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OPENOFFICE.ORG NEWSLETTER
Volume 03 - Issue 10 - 04/2006
Please send news clippings to:
newsletter@marketing.openoffice.org
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For up-to-date news visit the OpenOffice.org Newsletter Blog:
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com
To read all of this month's stories in full:
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_ooonewsletter_archive.html
ATOM feed:
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/atom.xml
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Contents
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1. Announcements
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* CP Hennessy: Winner, March Round Article Contest
2. Success Stories
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* The CRDP Midi-Pyrénées migrates to OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument
* City of Vaals (NL) switched to OpenOffice.org
* "National Archives Embrace OpenDocument"
* Bristol City Council saving £1m with StarOffice
3. Featured News
----------------
* OpenOffice.org participating in Google's Summer of Code
* OpenOffice.org available in Assamese, Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, ...
* New developer snapshot of OpenOffice.org chart re-implementation
* Details about the OpenOffice.org conference location
* "MS adds Office to Genuine Software Initiative"
* Microsoft Office users ready to jump ship: poll
* OpenOffice.org on 8% of the desktops?
* "Office 2007 and Vista not automatic selections: analyst"
4. Tips & Tricks
----------------
* Using OpenOffice.org's spadmin as an advanced font manager
* Free OpenOffice.org Training Materials
5. OpenDocument News Roundup
6. Clippings
7. Statistics
8. Events
All news for this month can be found at:
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_ooonewsletter_archive.html
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Want to help OpenOffice.org? Find out hot to contribute or see our
To Do List!!
http://www.openoffice.org/contributing.html
http://development.openoffice.org/todo.html
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Announcements
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CP Hennessy: Winner, March Round Article Contest
------------------------------------------------
"CP Hennessy has won the latest round of the contest with an excellent
article on the citation facilities of OpenOffice.org. Titled,
"Current Implementation of the OpenOffice.org Bibliographic
Component," the work examines "the APIs available to the programmer
to manipulate the citation data, and how these API calls actually map
to real C++ classes in the OpenOffice.org source code."
Winners of the rolling competition (a new one started for April at
the beginning of the month; deadline is end of April) receive US $750
plus a lot of recognition and the satisfaction of knowing they are
helping developers further OpenOffice.org.
About CP: The CTO of OpenApp.biz, a content and document management
company using the features of OpenOffice.org, CP has been a longtime
contributor to OpenOffice.org who has previously done valuable work
helping users, developers, and the general community work better
together. Congratulations CP!
You can find the article at
<http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/
Current_Implementation_of_the_OpenOffice.org_Bibliographic_Component >
or
<http://tinyurl.com/z3328>"
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=280
Success Stories
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The CRDP Midi-Pyrénées migrates to OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument
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According to the French article below, the CRDP Midi-Pyrénées
(CRDP = Centre Régional de Documentation Pédagogique = something
like "Regional Center for Educational Documentation") decided to
migrate to OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument. According to the article,
the CRDP used to have a mix of proprietary office suites and is now
moving to a consolidated desktop platform based on OpenOffice.org.
The default file format will become OpenDocument.
French Article:
http://linuxfr.org/2006/04/20/20691.html
City of Vaals (NL) switched to OpenOffice.org
---------------------------------------------
According to the Dutch article below, the City of Vaals switched to
OpenOffice.org. The city migrated its 90 desktop systems from WordPerfect
to OpenOffice.org and estimates a cost saving of 50,000 Euro. In the
future the city also wants to replace Windows with Linux.
Dutch article:
http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/40652/.html
"National Archives Embrace OpenDocument"
----------------------------------------
"The National Archives (NAA) will be the first government department
to move to the OpenDocument file format as the Digital Preservation
team migrates its current Xena preservation software to the
OpenOffice 2.0 suite."
http://www.idm.net.au/story.asp?id=7072
You might also find this related article insteresting:
"Because the bulk of the material received by NAA deals with office
productivity suites, converting it to an open format ensures the
longevity of the information. Carden said its paper documents,
if kept in perfect conditions should last well over 100 years.
