of Microsoft Office users into account?

Forum topic: Submitted by carolgeyer on Fri, 2006-09-08 19:48. Last updated on Fri, 2006-09-08 19:50.

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.