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OPENOFFICE.ORG NEWSLETTER
Volume 03 - Issue 12 - 06/2006
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_06_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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* OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 Is Here. Download It Now.
* PR: OpenOffice.org challenges Microsoft's Office "Test Drive"
* Registration for attending to OOoCon2006
2. Success Stories
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* OpenOffice.org at Migrant Helpline
* OpenOffice.org on 400,000 desktops in France
3. Featured News
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* First Brazilian OpenOffice.org Meeting
* StarOffice = Computer Shopper's "Best Budget Buy"
4. Tips & Tricks
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* Geertjan blogs about the OpenOffice.org API and NetBeans
* OpenOffice.org Help TNT (Tips 'n Tricks)
* Free OpenOffice.org Tutorials
5. OpenDocument News Roundup
6. Clippings
7. Events
All news for this month can be found at:
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2006_06_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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OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 Is Here. Download It Now.
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"* performance improvements: for example, a 23 percent improvement in
certain Calc benchmarks
* further improvements to file format compatibility with Microsoft
Office files
* new email integration features for users wanting to send emails in
Microsoft file formats
* more control over how exported PDF documents will display when
opened in a PDF reader
* support for more languages and improvements in hyphenation and
thesaurus
* support for Intel architecture for Mac OS X plus improved Mac OS X
System integration
* built-in check for updated versions"
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=292
PR: OpenOffice.org challenges Microsoft's Office "Test Drive"
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"Microsoft today announced the opening of a "test drive" so that
people can see what Microsoft Office 2007 might look like when it
finally goes on sale.
The OpenOffice.org Community invites potential upgraders to go one
better - download the full OpenOffice.org 2 office suite today for a
test drive, and if you like it, use it free for as long as you like.
It's the ultimate no-strings-attached test drive - if you enjoy the
test drive, keep the car!"
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=291
Registration for attending to OOoCon2006
----------------------------------------
"If you want to attend to the OpenOffice.org Conferences 2006 in Lyon
(France), you should register to help us organizing the conferences. You
just need to answer the question on one of these pages depending of your
prefered language:
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2006/registration.html
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2006/registration_fr.html";
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=290
Success Stories
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OpenOffice.org at Migrant Helpline
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“"According to Box, training is vital to the successful adoption of
any computer software, but this is especially true with open source
applications.
'Many companies try Openoffice but give up because it is slightly
different and not an exact copy of what they know. Properly configured,
training in Openoffice and other open source applications can overcome
these difficulties.'
Migrant Helpline now has 120 PCs running Openoffice and has linked its
offices together using open source system IPCop as a virtual private
network. Dayborn estimates that Migrant Helpline may have saved up to
'750,000 by implementing its open source systems, although this is a
headline figure, based on the savings that the charity would have made
if it had been paying full price for its Microsoft licences.
Even taking into account the discount Migrant Helpline receives on some
of its Microsoft software, the savings are still substantial, and the
users at the charity are now much happier with their system."”
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2006/06/13/216332/Open+source+makes+a+good+donation.htm
OpenOffice.org on 400,000 desktops in France
--------------------------------------------
According to the following French web page, OpenOffice.org will be
installed on 400,000 desktops in France:
http://www.adele.gouv.fr/sdae/article.php3?id_article=1083
Featured News
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First Brazilian OpenOffice.org Meeting
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“Innovation, collaboration and results. In its first National Meeting,
on June 2, 2006 through a video conference link connecting over
20 Brazilian states and Canada, the BrOffice.org project showed once
more the power of collaborative work.
The First National BrOffice.org Meeting opened a new chapter in the
history of Free Software events in Brazil. The virtual meeting had
the support of over 1000 people throughout the country integrating
the several local BrOffice.org communities and allowing for the
interaction of participants.”
http://www.openoffice.org.br/?q=first_brazilian_meeting
StarOffice = Computer Shopper's "Best Budget Buy"
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Computer Shopper reviewed 6 different presentation tools, and selected
StarOffice 8 as the "Best Budget Buy". Here is a short quote from the
review:
"StarOffice comes with similar fonts to Office, in case you don't have
them. So you can exploit the huge resource of PowerPoint templates
available."
