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OPENOFFICE.ORG NEWSLETTER
Volume 04 - Issue 9 - 03/2007
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/2007_03_01_ooonewsletter_archive.html
ATOM feed:
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/atom.xml
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Contents
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1. Announcements
================
* OpenOffice.org 2.2 released
* OpenOffice.org Annual Conference 2007 - Call for Papers
2. Success Stories
==================
* German City of Freiburg moving to OpenOffice.org and ODF
* OpenOffice.org on Intel Classmate PC's
* Dell will ship Linux on desktop computers
* French parliament picks Ubuntu for Linux switch
3. Featured News
================
* OpenOffice calls on Dell for distribution deal
* OpenOffice.org wins Softpedia Pick Award
* OpenOffice.org has been accepted for Google Summer of Code 2007
* eBay conducts OpenOffice.org developer contest
* Final Announcement of OOo QA Reloaded Project
* What about SVG?
* Aqua OpenOffice.org : new timeline
* OpenOffice.org at the CeBIT '07 fair!
* Chart Colors: And the Winner is ...
* "U.K. opposition leader calls for greater open-source adoption"
4. Tips & Tricks
================
* "Publishing Writer documents on the Web"
* "OOoBasic crash course: Adding GUI goodness"
* ODF manipulation using Java technology
5. OpenDocument News Roundup
6. Clippings
All news for this month can be found at:
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2007_03_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 2.2 released
===========================
"While OpenOffice.org 2.1 functions well on Microsoft's Windows Vista,
version 2.2 makes use of some of the new cosmetic changes available in
Vista, the new file dialogues being an example. Apple Mac users will
notice a smaller download and a smaller installed size. The Apple Mac
Intel version has many stability improvements, and bug fixes ranging
from .ppt export to improved UNO connections. Version 2.2 now requires
Mac OS X 10.4.x running X11.
Turning to some of the enhancements made to the individual components
of OpenOffice.org, the Calc spreadsheet has received additional
enhancements to its support for Microsoft file formats, including
improved support for Pivot Tables and some specialised trigonometric
functions. Base, the database component, has improved SQL editing
functionality as well as a new "Queries within Queries" feature.
Compatibility options for some database drivers, such as Oracle ODBC,
have been improved. Impress, the presentations component, offers
improvements in the handling of hidden slides which has been made
more intuitive."
http://www.openoffice.org/press/press_release_ooo2.2.0.html
OpenOffice.org Annual Conference 2007 - Call for Papers
=======================================================
"The 2007 OpenOffice.org International Conference will be held in
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain on 19th-21st September. See the Conference
website: http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007
The OpenOffice.org Community invites potential speakers to submit
proposals for papers. Whether you are a seasoned presenter, or have never
stood up in public before, if you have something interesting to share
about OpenOffice.org - we want to hear from you.
Your proposal should be submitted before 1 June 2007 in order to guarantee
that it will be considered for inclusion in the Conference."
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=320
Success Stories
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German City of Freiburg moving to OpenOffice.org and ODF
========================================================
"According to this German article the German City of Freiburg will deploy
OpenOffice.org on 2,000 desktops and expects to save 0.5M Euro over the
next two years compared to a migration to Microsoft Office 2007.
The City of Freiburg also adopts ODF in order to become vendor and
product independent."
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/german_city_of_freiburg_moving
OpenOffice.org on Intel Classmate PC's
======================================
Two of the three Intel Classmate PC configurations include OpenOffice.org:
http://www.classmatepc.com/classmatepc-system-software.html
Dell will ship Linux on desktop computers
=========================================
"In light of overwhelming customer demand, Dell has officially confirmed
it will soon offer Linux pre-installed on select consumer desktop and
notebook systems."
Considering that almost all Linux distributions include OpenOffice.org,
I'm sure that Dell's decision will boost the adoption and market share
of OpenOffice.org and ODF as well.
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/dell_will_ship_linux_on
French parliament picks Ubuntu for Linux switch
===============================================
"As well as using the Ubuntu software, the parliament members and their
assistants will use Firefox, OpenOffice, Mozilla's messaging client
Thunderbird, and other applications."
