OpenDocument, written — not just opened
Reading .odt, .ods and .odp but saving them as something else is half a promise. Rutba Office now writes OpenDocument too, so a file that arrives in an open format leaves in one.
· 3 min read
OpenDocument is the format governments, schools and a great many public bodies chose precisely because it belongs to nobody. A lot of software will open an .odt file. Far fewer will save one. They take the file in, and when you press save they quietly turn it into their own format — which for a user who chose an open format on purpose is the one thing they did not ask for.
Reading an open format and writing a closed one is half a promise. Rutba Office now keeps the whole of it.
What goes back out
The reader already took an OpenDocument file’s text, structure, tables, sheet values and formulas, and slide content. The writer now puts the same back:
- Word writes .odt — paragraphs, headings, lists and tables, with their run formatting.
- Worksheets writes .ods — values and formulas, with the value types that keep a cell a date or a percentage rather than a number that used to be one.
- Presentation writes .odp — text boxes and pictures, in place.
The value types are the detail worth dwelling on. A spreadsheet cell holding 45 and formatted as a date is a date; strip the type on the way out and the next program opens a column of numbers. Keeping the type is the difference between writing the format and writing something shaped like it.
Reading an open format and saving a closed one is half a promise.
The operating system was making the promise for us
There was a less visible reason this mattered. The installer tells Windows that Rutba Office is an editor for .odt, .ods and .odp — so double-clicking one opens it here. Until the writer existed, pressing Ctrl+S on a file Windows had handed us was refused. The operating system was promising something the application could not yet do.
Tested against the same content in both formats
Because the test fixtures are written by Office itself as OOXML and as OpenDocument from the same content, the two formats are checked against each other. It was that pairing that caught an .ods losing its named ranges, merged cells and number formats on the way in — the same run that holds this writer to account on the way out.
Free alternatives to Microsoft Office, honestly compared
Including the ones that are not ours — on the Rutba Office site.
Read the comparison
