Office Open XML
4 Terms and Definitions

4 Terms and Definitions

For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply. Other terms are defined where they appear in italic typeface, on the left side of a syntax rule, or within subclauses of language-specific grammars (17.16 and 18.17). Terms explicitly defined in this Part of ISO/IEC 29500 are not to be presumed to refer implicitly to similar terms defined elsewhere. [Note: This Part uses OPC-related terms, which are defined in ISO/IEC 29500-2. end note]

application — A consumer or producer.

behavior — External appearance or action.

behavior, implementation-defined — Unspecified behavior where each implementation is expected to document that behavior, which would thereby promote predictability and reproducibility within any given implementation. (This term is sometimes called “application-defined behavior”.)

behavior, locale-specific — Behavior that depends on local conventions of nationality, culture, and language.

behavior, unspecified —Behavior where ISO/IEC 29500 makes no recommendations. (This term is sometimes called “application-dependent behavior”.) [Note: To add an extension, an implementer must use the extensibility mechanisms described by ISO/IEC 29500 rather than trying to do so by giving meaning to otherwise unspecified behavior. end note]

byte — A sequence of 8 bits treated as a unit.

comment — A note attached to content in a document. Although a consumer might choose to display comments, they are not considered part of the body of the document. A comment might include the text of the note, the comment author’s name and initials, and date of creation, among other things.

consumer — A piece of software or a device that reads packages through a package implementer. A consumer is often designed to consume packages only for a specific physical package format.

content type — Describes the content stored in a part. Content types define a media type, a subtype, and an optional set of parameters, as defined in RFC 2616.

document category — One of the three categories of Office Open XML documents: Wordprocessing, Spreadsheet, and Presentation, defined as follows:

  • A document whose package-relationship item contains a relationship to a Main Document part (11.3.10) is a document of category Wordprocessing.

  • A document whose package-relationship item contains a relationship to a Workbook part (12.3.23) is a document of category Spreadsheet.

  • A document whose package-relationship item contains a relationship to a Presentation part (13.3.6) is a document of category Presentation.

An Office Open XML document can contain one or more embedded Office Open XML packages (15.2.11) with each embedded package having any of the three document categories. However, the presence of these embedded packages does not change the category of the document.

DrawingML — A set of conventions for specifying the location and appearance of drawing elements in an Office Open XML document.

extension — Any XML element, XML attribute, relationship, or part not explicitly included in ISO/IEC 29500, but that uses the extensibility mechanisms described by ISO/IEC 29500.

id — In some XML-related technologies, the term id implies use of the xsd:ID data type. In this international standard, this term is used to refer to a variety of different identification schemes. See unique identifier.

ODBC – An implementation of ISO/IEC 9075-3:2008 “Information technology – Database languages – SQL – Part 3: Call-Level Interface (SQL/CLI)” or SQL/CLI-based database connectivity API. An example of a broadly used SQL/CLI-based database connectivity API is the Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) API.

Office Open XML document — A rendition of a data stream formatted using the wordprocessing, spreadsheet, or presentation ML and its related MLs as described in ISO/IEC 29500-1 and ISO/IEC 29500-4. Such a document is represented as a package as described in ISO/IEC 29500-2.

OLE – OLE in this context does not refer to any specific technology; instead, it refers to the generalized abstraction of embedding and linking objects within a document.

package— A ZIP archive that conforms to the Open Packaging Conventions specification defined in ISO/IEC 29500-2.

package, embedded— A package that has been stored as the target of an Embedded Package relationship (15.2.11) in an Office Open XML document

PresentationML — A set of conventions for representing an Office Open XML document of category Presentation.

producer — A piece of software or a device that writes packages through a package implementer. A producer is often designed to produce packages according to a particular physical package format specification.

relationship —The kind of connection between a source part and a target part in a package. Relationships make the connections between parts directly discoverable without looking at the content in the parts, and without altering the parts themselves. (See also Package Relationships.)

relationships part — A part containing an XML representation of relationships.

relationship, explicit — A relationship in which a resource is referenced from a source part’s XML using the Id attribute of a Relationship tag.

relationship, implicit — A relationship that is not explicit.

SpreadsheetML — A set of conventions for representing an Office Open XML document of category Spreadsheet.

unique identifier — In some XML-related technologies, the term unique identifier implies use of the xsd:ID data type. In this international standard, this term is used to refer to a variety of different identification schemes. See id.

WordprocessingML — A set of conventions for representing an Office Open XML document of category Wordprocessing.

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