OpenDocument Day at aKademy 2006

Tuesday September 26

OpenDocument Day at aKademy offers software developers interested in ODF an opportunity to exchange ideas, build relations and collaborate on all things ODF in an informal setting. Potential topics can include interoperability between ODF implementations, new usages of ODF, tools and libraries for handling ODF, future ODF extensions and more.

OpenDocument Day is intended to be cross-platform and cross-application, even though it is held at the KDE aKademy conference site. If you are a developer and are working on OpenDocument related projects, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Visit the wiki for more information.

Lightning Talks

• ODF Test Suite (Lotzi Boloni, Waldo Bastian)
• A Proposed OpenDocument Raster Format (Sander Koning)
• An OpenDocument Viewer (Daniel Carrera)
• A Standard ODF Object Model (Rob Weir)
• The Promise of ODF (Sam Hiser)
• Smart fonts, font features and ODF (Tim Eves)
• ODF in Plone (Joel Burton)
• ODF Processing Toolsets (Florian Reuter)

About the OpenDocument Format

The OpenDocument format (ODF) is an open document file format for saving and exchanging office documents such as memos, reports, books, spreadsheets, databases, charts, and presentations. This standard was developed by the OASIS industry consortium. KOffice developer David Faure played an active role in the standardization process and KOffice 1.5 is using ODF as its native document format. ODF was first approved as an OASIS standard on May 1, 2005 and subsequently as international ISO/IEC 26300 standard on May 3, 2006.

The OpenDocument standard has been developed by a variety of organizations and is publicly accessible. This means it can be implemented into any solution be it open source or a closed proprietary product without royalties. The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats so organizations and individuals can avoid being locked in to a single software vendor.

ODF is the first standard for editable office documents that has been vetted by an independent recognized standardization body.

Organizations around the world are looking to adopt ODF as a standard format for document exchange. Some high profile ones include the state of Massachusetts, the National Archives of Australia, the federal government of Belgium, Denmark and the EC's IDABC, an initiative of the European Commission which makes recommendations for interoperable eGovernment services within Europe.

Visit Wikipedia for a more thorough description of the OpenDocument Format. The ODF Alliance website gives an overview of the widespread industry support for ODF.