ODT
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Open Document Text (ODT) is a file extension that is used by Open Office and Star Office word processing documents. The actual format is call Open Document Format (ODF).
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[edit] Introduction
Sun Microsystems, IBM and others developed ODF as an open exchange system for word processing and other office documents. This is a specific implementation of the XML format. To keep the file size small the XML is encapsulated into a zip file and used directly from that compressed file. In this respect it is similar to the MS Office Open (OOXML) format and ePUB. Microsoft and the ODF group are competing systems but ePUB is not intended as an office format but rather an eBook reading and publishing format.
OpenOffice.org uses ODF, as does IBM's Lotus Symphony, Google's Docs and Spreadsheets, Zoho Office, and others. Even Microsoft, which initially declined to join the ODF group, has announced its plans to add ODF support to Office 2007 early next year.
The Open Office suite has six full-blown applications: the Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentations program), Base (database program), Math (equation editor), and Draw (graphics program). These can generally import (and export) the equivalent Microsoft formats and other popular formats as well as working in their own formats.
Given that the full suite is free, this is one of the best deals you'll find in all of computing. It'll do just about anything you expect from an office suite, whether creating documents, spreadsheets, or presentations. You'll find solid formatting tools, as well as extras including mail merge, macros, charting capabilities, and more.
Writer can also export PDF files directly starting with release 2.4.
[edit] Content
The data for the ODT format is actually placed in a zip file container with a ODT extension. It actually contains multiple files instead of just one XML file. A typical zip file looks like:
- mimetype
- Configurations2/accelerator/current.xml
- layout-cache
- content.xml
- styles.xml
- meta.xml
- Thumbnails/thumbnail.png
- settings.xml
- META-INF/manifest.xml
- plus several folders to hold word processing preference data.
The content.xml file contains the actual document data while the rest of the files contain metadata and font styles and other word processing information. The mimetype is: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text
[edit] Sample
A document containing: 'This word is bold.' would look like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <office:document-content xmlns:office="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:office:1.0" xmlns:style="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:style:1.0" xmlns:text="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:text:1.0" xmlns:table="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:table:1.0" xmlns:draw="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:drawing:1.0" xmlns:fo="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:xsl-fo-compatible:1.0" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:meta="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:meta:1.0" xmlns:number="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:datastyle:1.0" xmlns:svg="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:svg-compatible:1.0" xmlns:chart="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:chart:1.0" xmlns:dr3d="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:dr3d:1.0" xmlns:math="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:form="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:form:1.0" xmlns:script="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:script:1.0" xmlns:ooo="http://openoffice.org/2004/office" xmlns:ooow="http://openoffice.org/2004/writer" xmlns:oooc="http://openoffice.org/2004/calc" xmlns:dom="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events" xmlns:xforms="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" office:version="1.1"><office:scripts/><office:font-face-decls><style:font-face style:name="Tahoma1" svg:font-family="Tahoma"/><style:font-face style:name="Times New Roman" svg:font-family="'Times New Roman'" style:font-family-generic="roman" style:font-pitch="variable"/><style:font-face style:name="Arial" svg:font-family="Arial" style:font-family-generic="swiss" style:font-pitch="variable"/><style:font-face style:name="Andale Sans UI" svg:font-family="'Andale Sans UI'" style:font-family-generic="system" style:font-pitch="variable"/><style:font-face style:name="Tahoma" svg:font-family="Tahoma" style:font-family-generic="system" style:font-pitch="variable"/></office:font-face-decls><office:automatic-styles><style:style style:name="T1" style:family="text"><style:text-properties fo:font-weight="bold" style:font-weight-asian="bold" style:font-weight-complex="bold"/></style:style></office:automatic-styles> <office:body><office:text><text:sequence-decls><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Illustration"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Table"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Text"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Drawing"/></text:sequence-decls><text:p text:style-name="Standard">This <text:span text:style-name="T1">word</text:span> is bold.</text:p></office:text></office:body></office:document-content>
[edit] SXW
SXW was an earlier document format used by StarWriter, the predecessor to StarOffice writer. There is still some support for this format but it is no longer native. StarOffice writer is the Sun version of Open Office writer but does include some extra features. It has native PDF support and has a converter for VBA macros that are generated for MS Word.
