A posting from Michael Brauer to the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee mailing list contains the OpenOffice.org XML file format specification and DTD files that Sun Microsystems, Inc. will contribute to the OASIS TC. The contribution will be discussed at the TC's first meeting on December 16, 2002. The XML specification consists of a 571-page OpenOffice.org XML File Format - Technical Reference Manual and 22 modularized XML DTD files. The design goal in the OpenOffice.org XML file format was to have a complete specification encompassing all OpenOffice.org components and to provide an open standard for office documents. The single XML format applies to a wide range of document types created by office tools. The specification is being made available to OASIS under a reciprocal Royalty-Free License, as explained in the communiqué.

A Late-Breaking News session at XML 2002 (December 10, 2002) feature the file format in a presentation by Daniel Vogelheim (Software Engineer, Sun Microsystems, Germany). In "XML For The Masses - An XML Based File Format for Office Documents" Daniel examined the design rationale behind the OpenOffice.org XML File Format and described uses of the format within and outside of its supporting applications.

Modularized DTD filenames: accelerator.dtd, chart.mod, datastyl.mod, defs.mod, dialog.dtd, drawing.mod, dtypes.mod, event.dtd, form.mod, image.dtd, menubar.dtd, meta.mod, nmspace.mod, office.dtd, office.mod, script.mod, settings.mod, statusbar.dtd, style.mod, table.mod, text.mod, toolbar.dtd

The goal of the OASIS Open Office XML Format TC is "to create an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications." On 2002-11-04 OASIS issued a Call for Participation in this new 'Open Office XML Format Technical Committee'. Michael Brauer (Sun Microsystems) will chair the TC. The proposed XML file format is to be "suitable for office documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical components." It will be compatible XML v1.0 and W3C Namespaces. The file format will "retain high-level information suitable for editing the document and keep the document's content and layout information separate such that they can be processed independently of each other." For interoperability, it must be "friendly to transformations using XSLT or similar XML-based languages or tools. The design will borrow from similar, existing standards wherever possible and permitted. Since the OpenOffice.org XML format specification meets these criteria and has proven its value in real life, this TC will use it as the basis for its work. TC work will be done in two phases, each resulting in a Committee Specification that includes (1) a set of XML DTDs/schemas setting the vocabulary, constraints and semantics of the file format in question, and (2) a set of written specifications that describe the elements and attributes of the DTDs/schemas in plain English."