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List of software that supports OpenDocument

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This is an overview of software support for the OpenDocument format, an open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents.

Current support

A number of applications support the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications; listed alphabetically they include:

Text documents (.odt)

Word processors

  • Abiword 2.4 (reading from 2.4, reading and writing from 2.4.2, full support 2.4.4)
  • KWord 1.4+ (full native support since 1.5)
  • OpenOffice.org Writer (full support from 2.0, import-only in 1.1.5)
  • TextMaker 2006 (import only; export in development)
  • Writely, a web-based word processor, can read/write OpenDocument word processing (ODT) format
  • Zoho Writer, an online word processor, can read/write ODT format
  • ajaxWrite, a web-based word processor, can read/write OpenDocument word processing (ODT) format

Other applications

Data management
  • eLawOffice.it 0.9.6.4, Law Firms crossplafrom Java GPL application (client-server). It uses opendocument as templates to generate opendocument documents with data merged from application database such as customer name, address etc [1]
  • phpMyAdmin 2.9.0+ - database manager, exports to ODT
Text management
Translation support
  • OmegaT — OmegaT is a free translation memory application written in Java.
Viewer

Spreadsheet documents (.ods)

Spreadsheets

  • Gnumeric Incomplete support for reading and writing OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS).
  • KSpread (basic support in 1.4.x, native support in 1.5 onwards)
  • OpenOffice.org Calc 2.0 (full support from 2.0, import-only in 1.1.5)
  • Tables Incomplete support for reading OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS).

Other applications

Translation support
  • OmegaT — OmegaT is a free translation memory application written in Java.

Presentation documents (.odp)

Other applications

Translation support
  • OmegaT — OmegaT is a free translation memory application written in Java.

Graphics documents (.odg)

Search tools

  • Beagle 0.1.4, Gnome project desktop search engine. Indexes and searches multiple file formats, including OpenDocument files.
  • Google Desktop Search has an unofficial OpenDocument plug-in available, supporting ODT, OTT, ODG, OTG, ODP, OTP, ODS, OTS, and ODF OpenDocument formats. [3]
  • Kat Desktop Search Environment, the KDE desktop search engine, supporting ODT, ODP, ODS, ODF, and ODC
  • Copernic, Desktop Search Engine for the Windows Platform supporting OpenOffice.org documents (ODT, OTT, ODM, OTH, ODS, OTS, ODP, OTP) (versions: 1.1, 2.0)
  • OpenIndexer, Search engine for Windows PC and network. Indexes and searches OD* file formats, including Draw. Additional features: backup&restore, automatic creation of mobile archives on CD/DVD.
  • Windows Desktop Search, indexes OpenOffice.org documents using an IFilter included in the installation of the Windows version of OpenOffice.org. An alternative IFilter that does not require OpenOffice.org to be installed can be found here.

Unclassified

Please help by moving these into the categories above

  • Aukyla Document Management System 2.0, lightweight web-based document management system. Has OpenDocument viewer and indexing functions [4]
  • DocMgr 0.53.3, full featured document management system. Included search engine indexes OpenDocument files. [5]
  • Hancom Office
  • Knomos 1.0 — Law office management application [6]
  • Lenteja — text document repository [7]
  • Artech India's Akshar Naveen

Other planned support

The general manager of Software602 reports that they plan to release a new version of their commercial office suite, currently named 602PC Suite, as 602Office 2. The product 602Office 2 will be based on OpenOffice.org 2, so it will include native support for OpenDocument.

JustSystem is the producer of the Ichitaro office suite (the second most common Japanese office software). JustSystem has announced that they are developing a plug-in module for both reading and writing the OpenDocument format, for release by Summer 2006 (JustSystem, 2005).

An extension for Mozilla Firefox has been proposed by a developer named Talin, according to Mozilla hacker Gervase Markham (source); since then it has been further modified by Alex Hudson [8] and was hosted in the official Firefox extension repository [9]. Google already supports viewing SXW format (used by OpenOffice.org 1.x) as HTML through their search engine[10] and G-Mail [11].

Programmatic support, filters, converters

OpenDocument packages are ordinary zip files. There is an OpenDocument format which is just a single XML file, but most applications use the package format. Thus, any of the vast number of tools for handling zip files and XML data can be used to handle OpenDocument. Nearly all programming languages have libraries (built-in or available) for processing XML files and zip files.