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/labs/221/presentation-software/products.html
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/shopper/labs/87574/sun-microsystems-staroffice-8-impress.html
Tips & Tricks
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Geertjan blogs about the OpenOffice.org API and NetBeans
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http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/geertjan
OpenOffice.org Help TNT (Tips 'n Tricks)
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http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/oootnt
Free OpenOffice.org Tutorials
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http://www.jup-it-er.co.uk/Publications.html
OpenOffice.org Solutions Page
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http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Solutions
OpenOffice.org Migration Studies
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http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Migration_Documents
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Market_Share_Analysis
OpenDocument News Roundup
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The Emerging ODF Environment Part III: Spotlight on StarOffice 8
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“OpenOffice.org was the first office suite available in languages that
typically are not supported by any commercial application. For example,
OpenOffice.org was the first office suite available in Catalan, one of
the official languages in Spain. OpenOffice.org is also available in
eleven South African languages, and millions of Hindi and Tamil versions
of the software have been distributed or downloaded in India.
In addition, for many people OpenOffice.org is the only affordable
office suite, because some people may have to decide between buying food
or software.”
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20060605074812177
ODF Alliance Comments on French Interoperability Guidelines
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http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/FranceRGI_20060614.pdf
Denmark ministries to publish in ODF by September
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"The Danish government will launch a four-month pilot program in September
that will involve publishing documents in the OpenDocument Format (ODF),
part of the country's broad endorsement of using open computing standards."
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1532219476;fp;16;fpid;0
The Ministry of Finance in Denmark will publish in ODF
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"Bonus news: In the report from the Science Committee, one can read that
there's more to ODF in Denmark: Also the Ministry of Finance will from
September 1, 2006 publish its new publications in ODF 'unless certain
contractual or content-related conditions occur'. The Government aims
to have 3-4 or more ministries in the pilot launched by the Ministry of
Science, Technology and Innovation."
http://gotze.eu/2006/06/openize-denmark-parliament-orders.html
Belgian government chooses OpenDocument
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"The OpenDocument Format (ODF) is to be the standard format for
exchanging documents within the Belgian government. This proposal,
which is expected to be approved by Belgium's Council of Ministers
on Friday, increases the pressure from governments worldwide on
Microsoft to embrace open standards.
From September 2008 onwards, all document exchanges within the
services of the Belgian Government will have to be in an open, standard
format, according to the proposal now before the Belgian Ministers.
Only ODF is accepted as such a standard in the proposal. Earlier
drafts of the Belgian proposal had treated ODF and Microsoft's own
Open XML format (which is to be included in Office 2007) on equal footing."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39020384,39276978,00.htm
ODF Alliance growing fast
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"Meanwhile, the movement supporting ODF is gaining momentum worldwide.
Last week, India's leading technical institutions, global IT companies
and government agencies held their first national event in support of
ODF, including the formation of the Indian Chapter of the ODF Alliance.
In less than four months, membership in the ODF Alliance has rocketed
from 36 organizations to more than 220 members in 40 countries."
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/06-29-2006/0004389569&EDATE=
ODF in India
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"Welcoming this initiative and highlighting its importance in Indian
IT Scenario, Chandershekhar, secretary, Ministry of Information &
Technology, Government of India said, "We are glad to note that with
formation of a National ODF alliance, India too would be playing a
pivotal role in spearheading the ODF revolution. Further, considering
the huge potential of eGovernance in the nation as well as the need to
adopt open standards to make our data systems more inter-operable and
independent of any limiting proprietary tools, we feel that ODF is a
great technological leap and a big boon to further propel IT right to
India's grass root levels. I congratulate this initiative of leading
private & public organisations and wish them all the best in
this endeavor.""
http://www.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle1.asp?artid=85632
ODF special interest group formed in Malaysia
---------------------------------------------
"Mission Statement
To promote the adoption of ODF (OpenDocument Format) and open standards
in Malaysia"
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2006/06/odf_special_int.html
Sun, Microsoft answer Mass. call for ODF/Office converter
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"Those developers include Sun, which said it has created two ways to
convert any Office file to ODF using its own StarOffice software;
OpenDocument Foundation Inc., a Redwood City, Calif.-based group that
said it has developed converters for Microsoft Word and Excel files and
is now working on PowerPoint; and four smaller companies, all of which
have developed file converters for Word, Excel or PowerPoint, but not
all three."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001535
Clippings
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Thoughts about the office productivity market
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_27/b3991412.htm
Microsoft delays Office 2007 again
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6089694.html
Events
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Upcoming
========
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/
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
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