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OPENOFFICE.ORG NEWSLETTER Volume 04 - Issue 11 - 05/2007 Please send news clippings to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ######################################################################### 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_05_01_ooonewsletter_archive.html ATOM feed: http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/atom.xml ######################################################################### Contents ######################################################################### 1. Announcements ================ * Reminder: OOoCon 2007 Call for Papers Deadline is June 1st * Press reports regarding "SB/BadBunny-A" virus 2. Success Stories ================== * OpenOffice.org on Dell PC's 3. Featured News ================ * Hot Topics for Draw/Impress * New Chart Module is Integrated * Developer Snapshot of the new ReportDesigner * On the way to a native Mac OS X OpenOffice.org * Sun and Redflag Chinese 2000 to Collaborate on OpenOffice.org Projects * Sun Microsystems joins porting effort for OpenOffice.org for Mac * Weekend of the German OpenOffice.org QA team * Forming better Japanese QA team 4. Tips & Tricks ================ * Dmitri Popov: Extend OpenOffice.org * The OpenOffice.org API Plugin for NetBeans * Does program logic embedded in documents make sense? * The quality of OpenOffice.org is not a miracle 5. OpenDocument News Roundup 6. Clippings All news for this month can be found at: http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_ooonewsletter_archive.html ######################################################################### 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 ######################################################################### Announcements ######################################################################### Reminder: OOoCon 2007 Call for Papers Deadline is June 1st ========================================================== http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/speakers.html Press reports regarding "SB/BadBunny-A" virus ============================================= "However, the OpenOffice.org community repeats the consistent message from security experts that users should never accept files from unknown sources. For any security issue, please visit OpenOffice.org's Security Team page [2] and send a note to [EMAIL PROTECTED] [1] http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/sbbadbunnya.html [2] http://www.openoffice.org/security/" http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=325 Success Stories ######################################################################### OpenOffice.org on Dell PC's =========================== "Just in case you did not notice, Dell just started shipping OpenOffice.org via their Ubuntu bundling. Pretty cool!" http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/openoffice_org_on_dell_pc Featured News ######################################################################### Hot Topics for Draw/Impress =========================== "First of all, I'd like to thank everybody sending me their valuable feedback regarding my 'Comments on SVG'. Feedback like this is the only way for us to adjust our priorities, define our feature set and the roadmap in general. I'm now more convinced than ever, that we need a so called 'native' support of SVG ASAP. ... Regarding my current Blog entry, I'd like to share some hot topics we're currently working on at the Sun OOo Draw/Impress team with you. The hottest topic for me is definitely the work on our so called 'Professional Presentation Package'. This package will most likely be available as an OOo extension (to be installed on top of OOo), and providing an additional set of features that ease both the creation and the actual presentation of slideshows." http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/hot_topics_for_draw_impress New Chart Module is Integrated ============================== "Finally, the New Chart made it into the master build! There are a lot of improvements. For details see the What's New page. If you like, download the developer snapshot build and give it a try! In case you discover any problems you can check this list of existing Issues. You are welcome to submit new issues you find. Thanks a lot to all contributors. There was plenty of valuable feedback from testing the milestone builds, suggestions for improvement, articles for the online help and specification documents. Many thanks to Regina Henschel, Tony Galmiche, Pierre-André Galmes, Jörg Wartenberg and all the other people of the OOo community who supported the Sun Chart team." http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/new_chart_module_is_integrated Developer Snapshot of the new ReportDesigner ============================================ "Now some issues are fixed in the Report Designer. You'll find the install sets here. This time it installs at a different location as the standard installation. To make life easier, we created a issuezilla query where you see which tasks we still have to do (Thanks, Chris and Marc)" http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/new_developer_snapshot_of_the On the way to a native Mac OS X OpenOffice.org ============================================== "In the evening I joined the IRC channel of the Mac porting community of OpenOffice.org to talk to some members. Eric B. asked me if I could have a look to a new native build he has made with the latest CVS chganges of the day and I agreed. Again WOW! What a great progress. It really makes me happy to see the native Mac OS X file picker dialog to load and save documents. It makes really fun to see no X11 starting in the background. Never I have hoped to see that so fast!" http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/on_the_way_to_a Sun and Redflag Chinese 2000 to Collaborate on OpenOffice.org Projects ====================================================================== "Under the provisions of the agreement, Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000, which produces the popular OpenOffice.org-based RedOffice, will add to the open source project approximately 50 engineers, some of whom have been working on the OpenOffice.org project since the second half of 2006." http://www.pr-inside.com/sun-and-redflag-chinese-2000-to-r133109.htm Sun Microsystems joins porting effort for OpenOffice.org for Mac ================================================================ "I'm excited to let you all know that as of now Sun engineering will add its support to the ongoing Mac/Aqua porting effort. ... You can imagine my excitement when I first heard about renewed efforts to make an Aqua port reality. And now finally I can spend my paid time to add to this great effort. At first Herbert Dürr and I will contribute to the Mac port, however there certainly will be other Sun developers involved in their areas of expertise when the need arises (e.g. when problems with the build system arise). Some may ask: Why is Sun joining the Mac porting project? If you look around at conferences and airport lounges, you will notice that more and more people are using Apple notebooks these days. Apple has a significant market share in the desktop space. We are supporting this port because of