DocumentStandards

From Document Freedom Day

Document Freedom Day focuses on the Open Document Format (ODF) because it is the only Open Standard that fits all common uses of an office document format, e.g. formatted editing and printing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It is certified by the ISO (International standardization organization, more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opendocument).

Other Formats

Other formats have been suggested for inclusion as well, but they either do not cover the same function range or do not qualify as an Open Standard, such as

• Plain text is the umbrella term for unformatted text. If you don't need formatting in your text, saving and distributing it as plain text is ideal. We do not emphasise plain text because we think most users want formatting.

• Rich Text Format (RTF) is a format developed and published by Microsoft. There is no known case of legal problems to implement RTF, but the format keeps being changed by Microsoft and fails the Open Standard definition in terms of a participatory process. Also RTF does not cover spreadsheets and presentations.

• Portable Document Format (PDF) is a fixed-layout file format created by Adobe that comes in many versions. Some of these versions allow interactive editing, some don't (example: PDF/A). Some of these versions are not encumbered, others are offered under RAND conditions, which are not acceptable to an Open Standard. PDF also does not cover spreadsheets and presentations.

• MS-OOXML is the format that comes closest to ODF in function, but it fails the test for an Open Standard in various ways, including an unclear legal status as well as inclusion of and reference to proprietary technologies. It has all signs of a vendor-specific format that only Microsoft will be able to implement completely.

• SyncML is a format for synchronisation of information between various devices. It may qualify as an Open Standard, but it is not meant for documents.

Media Formats

Common media formats are often endangered due to software patents. There are though some free multimedia codecs:

• Vorbis is an audio codec with comparable quality to the popular mp3 format, but from what is known free of patents.
• Theora is a video codec that is claimed to be free of patents. There's currently a discussion if the next HTML standard should contain a free media format as a default and there's a Petition to the W3C to choose Theora.