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/_French_parliament_picks_Ubuntu_for_Linux_switch/0,130061733,339274191,00.htm
Featured News
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OpenOffice calls on Dell for distribution deal
==============================================
"The OpenOffice project has published an open letter to Dell chief
executive Michael Dell asking him to bundle OpenOffice with new systems.
"Let's have a conversation about how we could build an 'OpenOffice.org
supplied by Dell' product to give your customers what they are asking
for," the group's marketing lead John McCreesh wrote.
The letter touted the high quality of OpenOffice and the fact that it is
free. McCreesh also solicited a financial contribution from Dell to assist
in the further development of the open source productivity suite.
The letter was inspired by Dell's IdeaStorm project to solicit feedback
from customers by letting users vote on suggestions from fellow users."
http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2185387/openoffice-calls-dell
OpenOffice.org wins Softpedia Pick Award
========================================
OpenOffice.org 2.2 has been awarded by Softpedia with 5 stars and the
SoftPedia Pick Award!
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Business/OpenOfficeorg.shtml
OpenOffice.org has been accepted for Google Summer of Code 2007
===============================================================
"Late in the night (US Pacific Time) the news about the organizations
accepted for Google Summer of Code ™ 2007 has been sent out. Thanks
to Google for running the program this year again and inviting
OpenOffice.org to participate.
...
Thanks go also to the (potential) mentors willing to work with a
student over the summer. Let's see how many slots will be alloted
to OOo at April 9."
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/openoffice_org_has_been_accepted
eBay conducts OpenOffice.org developer contest
==============================================
"As you can read on the German eBay website, eBay is conducting an
OpenOffice.org developer contest. eBay is looking for new creative
solutions that integrate OpenOffice.org and the eBay infrastructure
via the eBay API. The winner will be announced at the first eBay
developer conference in Munich on 3/4 May 2007. Up to 5,000 Euro
can be won, and the solutions will be published under an open license."
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/ebay_conducts_openoffice_org_developer
Final Announcement of OOo QA Reloaded Project
=============================================
"I was told to make a final announcement for the QA Reloaded project,
because it is now ready in general, even if some parts like the docu and
the manual testing are still in progress (but will hopefully be finished
soon, too).
...
.. you want to join one of the incredible OOo QA 'Super' Teams, but you
need some more really good reasons .. this should solve your problem:
- improve you technical knowledge and writing talent
- today open source work is an important job qualification
- sharing knowledge makes more fun
- fill boring sparetime with sensful work
- you can support the community and give back, of what you benefit from
- maybe you also get smarter, nicer and happier :)"
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/final_announcement_of_ooo_qa
What about SVG?
===============
"The question regarding an SVG import can be answered quite easily, too:
there is already an import filter solution available, that has been
created by community member Dr. Bernhard Haumacher and that can be found
at http://www.ipd.uni-karlsruhe.de/~hauma/svg-import. The main reason for
not being part of OOo itself is, that its requirements regarding the
baseline are quite on the high side, due to the fact that it requires
the very good but huge Batik framework (http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/batik)
as an essential part to work. Nevertheless, many thanks and congrats to
Bernhard from my side for his great work on this.
Next step to overcome the lack of an integrated SVG import filter is
the Google Summer Of Code (GSoC, http://code.google.com/soc) application
proposal, hosted by the community members Jan Holesovsky and Fridrich
Strba as possible mentors. Current state of this project is, that it
has been announced as a GSoC proposal but still needs final approval
(http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2007)."
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/what_about_svg
OpenOffice.org at the CeBIT '07 fair!
=====================================
"Three years in a row now, the German OpenOffice.org chapter again made
it to represent the project at the CeBIT trade fair in Hannover, Germany.
This year, they are sharing the booth with OpenOffice.org supporters and
services providers: we from Sun present StarOffice and our slick x86
Solaris on a dual-core Opteron (and, of course, the Sun weblog extension
for OOo), standing in line with the heroic OOo volunteers to answer
helpdesk questions from the hundreds of visitors."
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/openoffice_org_is_at_the
Aqua OpenOffice.org : new timeline
==================================
"A new timeline for the Aqua port of OpenOffice.org has been discussed
during our last weekly IRC meeting .
