More OpenDocument Format (ODF) wins and an important reminder of people who try to harm it, sometimes while pretending to be "helping"

I’ve been so busy with other stuff that I’ve only peripherally been paying attention to an ongoing meme on the Internet about how the World Wide Web Consortium’s Common Document Format (CDF) had been identified by the OpenDocument Foundation as a superior document format to the OpenDocument Format that it had been backing for so long.

While you can create and save documents in the OpenDocument format using OpenOffice.org, KWord, or AbiWord, there are other ways to generate ODF files. odtwriter, for example, can help you to quickly convert plain text files formatted using reStructured Text markup into odt (OpenOffice.org Writer-compatible ODF) documents.

OpenDocument, that is: The third stage, planned for mid-2008, will be the addition of the OpenDocument format for word processors to the list of export formats. "Imagine that you want to use a set of wiki articles in the classroom. By supporting the OpenDocument format, we will make it easy for educators to customize and remix content before printing and distributing it from any desktop computer," Sue Gardner explained.

The OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) is an XML standard that lets you store and exchange office application documents, including word-processor, spreadsheet, and presentation files. Whether you try to perform special tasks on files saved from such applications or work on applications to process such files, you should become familiar with this important format.

When in mid-October 2007, the OpenDocument Foundation announced that the World Wide Web Consoritum-backed Common Document Format (CDF) was the heir-apparent to what it believed was a dead-on-arrival OpenDocument Format, many confused the ODf to be one in the same with the ODF and the latter to have one foot in the grave.

Publishers aim for OpenDocument Format (ODF) whilst OOXML faces a few new barriers, exploits tricks

Rob Weir of IBM has just posted a lengthy reply to concerns raised by Marbux and Gary Edwards (OpenDocument Foundation).

Michael Brauer, the OpenOffice.org XML project lead and OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee Chair, has written a blog entry about the progress of native Office Open XML (OOXML) import filter development for OpenOffice.org. Brauer explains the importance of supporting OOXML in OpenOffice.org and also describes some of the challenges associated with supporting an emerging document format.