Welcome

Welcome to the OpenDoPE website.

OpenDoPE

OpenDoPE stands for Open Document Processing Ecosystem.

OpenDoPE is a new, standards based approach to document automation / document assembly.

It promotes vendor-neutral conventions which enable users to do document production without getting locked in to a vendor's proprietary file format.

Fundamentally, it is a set of conventions for doing document assembly using Open XML (the ISO-standard Microsoft Word docx file format), specifically, its content control databinding architecture.

As such, in adopting OpenDoPE, you aren't making any commitment above and beyond continued use of the docx file format, and a conventional approach to use of its content controls.

Vision

The vision is that interoperable components for authoring and processing be available from a variety of vendors, so users can pick and choose the pieces which best meet their needs.

As things currently stand, users are invariably locked in to proprietary systems. This has severely retarded awareness of document processing as a market, and caused it to remain "niche" (although quite a big niche). It has also resulted in extreme non-linear disparities between price and functionality across vendors (with prices ranging from several hundred dollars, to hundreds of thousands).

The Web experienced explosive growth because of standard authoring formats (HTML), authoring tools, and a variety of viewers/browsers. OpenDoPE aims to bring the same dynamics to the document processing marketplace.

OpenDoPE may also be used as an exchange format, to help users to convert/migrate between proprietary systems.

This web site is home to the OpenDoPE Conventions document, and supporting materials.

Reference source code is also available, so IT departments can deliver customised solutions beyond what vendor APIs allow (ie build as they wish).