The following are programs or programming libraries that provide specialized support for OpenDocument:

  • TeX4ht, recent distributions can convert LaTeX documents to OpenDocument format
  • OpenOpenOffice, a yet to be released plug-in for Microsoft Office so it can read and write OpenDocument (server beta completed, plugin alpha announcement expected early January)
  • ooo-word-filter, a plugin for Microsoft Word 2003 XML to open OpenOffice XML documents (alpha stage)
  • Docvert, web service software takes multiple word processor files (typically .doc) and converts them to OpenDocument and then any HTML or XML (used for converting MSWord or OpenDocument to HTML) [12]
  • OpenDocumentPHP is package of PHP 5.1.X classes for building OpenDocuments in PHP (published under GPL). (Most of the code can be found in the svn repository at sourceforge.net)
  • AODC — An OpenDocument Converter, a free (GPL) conversion application for OpenDocument Text and Spreadsheet documents. The application doesn't need an OpenOffice or another Office Suite with OpenDocument support installed. It will convert nearly all possible text content.
  • AODL — An OpenDocument Library, a free (LGPL) .net resp. C# library for loading, editing, creating and saving documents in the OpenDocument format. Up to now, the library offer support for Text and Spreadsheet documents.
  • odfReader extension for Firefox 1.5: A new Firefox extension still under heavy development for reading ODF document inside Firefox
  • DocBook to OpenDocument XSLT (docbook2odf)- DocBook XSLT stylesheets and utils to OpenDocument transformation.
  • com.catcode.odf.OpenDocumentTextInputStream is a Java class by J. David Eisenberg which extracts the text information from an OpenDocument text file. It extracts only the text within <text:p> and <text:h>, unless they are in <text:tracked-changes> (i.e., it automatically handles tracked changes). The lists of "capture" and "omit" elements is user-selectable.
  • ODT_to_XHTML is a Java program by J. David Eisenberg which converts OpenDocument files directly into XHTML. Note that many office suites can do this as well, by loading the OpenDocument file and then doing as a "Save As" (X)HTML.
  • Ruby-based ODT to XHTML Conversion
  • Some Perl extensions for OpenDocument file processing are available on CPAN packages, such as OpenOffice::OODoc, OpenOffice::OOCBuilder, OpenOffice::OOSheets, PBib::Document::OpenOffice, and others. These libraries allow Perl programs to retrieve, create, update or delete almost any piece of data (including text content, non-textual objects, and style definitions) in documents, and to create new documents from scratch.
  • odt2txt - a Python script to convert OpenDocument text files to plain text, using Markdown syntax to preserve some of the formatting.
  • PyArticle - a Python library providing ODF export from DocBook via docbook2odf

Corel WordPerfect status

Corel's WordPerfect office suite may release support for OpenDocument, even though they have not yet made a formal announcement. Corel is an original member of the OASIS Technical Committee on the Open Document Format, and Paul Langille, a senior Corel developer, is one of the original four authors of the OpenDocument specification. Also, Corel sent a letter to Massachusetts supporting their selection of OpenDocument, saying, "Corel strongly supports the broad adoption of the open standards Massachusetts has outlined, including XML, the OASIS Open Document Format and PDF… Corel remains committed to working alongside OASIS and other technology vendors to ensure the continued evolution of the ODF standard and the adoption of open standards industry-wide." [13] Many find it improbable that Corel would invest so much effort, encourage mandating the OpenDocument format, and say that they will work to ensure industry-wide adoption of OpenDocument, without implementing it themselves.

At the September 16 2005 "Town Meeting," an IBM representative said that they were implementing OpenDocument and that Corel was also actively implementing OpenDocument. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols's eWeek article of September 26 2005, states without caveats that Corel is actively implementing OpenDocument in their WordPerfect suite. On September 28 2005, he clarified further that Corel's WordPerfect "will soon be supporting the OpenDocument format", noting that while "Corel won't commit to a date for adding OpenDocument to WordPerfect, the company made it clear that it is working towards that goal."

A month later, on October 18 2005, a Corel representative described a different position in an interview for BetaNews [14]: they do not see OpenDocument format support as a priority for them just now, and cannot even evaluate the time it would need for them to support it, if ever. This report was immediately questioned; Berlind later reported that Corel "confirms OpenDocument commitment". (Berlind, October 25 2005). In November Corel was part of the ODF Summit, which was organized to promote the use of OpenDocument (LaMonica, November 10, 2005).

Microsoft

Microsoft has recently announced its support for an Open Source project licenced under a BSD style licence to develop a plug-in. At this stage support is only for Word 2007 and not for earlier versions. The sourceforge page hosting this project can be found at [15].

