SDW vs SXW: StarWriter Compound Binary vs OpenOffice XML Archive
Compare StarOffice StarWriter 5.x (.sdw) OLE 2.0 compound documents with OpenOffice.org 1.x (.sxw) XML ZIP archives.
SDW is the vintage proprietary OLE 2.0 compound document format used by StarWriter and StarOffice 3.x–5.x. SXW was the pioneering open XML format introduced in OpenOffice.org 1.x, which later evolved into the OASIS OpenDocument Standard (ODT).
| FEATURE | SDW | SXW |
|---|---|---|
| Container Architecture | OLE 2.0 Compound File Binary (CFB) | PKZIP (.zip) Compressed Package |
| Content Representation | Binary stream records with length prefixes | Sun XML Writer schema (content.xml) |
| Metadata Standard | OLE Property Set Streams (VT_LPSTR / VT_I4) | Dublin Core XML elements (<dc:title>, etc.) |
| Standardization | Proprietary Star Division / Sun Microsystems | OpenOffice.org open XML (pre-ODF standard) |
| Modern Reader Support | Very rare; deprecated in modern LibreOffice | Supported in LibreOffice, Calibre, and converters |
- Compact binary serialization with embedded OLE stream tables
- Direct compatibility with StarOffice 5.x productivity suites
- Contains structured Microsoft OLE property sets (SummaryInformation)
- Historical archive format of European corporate and government documents
- Open human-readable XML schemas inside standard ZIP packaging
- Direct ancestor and bridge to modern ISO/IEC 26300 OpenDocument Text (ODT)
- Easier programmatic recovery without specialized OLE FAT decoders
- Clean separation of content.xml, styles.xml, and meta.xml
SXW paved the way for modern open office formats, while SDW represents an older generation of OLE compound documents. convrtr extracts text, lists, and metadata from both formats into clean GitHub Flavored Markdown locally with zero privacy leakage.
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