{"id":2856,"date":"2009-03-25T13:19:44","date_gmt":"2009-03-25T17:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/?p=2856"},"modified":"2009-03-25T13:47:38","modified_gmt":"2009-03-25T17:47:38","slug":"document-freedom-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/25\/document-freedom-day.html","title":{"rendered":"Document Freedom Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is the second annual celebration of Document Freedom Day<\/strong><\/a>!<\/p>\n

So why are open document formats important?\u00a0 What happens when someone sends you a document created with Microsoft Word 2007, and saved with the default file format?\u00a0 You get a file with a .docx extension, and you have to find some way to convert it or obtain it in another format.<\/p>\n

What happens when you encounter a file from a program you used 10 years ago, when the company is out of business, and you don’t know anyone who still uses it?\u00a0 This can be more challenging.<\/p>\n

The purpose of open document formats is to ensure that the information about how the document was saved is available for any person\/company to utilize.\u00a0 Importers for different programs and standalone converters can be created; the files themselves can sometimes be opened using simpler means.<\/p>\n

The most forward-thinking and useful set of open document formats are those from the OASIS<\/a> project.\u00a0 They are in use in several programs, but the highest profile of these is OpenOffice.org<\/a>.\u00a0 The Open Document Format<\/a> has proven to be very robust, and stores information in a manner that generally makes them much smaller in size than the Microsoft Office pre-2007 formats (I average about 10% on reports that I generate on a regular basis… that means 10% of the file size, not merely a 10% reduction!).<\/p>\n

I like to do this demonstration:\u00a0 make a copy of a .odt (Open Document Text) file, then change the extension to .zip.\u00a0 Open the zipped file and start looking around.\u00a0 Any graphics embedded within the file are saved in a separate folder.\u00a0 You will find the raw text of the file in files.\u00a0 All in all, this is a very open way to store and retrieve information from files that you may not be able to open otherwise (plus it is a great way to extract the graphic files).<\/p>\n

What can you do to improve things?\u00a0 Get OpenOffice (or try Go-oo<\/a>, which bundles some great plugins and configuration settings) and try it out.\u00a0 It is different from Microsoft Office, but once you are familiar with the menu placements, you can do some wonderful things.<\/p>\n

What else?\u00a0 If you are a Microsoft Office user, you can download and install the converters for ODF files<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anything else?\u00a0 Yes… think about what your needs may be for 5, 10, 20 years down the road, and strive to use document formats that will fill those needs effectively.\u00a0 My recommendation lies with open formats rather than closed.<\/p>\n

Added later:\u00a0 Thanks to Rose Guerrieri, Director of the Kent State University Trumbull Campus Library, for her reminder via the Ohiolink list!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the second annual celebration of Document Freedom Day! So why are open document formats important?\u00a0 What happens when someone sends you a document created with Microsoft Word 2007, and saved with the default file format?\u00a0 You get a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2936,2945,2948,2982,2966],"tags":[4627,4429,4109,4837,4836,3121,4427,4425,4424,4426,4428,4835],"class_list":["post-2856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-groups","category-licensing","category-news","category-open-source","category-software","tag-director","tag-document-freedom-day","tag-go-oo","tag-kent-state-university","tag-kent-state-university-trumbull-campus-library","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-office","tag-odf","tag-open-document-format-odf","tag-open-formats","tag-openofficeorg","tag-rose-guerrieri"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSU5g-K4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}