Digital information should also be afforded that luxury, he said."
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;954149621;fp;2;fpid;1
Bristol City Council saving £1m with StarOffice
-----------------------------------------------
"Bristol City Council is set to save 60 per cent on software
costs over five years following its decision to switch from
Microsoft Office to Sun’s StarOffice. ... Including implementation
costs (migration, training, support, etc.) over a five-year period,
the TCO for Microsoft Office would be £1.7m and StarOffice £670,000."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39260274,00.htm
Featured News
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OpenOffice.org participating in Google's Summer of Code
-------------------------------------------------------
OpenOffice.org is one of the projects participating in
Google's Summer of Code 2006.
http://code.google.com/soc/
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/SummerOfCode2006
OpenOffice.org available in Assamese, Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, ...
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OpenOffice.org can now be used by a much larger population in India.
The BharateeyaOO.o Group just released additional language packs.
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2006/04/openofficeorg-available-in-7-new-other.html
New developer snapshot of OpenOffice.org chart re-implementation
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A new developer snapshot of the OpenOffice.org chart re-implementation
can be found here:
http://graphics.openoffice.org/chart/chart.html
Details about the OpenOffice.org conference location
----------------------------------------------------
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2006/travel.html
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2006/accommodation.html
"MS adds Office to Genuine Software Initiative"
-----------------------------------------------
"Microsoft has introduced an initiative for testing if customers have
a genuine version of its Office productivity suite.
The move is part of the firm's continued efforts to prevent software
piracy and the distribution of counterfeit copies of its products.
Microsoft has launched a pilot of the OGA (Office Genuine Advantage)
programme in seven languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Czech,
Greek, Korean, simplified Chinese, Russian and Spanish, according to
Microsoft. The initiative will determine if pilot users have a genuine
installation of Microsoft Office on their computers."
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=6045
Microsoft Office users ready to jump ship: poll
-----------------------------------------------
"An iTWire poll taken in the past day asked the question: ?Would
you try Open Office.org instead of buying MS Office 2003?? Of the
441 respondents which voted in the space of 18 hours, 381 (86.4%)
voted yes while just 60 (13.6%) voted no.
...
While WGA may have been a success, however, there is one big
difference between sending users verbal barrages to pay for Windows
and sending similar alerts to Microsoft Office users. The difference
is that Microsoft Office 2003 users can easily download
Open Office.org 2.0 and be up and running with a similar product,
with a similar look and feel and all their data and functionality
intact, for absolutely free. So most would prefer to give that a
try rather than shell out hundreds of dollars for MS Office."
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4054/53/
OpenOffice.org on 8% of the desktops?
-------------------------------------
A survey with 1,185 IT managers of German companies with more than
20 employees was conducted in November/December 2005. The survey
revealed that 8% of the companies are using Linux on the desktop.
Most likely these Linux desktops run either StarOffice or OpenOffice.org.
German article:
http://www.perspektive-mittelstand.de/pages/business%20forum/presse-service-meldung-detail.php?prmID=522
"Office 2007 and Vista not automatic selections: analyst"
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"IT organisations should take this opportunity, Dr McIsaac says,
to review desktop strategy this year and undertake an initiative to
understand what users really need from their desktop.
"I recommend organisations compare the cost/risk/benefits of upgrading
Windows and Office against a migration to an alternative solution that
uses a mixture of Microsoft, open source and web service,? said Dr
McIsaac. "Some companies will use this review to negotiate significantly
better licensing terms with Microsoft while others will implement
Open Office or Star Office, and so radically change their desktop
upgrade cycle and their ongoing desktop cost structure."
