Uniform Office Format


Uniform Office Format, sometimes known as Unified Office Format, is an open standard for office applications developed in China. It includes word processing, presentation, and spreadsheet modules, and is made up of GUI, API, and format specifications. The document format described uses XML contained in a compressed file container, similar to OpenDocument and Office Open XML.
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:

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.

OOXML to UOF

Software is being developed at ACT at Beihang University to convert from OOXML to UOF and vice versa.

Possibility of merging UOF and ODF

At the "World Trade Organization IPRs Issues in Standardization" conference in Beijing, convened by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, the China State Intellectual Property Office and Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy, the Chairman of Sun Microsystems called for a merger of OASIS/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.