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Open Document Architecture

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The Open Document Architecture (or sometimes referred to as Office Document Architecture or just ODA) is a standard document file format maintained by the ITU-T to replace all proprietary document file formats. It should not be confused with the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications, also known as OpenDocument.

ODA is detailed in the standards documents T.411-T.424, which is equivalent to ISO 8613. The standard was finally published in 1999. ODA defines a compound document format that can contain raw text, raster images and vector graphics. The documents have both logical and layout structures. Logically the text can be partitioned into chapters, footnotes and other subelements akin to HTML, and the layout fill a function similar to Cascading Style Sheets in the web world. The binary transport format for an ODA-conformant file is called Open Document Interchange Format (ODIF) and is based on the Standard Generalized Markup Language and Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1).

In 1985 ESPRIT financed a pilot implementation of the ODA concept, involving, among others, Bull corporation, Olivetti, ICL and Siemens AG. However, no significant developer of document software chose to support the format. It also took an extraordinarily long time to release the format (the pilot was financed in 1985, but the final specification not published until 1999). Given a lack of products that supported the format, in part because of the excessive time used to create the specification, few users were interested in using it. Eventually interest in the format faded.

It would be improper to call the ODA anything but a failure, but its spirit clearly influenced latter-day document formats that were successful in gaining support from many document software developers and users. These include the mentioned HTML and CSS as well as XML and XSL leading up to OpenDocument.

The standard itself was made available for free download on September 7 2007 (the "missing" documents T.420 and T.423 do not exist):

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