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/3810/0/
Tips & Tricks
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Using OpenOffice.org's spadmin as an advanced font manager
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"One of the few remaining gaps in basic desktop functionality in
GNU/Linux is the dynamic loading and unloading of fonts, especially
in groups. If you're working in OpenOffice.org (OOo), StarOffice Printer
Administrator (spadmin) offers a partial solution to the problem."
http://software.newsforge.com/software/06/04/18/1410242.shtml?tid=93
Free OpenOffice.org Training Materials
----------------------------------
Solveig Haugland just published 40 pages of free OpenOffice.org/StarOffice
training material. More information and a link to the PDF file can be
found here:
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/04/free_openoffice.html
OpenDocument News Roundup
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"OpenDocument Format Alliance Grows to 138 Members ..."
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"A groundswell of support has developed behind the OpenDocument format
as demonstrated by the rapidly growing OpenDocument Format Alliance
(ODF Alliance), which in just one month since its inception with
36 initial members now counts 138 members from throughout the world. ...
The ODF Alliance also announced today the appointment of Marino Marcich
as managing director. Marcich will be responsible for implementing the
goals of the Alliance, which include educating policy makers on the
benefits and opportunities of ODF and working to see ODF used by
governments. ...
Marcich brings more than a decade in working internationally on
technology, standards and open market issues. Prior to joining
the Alliance, Marcich was vice president of Dutko Global Advisors,
an international strategy and management firm. A former senior
official at the U.S. Department of State, Marcich has worked in
Brussels advising companies on global strategies relating to
regulation, standardization and trade issues."
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=64124
NeoOffice with OpenDocument support
-----------------------------------
Since NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha is based on OpenOffice.org 2.0.2,
it should support the OpenDocument format even though it does
not say so on the project website.
http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/earlyaccessfeatures.php
Identity next public sector battleground for Microsoft?
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"Denmark's recent call for Microsoft Corp to support SAML for
federated identity is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes
to public and private sector demand for such a move, according
to the executive director of the Liberty Alliance. Advertisement
Brett McDowell told us he thinks there are some similarities
between the Danish call for SAML support and the recent
decision by Massachusetts to standardize on the non-Microsoft
OpenDocument Format."
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=B7C3C5BC-899B-472C-8960-BF5A7907FAB9
"States struggling to deal with digital documents"
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"Yet states continue to generate millions of digital documents,
as well as multimedia content such as video of "State of the
state" speeches, Robinson said.
"Very few states have really adequately addressed this,
although all these states recognize that there's a business
problem that everyone needs to address," he said.
Andrew Updegrove, the attorney for standards body OASIS and a
proponent of the OpenDocument format, said he wasn't aware of
other attempts to legislate the use of standards.
But he said that having two states explicitly adopt standards
policies for documents could encourage other states to follow,
even if those efforts are low-profile."
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6064793.html
OpenDocument in Rome / Italy
----------------------------
"In 2003, Italy's Ministry for Innovation and Technologies
issued a directive that states that public administrations (PA)
should prefer IT solutions that can export data and documents
to at least one open format, such as the Open Document Format.
...
On this front, one of the first things the government needs to
accomplish is to make sure, be it with the European Computer
Driving License (ECDL) or in another way, that as many people
as possible have the minimum skills to use a computer.
The second is to actually set up all the Web portals where all
this interaction should take place. Last but not least, in
compliance with the first directive we mentioned, the province
is slowly starting to evaluate and prepare a gradual migration
to open source software and, above all, non-proprietary formats
like OpenDocument."
http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/06/03/29/1931228.shtml?tid=136&tid=132&tid=150
Interview with the CIO of the ITD of Massachusetts
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"Do you think your predecessors made a sound decision with
respect to ODF? I do think that this was a far-seeing and very
thoughtful objective that?s embedded in the policy, and I
think that?s one reason it?s resonated the way it has. It has
captured the essence of an important notion about openness,
about standards, about the way documents are used and will
be used. I?ve signed up to do the execution, and I have a
lot of work to do on implementation planning and on figuring
out the right kinds of phasing for this and of addressing
concerns of accessibility advocates. But I do think this is
the right direction to be going."
http://www.computerworld.com/databasetopics/data/story/0,10801,110487,00.html
Substantially updated OpenDocument support in AbiWord
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AbiWord v2.4.4 with "Substantially updated the OpenDocument
import and export filters" just got released. You can find
the release notes here:
http://www.abisource.com/release-notes/2.4.4.phtml
KOffice 1.5 brings OpenDocument support
---------------------------------------
"KOffice, an element of the KDE interface software widely
used with Linux, now supports the OpenDocument format and
uses it by default. The change comes with version 1.5,
released Tuesday, project organizers said. ...