After a little clean up ( thanks to Shaun McDonald ) , this one will
soon replace the previous one
This new timeline has been prepared using the changelog I try to
maintain on my wiki page
More than never, we need help, and donations ( see Cusoon - Paypal
button inside - ;) )
Thanks in advance !"
http://eric.bachard.free.fr/news/2007/03/aqua-openofficeorg-new-timeline.html
Chart Colors: And the Winner is ...
===================================
"Thanks a lot to all of you who gave their vote for better default
colors for the chart! The total number of valid votes is 632, which is
an amazing number (This is more than the number of votes for the
location of the OOoCon 2007).
You can see the results here. The following chart also shows the
distribution of the votes for the different color sets. It was
created with the new chart using the new colors."
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/chart_colors_and_the_winner
"U.K. opposition leader calls for greater open-source adoption"
===============================================================
"Shadow chancellor George Osborne has called for an overhaul of the
government's approach to open source, arguing that greater use in the
public sector could save £600 million ... a year."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012578&intsrc=news_ts_head
Tips & Tricks
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"Publishing Writer documents on the Web"
========================================
"Let's start with the simplest scenario, where you need to convert a
single Writer document into an HTML page. One way to do this is to use
a pair of scripts: odt2txt.py and markdown.py. The first script converts
the Writer document into a plain text file and turns the text formatting
into markdown markup (you can read more about markdown here and here).
You can then convert the resulting text file into HTML using the
markdown.py script. To perform this transformation, simply download both
scripts, unpack them, and use the terminal to run them as follows:"
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/02/22/1727218
"OOoBasic crash course: Adding GUI goodness"
============================================
"Some OpenOffice.org macros have rudimentary dialog boxes that allow
you to define a few parameters. If you're ready to take your macro
programming skills to a new level, you can learn how to create graphical
interfaces for your macros. Once you know how to do that, you can build
advanced macros that are close to full-blown applications."
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/03/14/1911247
ODF manipulation using Java technology
======================================
"Lars Oppermann recently started the odf4j (odf for java) subproject
of the OpenOffice.org ODF Toolkit project. I had some experimental stuff
for ODF file handling in java lying around, merged that with what lars
provided as initial java sources for odf4j added some new stuff and
contributed the result to odf4j.
...
Doing something like this is very easy with the things now available
in odf4j. If you´ve got some database query and want to create an
OpenDocument SpreadsheetDocument from the result what you basically
do is:"
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/odf4j_at_work_in_eis
OpenDocument News Roundup
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"CHOICE: THE KEY DIFFERENTIATOR OF OPEN SOURCE"
===============================================
"Open source allows its users and members to make money, have great tools,
but it also gives them choice. It is not just about writing and licensing
software, but also about open standards, which is alien to Microsoft.
A case point here being Microsoft's refusal to just work on ODF in
collaboration, instead of creating a new, bloated standard (OOXML).
In response to an attendee’s question on this issue, Hilf clarified
that the file format was a part of the software, which is why they
could not adopt ODF as the file format for subsequent versions of
MS Office.
Dinesh Nair reacted to this by saying that the whole OOXML, ECMA and
ISO standards play is not about standards nor about Microsoft vs. IBM
but about legitimising a specific isolated technology from a single
company as a standard. Nair said, “It was an eye opener, and in my
opinion, quite damning to Microsoft. Are they really trying to push
through their software, in the form of the inseparable OOXML/MS Office
as an international standard? Is this all about ensuring that future
generations of MS Office have a purpose on the planet in the face of
competition from other office suites like OpenOffice.Org?”"
http://www.sda-india.com/sda_india/psecom,id,102,site_layout,sdaindia,news,16489,p,0.html
OpenDocument Workshop at OASIS Symposium
========================================
"Hosted by the OASIS ODF Adoption Committee, this special workshop will
focus on the 'implementability' of using applications that comply with
the OpenDocument format OASIS Standard (ISO/IEC 26300). Leaders from
Europe and the US will discuss the latest advances in OpenDocument
adoption, accessibility, and programmability."
http://www.gridtoday.com/grid/1297121.html
Oregon might adopt ODF as well
==============================
"Oregon has joined Texas, California and Minnesota as states that may
vote this year on legislation that would mandate the use of open document
formats for public documents and records.
