Getting Started Guide

Appendix B  
Open Source, Open Standards, OpenDocument

Copyright

This document is Copyright © 2017 by the LibreOffice Documentation Team. Contributors are listed below. You may distribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html), version 3 or later, or the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), version 4.0 or later.

All trademarks within this guide belong to their legitimate owners.

Contributors

Feedback

Please direct any comments or suggestions about this document to the Documentation Team’s mailing list: documentation@global.libreoffice.org

Note: Everything you send to a mailing list, including your email address and any other personal information that is written in the message, is publicly archived and cannot be deleted.

Acknowledgments

This appendix is adapted from Appendix B of Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 3.3. The contributors to that appendix are:

Publication date and software version

Published 16 February 2017. Based on LibreOffice 5.2.

Note for Mac users

Some keystrokes and menu items are different on a Mac from those used in Windows and Linux. The table below gives some common substitutions for the instructions in this chapter. For a more detailed list, see the application Help.

Introduction

LibreOffice is a productivity suite that is compatible with other major office suites and available on a variety of platforms. It is open source software and therefore free to download, use, and distribute. If you are new to LibreOffice, this appendix will provide some information regarding its history, its community, and some of its technical specifications.

A short history of LibreOffice

The OpenOffice.org project began when Sun Microsystems released the source code (“blueprints”) for its StarOffice® software to the open source community on October 13, 2000. OpenOffice.org 1.0, the product, was released on April 30, 2002. Major updates to OpenOffice.org included version 2.0 in October 2005 and version 3.0 in October 2008. On January 26, 2010, Oracle Corporation acquired Sun Microsystems.

On September 28, 2010, the community of volunteers who develop and promote OpenOffice.org announce a major change in project structure. After ten years’ successful growth with Sun Microsystems as founding and principle sponsor, the project launched an independent foundation called The Document Foundation, to fulfill the promise of independence written in the original charter. This foundation is the cornerstone of a new ecosystem where individuals and organizations can contribute to and benefit from the availability of a truly free office suite.

Unable to acquire the trademarked OpenOffice.org name from Oracle Corporation, The Document Foundation named its product LibreOffice. Continuing the version numbers from OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice 3.3 was released in January 2011. Version 5.0 was released in July 2015; version 5.1 was releases in February 2016.

In February 2012, The Document Foundation was incorporated in Berlin as a German Stiftung. You can read more about The Document Foundation at: http://www.documentfoundation.org/

The LibreOffice community

The Document Foundation’s mission is:

“...to facilitate the evolution of the OpenOffice.org Community into a new open, independent, and meritocratic organizational structure within the next few months. An independent Foundation is a better match to the values of our contributors, users, and supporters, and will enable a more effective, efficient, transparent, and inclusive Community. We will protect past investments by building on the solid achievements of our first decade, encourage wide participation in the Community, and co-ordinate activity across the Community.”

Some of our corporate supporters include Canonical, The GNOME Foundation, Google, Novell and Red Hat. Additionally, over 450,000 people from nearly every part of the globe have joined this project with the idea of creating the best possible office suite that all can use. This is the essence of an “open source” community!

With its open source software license, LibreOffice is key in the drive to provide an office suite that is available to anyone, anywhere, for commercial or personal use. The software has been translated into many languages and runs on all major operating systems. New functionality can be added in the form of extensions.

The LibreOffice community invites contributors in all areas, including translators, software developers, graphic artists, technical writers, editors, donors, and end-user support. Whatever you do best, you can make a difference in LibreOffice. The community operates internationally in all time zones and in many languages, linked through the internet at www.libreoffice.org and www.documentfoundation.org.

How is LibreOffice licensed?

LibreOffice is distributed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) 2.0.
See https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/licenses/

What is “open source”?

The four essential rights of open-source software are embodied within the Free Software Foundation’s General Public License (GPL):

• •The right to use the software for any purpose. 

• •Freedom to redistribute the software for free or for a fee. 

• •Access to the complete source code of the program (that is, the “blueprints”). 