The current version, which in fairness is still very much under development, has been criticised for a number of reasons including its integration with the Microsoft Office user interface, its absence from the options presented when saving a file, and the inability to select odf as the default format (see for instance an article on Groklaw entitled "Taking Microsoft's ODF Plugin for a Spin... Splat").

Third party support: Three OpenOpenOffice plug-ins for Microsoft Office

There are currently two third-party plug-ins: ooo-word-filter [16] and OpenOpenOffice O3. A third one was announced by the OpenDocument Foundation [17] on May 2006 [18]

OpenOpenOffice is developed by Phase-n, an open source software plug-in for Microsoft Office. With this free plug-in, Microsoft Office will be able to read and write OpenDocument documents (and any other formats supported by OpenOffice.org). Instead of installing a complete office application or even a large plug-in, O3 will install a tiny plug-in to the Microsoft Office system. This tiny plug-in would automatically send the file to some server, which would then do conversions and send it back. The server could be local to an organization (so private information won't go over the Internet) or accessed via the Internet (for those who do not want to set up a server).

A beta of the server half has been completed, and an announcement of a plugin alpha is expected in early January 2006).

Phase-n argues that the main advantage of their approach is simplicity. Their website announces that O3 "requires no new concepts to be explored, no significant development, and leverages the huge existing body of work already created by the OpenOffice.org developers, the CPAN module authors, and the Microsoft .NET and Office teams. Initial ballpark estimates are for less than 2,000 lines of code and only a few hundred hours of development time to get to an initial stable release of the O3 client and server." They also argue that this approach significantly simplifies maintenance; when a new version of OpenOffice.org is released, only the server needs to be upgraded. Its developers have acknowledged that it would be easy to add support for calling a local installation of OpenOffice.org as well, and may add that capability after the plug-in's initial release.

The OpenOpenOffice project is a partnership between the software industry group Open Source Victoria, the technology company Phase N Australia, and the wider Open Source community. Open Source Victoria was convened by Con Zymaris and includes more than 100 Victorian firms and developers (Varghese, 2005).

Accessibility

One important issue raised in the discussion of OpenDocument is whether or not the format is accessible to those with disabilities. There are two issues: does the specification support accessibility, and are implementations accessible?

Specification

While the specification of OpenDocument is going through an extensive accessibility review, it is known that many of the components it is built on (such as SMIL for audio and multimedia and SVG for vector graphics) have already gone through the World Wide Web Consortium(W3C)'s Web Accessibility Initiative processes.

There are already applications that currently read/write OpenDocument that export Tagged PDF files (in support of PDF accessibility); this suggests that much or all of the necessary data for accessibility is already included in the OpenDocument format.

The OASIS OpenDocument technical committee release a draft of OpenDocument 1.1 on 2006-07-27, for public comment through 2006-09-25. [19] This is a very minor update to the specification to add accessibility information, mainly soft page break markings, table header markings, presentation navigation markings, alternative text and captions, and specifically stating that spreadsheets may be embedded in presentations. Peter Korn (an accessibility expert) reviewed version 1.1 "to satisfy myself that all of our accessibility concerns have been addressed", and declared "I am so satisfied." [20] [21]

Implementations

But having an accessible specification is not enough; what's also needed are accessible implementations.

Peter Korn gave an in-depth report on OpenDocument accessibility. He noted that there are many kinds of impairments, including visual (minor, major, or blind), physical (minor, major with vocal control, major without vocal control), auditory, and cognitive. He then noted that the situation varies, depending on the specific disability. For a vast number of disabilities, there are no known problems, though.

  • If those with disabilities are already using Microsoft Office, then clearly a plug-in that allows them to load and save OpenDocument files using Microsoft Office gives them exactly the same capabilities they already have. So from that perspective, OpenDocument is at least as accessible as Microsoft Office. The primary problem is that Microsoft Windows does not have a real accessibility infrastructure compared to UNIX-like systems with GNOME, the Java platform, or Macintosh OS X.
  • Others are known to be challenges if the user insists on not using Microsoft Office, though there is ongoing work. For example, IBM has stated that its "Workplace productivity tools available through Workplace Managed Client including word processing, spreadsheet and presentation editors are currently planned to be fully accessible on a Windows platform by 2007. Additionally, these productivity tools are currently planned to be fully accessible on a Linux platform by 2008" (Sutor, November 10, 2005). For these others, it may be best to stay with Microsoft Office and use an OpenDocument plug-in until alternatives are available.

It is important to notice that since OpenDocument is a standard file format, there is no need for everyone to use the same program to read and write OpenDocument files; someone with a disability is free to use whatever program works best for them.

See also

References

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