TDF Community Blog

I decided to start the current campaign, with one blog post per week focusing on the different aspects of Open Document Format, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the standardisation by OASIS, which happened in May 2005.

My hope was to raise the interest around ODF, which is the document format that every conscious user of office suites should adopt in order to maintain full control on his intellectual property (even if we are not professional writers or researchers, the content of our documents is our intellectual property, and we have the right to decide when, how and with whom we want to share it).

My articles were targeting LibreOffice users, as they have the privilege – over other office suite users – of creating documents (and I am not referring only to text, but also to spreadsheets and presentations or drawings) with the only program adopting ODF as native document format.

I wanted to strengthen their understanding of ODF, and explain in detail the enormous value of the open and standard document format they are using in comparison with the closed and proprietary Microsoft office document format, which is unfortunately the most used worldwide to maintain Microsoft lock in and reinforce Microsoft monopoly.

Software supporting OOXML – the technical name of the closed and proprietary Microsoft office document format – as their native document format are in fact strengthening Microsoft lock in just because in their paramount ignorance of the real situation – today, OOXML is the only lock in tool available to Microsoft – they protect Microsoft rather than protecting their users. In reality, they are enemies of their own users, as they use Microsoft handcuffs to prevent them to own and control their intellectual property.

Unfortunately, the absolute majority of office suite users are not aware of the issues – for their intellectual property – related to the closed and proprietary Microsoft office document format, and are just victim of the irresponsible choice about the native document format made by developers of OnlyOffice and WPS Office, and the likes.

Of course, given Microsoft monopoly on office suites, programs must support OOXML to their best, as LibreOffice does, to “steal” Microsoft stronghold on intellectual property, and give it back to legitimate owners, i.e. users of Microsoft office series suites, whatever the name, and of their accomplishes.

While I was trying to explain all this with my blog posts about ODF, something unexpected happened: several journalists picked up the contents of the articles and relaunched them on their media, showing that there is still hope for a sane attitude about document formats, rather than the current “comfortable” behaviour of choosing the most frequently used document format without even thinking to the consequences of the evil strategy associated to it.

Based on this unexpected – and extremely positive – outcome, I have decided to revive the ODF Advocacy project (which was killed twice in the past) by launching ODF News (https://www.odf.news), where I will write about ODF and publish ODF supporting documents.

ODF News will go live in January 2026, to prepare for the 20th anniversary of ODF being approved as ISO/IEC 26300.

This new version of the native LibreOffice document format standard marks the 20th anniversary of the only open document format for office applications

Berlin, December 3, 2025 – The Document Foundation announces that OASIS Open (www.oasis-open.org), the global open-source and standards organisation, has approved the Open Document Format (ODF) for office applications v1.4 as an OASIS standard, which is the organisation’s highest level of ratification.

The release of ODF v1.4 coincides with the 20th anniversary of ODF’s adoption as an OASIS Standard. Since 2005, ODF has served users as a vendor-neutral, royalty-free format for office documents, ensuring that files remain readable, editable and interoperable across platforms.

Several governments and international organisations, including NATO, the European Commission and countries across multiple continents, have mandated ODF for their operations worldwide.

ODF v1.4 maintains full backward compatibility and improves developer documentation, adds better support for assistive technologies for accessibility, improves professional document formatting and visual design capabilities, and expands features for data analysis and technical documentation. These updates reinforce the Open Document Format’s position as a comprehensive solution for office productivity and document creation.

“ODF provides a vendor-neutral foundation for office productivity and collaboration. With v1.4, the standard continues to evolve, supporting cloud collaboration, richer multimedia, and standardised security,” said Svante Schubert, Open Document Format’s TC Co-Chair. “Looking ahead, ODF is moving beyond document exchange towards standardised, semantic, change-based collaboration, enabling the meaningful sharing of interoperable changes across platforms.”

ODF v1.4 safeguards digital sovereignty by removing a single vendor’s control over documents and returning it to the community, to allows individuals and enterprises to independently decide how and with whom to share content, preventing it from being analysed for commercial purposes or potentially shared without the legitimate owner’s knowledge.
Like all other versions of the standard format, ODF 1.4 is based on an XML schema that complies with simplicity and readability guidelines, making files much more robust and secure than those commonly found on the market.

Overall, this is another significant step towards transparency, openness and digital sovereignty, thanks to the collaborative efforts of open-source software developers, advocates and users.
The finalized four-part specification of ODF v1.4 can be found in the OASIS library by clicking here: docs.oasis-open.org/office/OpenDocument/v1.4/os/.

The announcement mentions OASIS sponsors who have not contributed to the development of ODF 1.4, whereas The Document Foundation, which funded the development of the standard alongside companies such as Microsoft and has always advocated for it, is not mentioned at all. Unfortunately, business is business, even when it comes to open standards.

ODF 1.4 New Features

General

• The writing direction specification has been expanded and clarified.
• Complex backgrounds, such as colour gradients or hatching, can now be applied to a wider range of objects.
• Objects can be marked as “decorative” to support accessibility technologies.
• Shapes can now contain not only simple text and lists, but also tables.
• The method for specifying the handles of shapes has been improved.
• A new, more flexible method has been added for specifying the format of number labels in multi-level lists.

Text Documents

• It is now possible to position objects relative to the page margins.
• A binding area (also known as a gutter) can be set in the page format.
• The overlay behaviour of objects can now be specified more flexibly.

Spreadsheets

• A new function, EASTERSUNDAY, can be used to calculate the date of Easter and its associated dates.
• Text colour and cell background colour can be used as filter criteria.

Charts

• Scales can be labelled more flexibly.
• For logarithmic scales, the underlying base can be specified.

Formula Typesetting

• All versions of the MathML formula language are now permitted.