...
It requires state agencies, "when practicable," to use "open formats for
which freeware is available."
Additionally, all libraries would have "to install and maintain freeware
so that members of public can view, print and make copies of public
documents, if in doing so library does not incur additional
administrative or operational expense.""
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=open_source&articleId=9014658&taxonomyId=88&intsrc=kc_top
'Legitimate concerns' raised over Microsoft's Office formats
============================================================
"Microsoft Corp's director of corporate standards has conceded that
'legitimate concerns' have been raised in response to its attempt to
fast-track the approval of its Open XML format by ISO."
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=CCED1215-080E-4A71-A5B7-15027927C415
Zoho Sheet gets ODF support
===========================
Zoho Sheet, a web application comparable to Google Spreadsheets, just
announced ODF support as a new feature.
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/zoho_sheet_gets_odf_support
Happy Birthday ODF Alliance!
============================
Congratulations! The ODF Alliance just turned one. From the anniversary
press release I especially like the following quote from Bristol
City Council:
"Bristol values open standards and architectures because they increase
our flexibility, enable effective collaboration and promote competition,
which reduces our costs. As a result, we can direct more money into
improved service to our public. The increased take up of ODF over the
past 12 months, and the growing range of systems that use it, will
support our continued drive to build openness into Bristol's technology
infrastructure." (Stewart Long, Head of Information and Communication
Technologies, Bristol City Council, United Kingdom)
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/happy_birthday_odf_alliance
"Conclusions from Open Document Exchange Formats Workshop"
==========================================================
"The presentation given by Dr Barbara Held is attached (pdf) but the
conclusions presented were:
There was strong consensus among Member State administrations on
* the necessity to use ODEF
* on "openness" being the basic criteria of ODEF
* and resulting requirements towards industry players / consequences
for public administrations
* There is a general dissatisfaction with the perspective of having
competing standards;
* One format for one purpose: Administrations should be able to
standardize (internally) on a minimal set of formats;
* No incomplete implementations, no proprietary extensions;
* Products should support all relevant standards and standards used
should be supported by multiple products;
* Conformance testing and document validation possibilities are needed
-> in order to facilitate mapping / conversion;
* Handle the legacy / safeguard accessibility"
http://www.openforumeurope.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=937&Itemid=1
OpenDocument (ODF) Enhances XML Accessibility
=============================================
“We are thrilled with the progress to date,” said Curtis Chong, president
of the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science. “Our views
ave changed over time. OpenDocument is no longer a thing to be feared, as
we once thought. The OASIS process exemplifies what should be done if
true accessibility to both a document format and the tools to manipulate
it are to be achieved.”
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/document-management/opendocument-odf-enhances-xml-accessibility-001107.php
Clippings
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* OpenOffice.org, "the price is right"
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/56341.html
* Medical record system with OpenOffice.org support
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1419
* Search tool with OpenOffice.org support
http://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/511981/2585
* You "barely notice the difference"
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/technology/article2399581.ece
* CAD software with OpenOffice.org support
http://www.tenlinks.com/NEWS/PR/ASCON/032807_template.htm
* Microsoft Hit By U.S. DOT Ban On Windows Vista, Explorer 7,
and Office 2007
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=CPID0SY4ST0CIQSNDLRCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=197700789
* Microsoft Suffers Latest Blow As NIST Bans Windows Vista
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198000229
* FAA May Ditch Microsoft's Windows Vista And Office For Google And
Linux Combo
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197800480
* Tune-up testing speed with software test automation
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/tune_up_testing_speed_with
* Why all issues are equal but some are more equal than others
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/why_all_issues_are_equal
* AAWAX or How to Check Out OpenOffice.org fast
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/?page=1
* Importing the beast...
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/importing_the_beast
* Patch-as-patch-can
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/patch_as_patch_can1
* New update of the OpenOffice.org Developer's guide
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/ongoing_work_on_office_open
* Ongoing Work on Office Open XML FIlters
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/ongoing_work_on_office_open
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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