ODF is used in KWord, KSpread and KPresenter, but work remains.
"Great care has been taken to ensure interoperability with other
office software that supports OpenDocument, most notably
OpenOffice.org. We acknowledge, however, that the ODF support
and interoperability is not yet perfect," project organizers
said in a statement."
http://news.com.com/2061-10808_3-6060096.html
OpenDocument support in TYPO3
-----------------------------
"The Indexed Search extension has been thoroughly revised as
well and has increased in both speed and function, making mass
indexing of several TYPO3 sites and its content possible.
Enhancements include crawler improvements, template support
and the indexing of Oasis OpenDocument files."
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/4/prweb369269.htm
OpenDocument reader for Symbian
-------------------------------
"Odendahl SEPT-Solutions is proud to announce a new software
which will be released in the 2nd quarter. This will be an
OpenDocument reader for the Symbian platform and will be
therefore the first implementation of this format regarding
smartphones."
http://www.sept-solutions.com/English/newsdetail.php?id=37
"Update: Massachusetts ODF Milestones, Due Dates and Schedule"
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http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=2006040709301679
"Why open standards matter"
---------------------------
http://business.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/04/05/2046210&from=rss
OpenDocument format benefits Singaporeans.
------------------------------------------
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2006/04/opendocument-format-benefits.html
Clippings
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* StarOffice 8 finalist in sixth annual eWEEK Excellence Awards
https://www.excellenceawardsonline.com/index.jsp
* Java JDK and JRE 1.5 Binaries for FreeBSD
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2006/04/java-jdk-and-jre-15-binaries-for.html
Statistics
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* More than 61,800,000 have downloaded OpenOffice.org so far
(as of 8 April 2006).
* The OpenOffice.org project has about 35,000 unique people subscribed
to the mailing lists (as of 8 April 2006).
* 716 people and companies have signed a JCA and are thus either already
contributing or considering to do so (as of 28 April 2006):
http://www.openoffice.org/copyright/copyrightapproved.html
* More than 620,000 people completed the user survey since the launch
of OpenOffice.org 2.0 on October 20, 2005 (as of 28 April 2006).
Events
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Upcoming
========
LinuxTag 2006
Wiesbaden, Germany
3-6 May 2006
http://www.linuxtag.org/2006/
OSCON 2006
Portland, Oregon, USA
24-28 July 2006
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2006/
LinuxWorld San Francisco
San Francisco, CA, USA
15-17 August 2006
http://www.linuxworldexpo.com
OpenOffice.org Conference 2006
Lyon, France
11-13 September 2006
http://marketing.openoffice.org/conference/
Reports
=======
Pavel Janik gives a talk at the OpenGovernment Conference in Prague
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http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2006/04/pavel-janik-gives-talk-at.html
News of the Germanophone project at the Cebit
---------------------------------------------
"The germanophone project had a nice booth in hall 4, where also
Microsoft, SAP and other small companies exhibited their goods :-)
We presented the project together with some companies, which offer
services around OOo and which made our booth possible. Additionally
we had two lectures in the "LinuxPark".
Please have a look at our summary (german):
http://de.openoffice.org/veranstaltungen/cebit2006/index.html
English version:
http://de.openoffice.org/veranstaltungen/cebit2006/index_en.html";
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2006/04/news-of-germanophone-project-at-cebit.html
Newsletter Archive
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Past issues of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter can be found in the archive
of the announce mailing list:
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=announce
Contact Information (regarding this newsletter)
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