Converting OpenOffice SXW to Markdown: Unpacking Pre-ODF XML Document Archives

In 2000, Sun Microsystems acquired StarDivision and open-sourced the StarOffice suite as OpenOffice.org. Before the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and OASIS standardized the OpenDocument Format (.odt) in 2005, OpenOffice.org 1.0 and 1.1 saved word processing documents using the .sxw extension.

SXW proved that office documents could abandon opaque, proprietary binary OLE containers (like Microsoft Word .doc) in favor of human-inspectable XML wrapped inside a standard ZIP package.

However, modern office suites and mobile devices no longer provide reliable backwards compatibility for the pre-ODF Sun XML schema used in SXW files.

This technical guide explores the package hierarchy of .sxw archives, contrasts its XML syntax with modern ODF, and demonstrates how convrtr's SXW to Markdown converter transforms vintage StarOffice and OpenOffice documents into portable GitHub Flavored Markdown entirely inside your browser.

The SXW ZIP Package Hierarchy

An .sxw document is a PKZIP archive containing structured XML streams:

• mimetype: Uncompressed text file declaring application/vnd.sun.xml.writer.
• content.xml: The core document tree holding headings, paragraphs, tables, lists, and character styles.
• meta.xml: Document metadata adhering to the Dublin Core metadata specification (title, author, creation timestamp, summary).
• styles.xml: Page layout, margins, font declarations, and paragraph styles.
• settings.xml: View zoom levels, cursor position, and printer preferences.

convrtr extracts content.xml and meta.xml directly into memory using client-side JavaScript, bypassing file-system write overhead.

The Sun XML Document Schema

While modern OpenDocument Text (.odt) uses the urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:text:1.0 namespace, SXW files use the original Sun namespace:

<office:document-content
  xmlns:office="http://openoffice.org/2000/office"
  xmlns:text="http://openoffice.org/2000/text"
  xmlns:table="http://openoffice.org/2000/table">
  <office:body>
    <text:h text:level="1">Executive Summary</text:h>
    <text:p>OpenOffice pioneered open document formats.</text:p>
  </office:body>
</office:document-content>

Key XML structures include:

• Headings: <text:h text:level="N"> tags, where $N$ maps directly to Markdown heading levels (#, ##, ###).
• Paragraphs: <text:p> tags containing text runs, spaces (<text:s text:c="N"/>), and hyperlinks (<text:a xlink:href="...">).
• Lists: <text:unordered-list> and <text:ordered-list> containing nested <text:list-item> elements.
• Tables: <table:table>, <table:table-row>, and <table:table-cell> grids.

Transformation to GitHub Flavored Markdown

convrtr's extraction engine walks the XML node graph and translates each block element into standard GitHub Flavored Markdown:

• Headings are converted with appropriate # prefixes.
• Tables are formatted into Markdown pipe tables with aligned header rows (| Header | and | --- |).
• Bulleted and numbered lists are preserved with indentation hierarchy.
• Dublin Core metadata is formatted into frontmatter at the top of the document.

Because all processing runs client-side in browser memory, your confidential business archives and legal records remain 100% private.