.. _intro:

Introduction
============

PHPWord is a library written in pure PHP that provides a set of classes
to write to and read from different document file formats. The current
version of PHPWord supports Microsoft `Office Open
XML <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML>`__ (OOXML or
OpenXML), OASIS `Open Document Format for Office
Applications <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument>`__
(OpenDocument or ODF), and `Rich Text
Format <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format>`__ (RTF).

No Windows operating system is needed for usage because the resulting
DOCX, ODT, or RTF files can be opened by all major `word processing
softwares <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_word_processors>`__.

PHPWord is an open source project licensed under LGPL.
PHPWord is `unit tested <https://travis-ci.org/PHPOffice/PHPWord>`__ to
make sure that the released versions are stable.

**Want to contribute?** `Fork
us <https://github.com/PHPOffice/PHPWord/fork>`__ or
`submit <https://github.com/PHPOffice/PHPWord/issues>`__ your bug
reports or feature requests to us.

Features
--------

-  Set document properties, e.g. title, subject, and creator.
-  Create document sections with different settings, e.g.
   portrait/landscape, page size, and page numbering
-  Create header and footer for each sections
-  Set default font type, font size, and paragraph style
-  Use UTF-8 and East Asia fonts/characters
-  Define custom font styles (e.g. bold, italic, color) and paragraph
   styles (e.g. centered, multicolumns, spacing) either as named style
   or inline in text
-  Insert paragraphs, either as a simple text or complex one (a text
   run) that contains other elements
-  Insert titles (headers) and table of contents
-  Insert text breaks and page breaks
-  Insert and format images, either local, remote, or as page watermarks
-  Insert binary OLE Objects such as Excel or Visio
-  Insert and format table with customized properties for each rows
   (e.g. repeat as header row) and cells (e.g. background color,
   rowspan, colspan)
-  Insert list items as bulleted, numbered, or multilevel
-  Insert hyperlinks
-  Insert footnotes and endnotes
-  Create document from templates
-  Use XSL 1.0 style sheets to transform main document part of OOXML
   template
-  ... and many more features on progress

File formats
------------

Below are the supported features for each file formats.

Writers
~~~~~~~

+-------------------------------------------------+--------+-------+-------+
| Features                                        | DOCX   | ODT   | RTF   |
+=========================+=======================+========+=======+=======+
| **Document Properties** | Standard              |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Extended              |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | UserDefined           |        |       |       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
| **Element Type**        | Text                  | ✓      | ✓     | ✓     |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Text Run              | ✓      | ✓     | ✓     |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Title                 | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Link                  | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Preserve Text         | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Text Break            | ✓      | ✓     | ✓     |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Page Break            | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | List                  | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Table                 | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Image                 | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Object                | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Watermark             | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Table of Contents     | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Header                | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Footer                | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Footnote              | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Endnote               | ✓      |       |       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
| **Graphs**              | 2D basic graphs       |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | 2D advanced graphs    |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | 3D graphs             |        |       |       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
| **Math**                | OMML support          |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | MathML support        |        |       |       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
| **Bonus**               | Encryption            |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Protection            |        |       |       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+


Readers
~~~~~~~

+-------------------------------------------------+--------+-------+-------+
| Features                                        | DOCX   | ODT   | RTF   |
+=========================+=======================+========+=======+=======+
| **Document Properties** | Standard              | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Extended              | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | UserDefined           | ✓      |       |       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
| **Element Type**        | Text                  | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Text Run              | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Title                 |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Link                  | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Preserve Text         | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Text Break            | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Page Break            | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | List                  |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Table                 | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Image                 |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Object                |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Watermark             |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Table of Contents     |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Header                | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Footer                | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Footnote              | ✓      |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Endnote               | ✓      |       |       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
| **Graphs**              | 2D basic graphs       |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | 2D advanced graphs    |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | 3D graphs             |        |       |       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
| **Math**                | OMML support          |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | MathML support        |        |       |       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
| **Bonus**               | Encryption            |        |       |       |
+                         +-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+
|                         | Protection            |        |       |       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------+--------+-------+-------+