Uniform Office Format (UOF; Chinese 标文通, literally "standard text general"), sometimes known as Unified Office Format, is an

open standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definition ...

for

office An office is a space where an Organization, organization's employees perform Business administration, administrative Work (human activity), work in order to support and realize objects and Goals, plans, action theory, goals of the organizati ...

applications developed in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It includes word processing, presentation, and spreadsheet modules, and is made up of

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

, and format specifications. The document format described uses

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

contained in a compressed file container, similar to

OpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed wi ...

and

Office Open XML Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version a ...

. The working group that produced the standard was founded in January 2002, and the first draft of the specification was produced in December 2005.

Application support

Office suites

A number of applications list support for the Uniform Office Format; listed alphabetically they include: *

EIOffice EIOffice, also known as Evermore Integrated Office, is a proprietary Office suite by Evermore Software. In 2010, Evermore changed their name to Yozosoft. Supported operating systems include Microsoft Windows and Linux. It is marketed internationa ...

2009 is said to be based on UOF. It uses binder files with

file extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...

EIO (.eio). In the latest version 5.0.1272.101 it doesn't open or save files with extensions .uof, .uot, .uos or .uop. The documentation of EIOffice states it is possible to publish documents in "Unit Office Format (XML)" *

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...

and

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source productivity software, office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was fork (software development), forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of t ...

from version 3 can open and save files in "Unified Office Format" with file extensions .uof, .uot, .uos, .uop (text, spreadsheet, presentation) (This also applies to version 3 of NeoOffice, a popular variant of OpenOffice for the Macintosh.). * RedOffice 4.0, a Chinese

variant, can open and save files with file extension .uof. *

WPS Office WPS Office (an acronym for Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheets, previously known as Kingsoft Office) is an office suite for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and HarmonyOS developed by Zhuhai-based Chinese software developer Kings ...

claims read and write support of UOF since 2009, including UOF 2.0.

Filters and converters

ODF to UOF

Software is available to convert from ODF to UOF and the other way round. The software was developed between November 2005 and October 2006 by the ''Open Standard Lab'' of

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charter ...

OOXML to UOF

Software is being developed at ACT (The Institute of Advanced Computing Technology) at Beihang University to convert from OOXML to UOF and ''vice versa''.

Possibility of merging UOF and ODF

At the "

World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and e ...

IPRs Issues in Standardization" conference in Beijing (April 2007), convened by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, the China State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

Scott McNealy Scott McNealy (born November 13, 1954) is an American businessman. He is most famous for co-founding the computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim. In 2004, while still at Sun, ...

, the Chairman of Sun Microsystems called for a merger of

OASIS In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

's ODF and China's UOF. While both formats are open, there are significant technical challenges in achieving a merger, as the two formats have made different fundamental choices in how to describe documents. A comparison document between ODF and UOF is available from the ODF-UOF project on SourceForge.

UOF 2.0

UOF 2.0 was released in 2011, with support from WPS Office.

References

External links

GB/T 20916-2007 中文办公软件文档格式规范
''(GB / T 20916-2007 Chinese office file format specification)'' updated 1 September 2009 (Simplified Chinese) * . * . * . {{Document markup languages Markup languages Document-centric XML-based standards Computer file formats Standards of the People's Republic of China