Open Document Text

Open Document Text is actually a zip archive with XML files describing text and relationships and JPEG, PNG, and other graphical files for pictures and other media included in the document.

The layout of the regular ODT file is the following:
 * META-INF
 * manifest.xml
 * Thumbnails
 * thumbnail.png
 * content.xml
 * manifest.rdf
 * meta.xml
 * mimetype
 * settings.xml
 * styles.xml

manifest.xml
Lists all the other xml files that are in this document. In the event of the simple document its contents maybe something like:

 <!DOCTYPE manifest:manifest PUBLIC "-//OpenOffice.org//DTD Manifest 1.0//EN" "Manifest.dtd">       

conten.xml
This is the file that contains all the text in the document.

The root element is always &lt;office:document-content&gt;. To get the text without metadata you go through the following hierarchy:
 * office:document-content
 * office:body
 * office:text

There you will find tags in the text namespace, that either mirror HTML in their names or are self-explanatory for the most part. Some examplese are:
 * text:p - paragraph
 * text:list - a listing that will have several text:list-item elements
 * text:list-item - a single item of the list

Each text tag may have text:style attribute that links it to the style that is defined in office:document-content > office:automatic-styles > style:style.

manifest.rdf
RDF metadata. Most often the contents are just

  

meta.xml
This is the metadata that somebody fills in to describe the document or is automatically recorded by the software. The root element is always office:document-meta. The contents are defined rather loosely, the editing software is advised not to delete tags that it doesn't recognise, since other software maybe using them. In practice deleting all the contents of office:document-meta > office:meta will not damage the document, and it can be considered non-essential information.

mimetype
A text file that consists of  application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text

settings.xml
Software specific settings of the document. The root tag is &lt;office:document-settings&gt;. No inner contents are required for the functioning document.

styles.xml
Non-automatic document styles, that are held in &lt;office:document-styles&gt; tag.