OpenOffice.org XML is an open XML-based file format developed as an open community effort by Sun Microsystems in 2000–2002. The open-source software application suite OpenOffice.org 1.x and StarOffice 6 and 7 used the format as their native and default file format for saving files. The OpenOffice.org XML format is no longer widely used, but it is still supported in recent versions of OpenOffice.org-descended software.
OpenDocument (ISO/IEC 26300:2006) is based on OpenOffice.org XML and these formats are very similar in many technical areas. However, OpenDocument is not the same as the older OpenOffice.org XML format and these formats are not directly compatible. In 2005, OpenOffice.org (since version 2.0) and StarOffice (since version 8) switched to OpenDocument as their native and default format.
History
StarOffice developers adopted XML to replace the old binary StarOffice file format. The draft version was also known as StarOffice XML File Format.
The stated goal in the draft was:
File formats The format uses XML files to describe the documents. To minimize space, the files are compressed into an archive and given a suffix depending on what sort of data is contained in them. File type OpenOffice.org/StarOffice component File (template) suffixes MIME Text Writer sxw (stw) application/vnd.sun.xml.writerapplication/vnd.sun.xml.writer.template Spreadsheet Calc sxc (stc) application/vnd.sun.xml.calcapplication/vnd.sun.xml.calc.template Graphics Draw sxd (std) application/vnd.sun.xml.drawapplication/vnd.sun.xml.draw.template Presentation Impress sxi (sti) application/vnd.sun.xml.impressapplication/vnd.sun.xml.impress.template Formula Math sxm application/vnd.sun.xml.math Master document Writer sxg application/vnd.sun.xml.writer.global HTML Writer HTML (stw) text/htmlapplication/vnd.sun.xml.writer.web
Implementations
Abiword (SXW) Apache OpenOffice EditGrid Viewer (SXC) Gnumeric (SXC) Google Docs (SXW, import only) KOffice (SXW, SXC, SXI) LibreOffice (as of 4.3, import only) OpenOffice.org StarOffice/Oracle Open Office SoftMaker Office 2006 TextMaker 2006 (SXW, import only) TextMaker Viewer (SXW, view only) Visioo-Writer (limited support) Zoho Office (SXW, SXC, SXI - view/edit/convert files) Zoho Viewer (SXW, SXC, SXI - view/convert files) Zoho QuickRead - a Firefox/Internet Explorer plug-in for online Viewer
See also List of document markup languages Comparison of document markup languages
References
External links OpenOffice.org XML File Format — File Format Specification and General Information Thinking XML: The open office file format - IBM technical library (January 1, 2003)