• •The right to modify any part of the source, or use portions of it in other programs. 

The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs.

For more information on Free and Open Source software, visit these websites:

Open Source Initiative (OSI): http://www.opensource.org

Free Software Foundation (FSF): https:///www.fsf.org

What are “open standards”?

An open standard provides a means of doing something that is independent of manufacturer or vendor, thus enabling competing software programs to freely use the same file formats. HTML, XML, and ODF are examples of open standards for documents.

An open standard meets the following requirements:

• •It is well documented with the complete specification publicly available, either free or at a nominal charge. 

• •It can be freely copied, distributed and used. The intellectual property of the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis. 

• •It is standardized and maintained in an independent, open forum (also called “standards organization”) using an open process. 

What is OpenDocument?

Unlike other file formats, ODF (ISO-IEC 26300:2015) is an open standard. It is publicly available, royalty-free, and without legal or other restrictions; therefore ODF files are not tied to a specific office suite and anybody can build a program that interprets these files. For this reason ODF is quickly becoming the preferred file format for government agencies, schools and other companies who prefer not to be too dependent on any one software supplier.

LibreOffice saves documents in OpenDocument Format by default. LibreOffice 3 adopted version 1.2 of the OpenDocument standard and LibreOffice 5 continues to use this standard. LibreOffice can also open and save many other file formats, as summarized below.

For a full list of file formats that LibreOffice can read and write, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Supported_file_formats

OpenDocument filename extensions

The most common filename extensions used for OpenDocument documents are:

*.odt for word processing (text) documents

*.ods for spreadsheets

*.odp for presentations

*.odb for databases

*.odg for graphics (vector drawings)

*.odc for charts

*.odf for formulas (scientific formulas and  equations)

File formats LibreOffice can open

LibreOffice can open a wide variety of file formats in addition to the OpenDocument formats, including Portable Document Format (PDF), if an ODF file is embedded in the PDF (see Chapter 10 Printing, Exporting, and Emailing for more information).

Opening text documents

In addition to OpenDocument formats (.odt, .ott, .oth, .odm, and .fodt), Writer can open the formats used by OpenOffice.org 1.x (.sxw, .stw, and .sxg), the following text document formats, and a variety of legacy formats not listed below:

Microsoft Word 6.0/95/97/2000/XP/Mac) (.doc and .dot)
Microsoft Word 2003 XML (.xml)
Microsoft Word 2007/2010 XML (.docx, .docm, .dotx, .dotm)

Most of these file types are automatically detected by LibreOffice, so they can be opened without explicitly selecting the document type in the file picker.

When opening .htm or .html files (used for web pages), LibreOffice customizes Writer for working with these files.

Opening spreadsheets

In addition to OpenDocument formats (.ods, .ots, and .fods), Calc can open the formats used by OpenOffice.org 1.x (.sxc and .stc) and the following spreadsheet formats:

Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP (.xls, .xlw, and .xlt)
Microsoft Excel 4.x–5.0/95 (.xls, .xlw, and .xlt)
Microsoft Excel 2003 XML (.xml)
Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 XML (.xlsx, .xlsm, .xlts, .xltm)
Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 binary (.xlsb)
Lotus 1-2-3 (.wk1, .wks, and .123)
Data Interchange Format (.dif)
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Text CSV (.csv and .txt)
StarCalc formats (.sdc and .vor)
dBASE (.dbf)
SYLK (.slk)
Unified Office Format spreadsheet (.uos, .uof)
HTML Document (.htm and .html files, including Web page queries)
Quattro Pro 6.0 (.wb2)
Apple Numbers 2 (.numbers)
... and many others

Opening presentations

In addition to OpenDocument formats (.odp, .odg, .otp, and .fopd), Impress can open the formats used by OpenOffice.org 1.x (.sxi and .sti) and the following presentation formats:

Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP (.ppt and .pot)
Microsoft PowerPoint 2007/2010 (.pptx, .pptm, .potx, .potm)
StarDraw and StarImpress (.sda, .sdd, .sdp, and .vor)
Unified Office Format presentation (.uop, .uof)
CGM – Computer Graphics Metafile (.cgm)
Portable Document Format (.pdf)
Apple Keynote 5 (.key)
... and many others

Opening graphic files

In addition to OpenDocument formats (.odg and .otg), Draw can open the formats used by OpenOffice.org 1.x (.sxd and .std) and the following graphic formats:

Adobe Photoshop (*.psd)
AutoCAD Interchange Format (*.dxf)
Corel Draw (*.cdr)
Corel Presentation Exchange (*.cmx)
Microsoft Publisher 98-2010 (*.pub)
Microsoft Visio 2000-2013 (*.vdx; *.vsd; *.vsdm; *.vsdx)
WordPerfect Graphics (*.wpg)

Opening formula files

In addition to OpenDocument Formula (.odf) files, Math can open the format used by OpenOffice.org 1.x (.sxm), StarMath, (.smf), and MathML (.mml) files.

When opening a Word document that contains an embedded equation editor object, if the option for it (MathType to LibreOffice Math or reverse) is checked in Tools > Options > Load/Save > Microsoft Office, the object will be automatically converted to an LibreOffice Math object.

File formats LibreOffice can save to

Saving in an OpenDocument format guarantees the correct rendering of the file when it is transferred to another person or when the file is reopened with a later version of LibreOffice or with another program. It is strongly recommended that you use OpenDocument as the default file formats. However, you can save files in other formats, if you wish.

• Tip 

When sharing a document that you do not expect or want the recipient to modify, the preferred option is to convert the document to PDF. LibreOffice provides a very straightforward way to convert documents to PDF. See Chapter 10 Printing, Exporting, and E-Mailing in this guide.

Saving text documents

In addition to OpenDocument formats (.odt, .ott, and .fodt), Writer can save in these formats:

Encryption support within the Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP filter allows password protected Microsoft Word documents to be saved.

• Note 

The .rtf format is a common format for transferring text files between applications, but you are likely to experience loss of formatting and images. For this reason, other formats should be used.

Saving spreadsheet files

In addition to OpenDocument formats (.ods and .ots), Calc can save in these formats:

Saving presentations

In addition to OpenDocument formats (.odp, .otp, .fodp, and .odg), Impress can save in these formats:

Microsoft PowerPoint 97–2003 (.ppt)
Microsoft PowerPoint 97–2003 Template (.pot)
Microsoft PowerPoint 97–2003 AutoPlay (.pps)
Microsoft PowerPoint 2007–2013 XML (.pptx, .potm)
Microsoft PowerPoint 2007–2013 XML AutoPlay (.ppsx)
Office Open XML Presentation (.pptx, .potm, .ppsx)
Unified Office Format presentation (.uop)

Impress can also export to MacroMedia Flash (.swf) and any of the graphics formats listed for Draw.

Saving drawings

Draw can only save in the OpenDocument Drawing formats (.odg, .otg, and .fodg), the OpenOffice.org 1.x formats (.sxd and .std) and StarDraw format (.sda, .sdd, and .vor).

However, Draw can also export to BMP, EMF, EPS, GIF, JPEG, MET, PBM, PCT, PGM, PNG, PPM, RAS, SVG, SVM, TIFF, WMF, and XPM.

Writer/Web can save in these formats

HTML document (.html and .htm), as HTML 4.0 Transitional
Text and Text Encoded (LibreOffice Writer/Web) (.txt)

Exporting to other formats

Different from the command Save as, LibreOffice uses the term “export” to create a new file with another format without leaving the current content and file format. If you cannot find the file type you are looking for under Save As, look under Export for additional types.

LibreOffice can export files to HTML and XHTML. To publish on a Wiki server, export the documents with MediaWiki (.txt) format. In addition, Draw and Impress can export to Adobe Flash (.swf) and a range of image formats.

To export to one of these formats, choose File > Export. On the Export dialog, specify a file name for the exported document, then select the desired format in the File format list and click the Export button.

1http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=66363