the interest and activity of the community wanting this port. The new invigorated effort in Mac/Aqua-porting (basically since CWS aquavcl01) is an obvious indicator. I think this is the right way to go to make OOo on Mac as good as or even better than the other ports. Add in the growing Mac community as a whole and suddenly from Sun's point of view Mac has a higher value since our strategy is to be multi-platform capable." http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/sun_microsystems_engineering_joins_porting Weekend of the German OpenOffice.org QA team ============================================ "In the evening we had a 'bughunting party' until ~01:30am. We tried to use the build bots to compile a new build but failed (AFAIK the build bot had a configuration problem). Jacqueline and Simon Wilper then started to do a Linux build on Jacqelines' notebook. By using SRC680_m211 build we were able to verify issues of child workspaces that were integrated into this version. Some people confirmed issues, some closed verified issues and some filed new issues. It was really fun to work together with a fairly big team at such an event." http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/weekend_of_the_german_openoffice Forming better Japanese QA team =============================== "I was really impressed by the QA team of DE. Weekend of the German OpenOffice.org QA team, and motivated very much. Recently I have been working on how we Japanese team do better QAs. * how we define QA tests/protocole for Japanese * how we find volunteers * how we do not exhaust good QA testers and QA managers." http://blog.livedoor.jp/maho_nakata/archives/50658554.html Tips & Tricks ######################################################################### Dmitri Popov: Extend OpenOffice.org =================================== "Extending OpenOffice.org's functionality using extensions is nothing new. From the very beginning, users could add new features to the office suite by installing so-called UNO packages. Usually, these packages contained OOo Basic code, and they offered a more straightforward way of integrating macros into OpenOffice.org applications. With the release of OpenOffice.org 2.0.4, the idea of adding new features via installable packages has been rethought thoroughly and aligned with a concept that is more familiar to end users-namely the extension architecture of the Mozilla Firefox browser." http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9412 The OpenOffice.org API Plugin for NetBeans ========================================== "If you know the plugin from its humble beginnings, formerly named OOo Extension Plugin, you'll be amazed by what we have already achieved: The OpenOffice.org API Plugin has finally reached version 1.0.0 and is available officially in the NetBeans Update Center. So, if you are curious (and why shouldn't you be?), give it a try: Either click on Tools - Update Center in NetBeans, see that "NetBeans Update Center" is selected in the list of available centers and click Next. You can find the plugin in the Features section as "OpenOffice.org API Plugin". Or go to the NetBeans Portal Page and download, the page is linked at the end of this text. After installing the Plugin, you are greeted by a dialog that wants the paths to the OpenOffice.org and OpenOffice.org SDK installation. Enter or Browse to those and the Plugin will work fine." http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/the_openoffice_org_api_plugin Does program logic embedded in documents make sense? ==================================================== "Documents should be used as data container only, and the file format specification defines how the content should be displayed in different applications handling this file format. At least for documents which should be shared with others and/or other applications it would be a good approach to keep program logic out of the documents. Automation of document centric workflows make sense and is necessary of course, but you should think about the usage of embedded macros versus macros deployed in office installations directly. Deploy the macro libraries inside your company, everywhere where necessary but keep it out of the document." http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/does_program_logic_embedded_in The quality of OpenOffice.org is not a miracle ============================================== "Many activities were initiated since OOo 2.0. One of the biggest wins was the integration of the crash reporter tooling in OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. With this tooling many critical crashes were identified quickly. The most critical and most reported crashes could be fixed in the next release/update ( some data I brought up in one blog ). Another hard work was to eliminate all compiler warnings from the code. All these warnings are hints for potential crashes or other critical issues. Until now the code isn't warning free in all cases, but with OOo 2.3 the developers will nearly finalize that project. ' Valgrind '-warning free code is another project. A run with Valgrind identifies additional errors in coding which could lead to buffer overflows or other critical issues. Some of the generated issues are fixed now, but this project is still in progress. Last but not least continuous code reviews are made by Sun developers. All other teams which contributed to OOo could find our accepted coding guidelines for C++ on OOo wiki. These are activities to stabilize the product. In my daily work I notice this extremely. I didn't crash at working with released versions or developer snapshots in the past months." http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/the_quality_of_openoffice_org OpenDocument News Roundup ######################################################################### ODF for OS/2 ============ OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 including ODF support, AFAIK, is now available for OS/2. Unfortunately it's not free like for the other platforms. More details can be found here. Nevertheless, this adds another platform to the long list of operating systems for which ODF implementations exist. ANSI/INCITS accepts comments regarding Ecma Office Open XML =========================================================== "I wonder who provided the template for the comments regarding OOXML that have arrived at ANSI/INCITS during the last few days. Many comments have almost identical wording in the beginning. The comments can be found here. I guess, ANSI/INCITS is mainly interested in comments from people in the US, but if you want to send in your comments as well, you can probably send your emails to this person. At least that email address shows up on several of the other comments." http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/ansi_incits_accepts_comments_regarding ODF in the sky ============== "ODF files can now easily be created on air planes as well, even without a notebook." http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/odf_in_the_sky http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/picture_staroffice_on_singapore_airlines Why ODF is a safe bet! ====================== "Even applications like Firefox and Microsoft Office can be used to view and/or create ODF files. For example the Sun ODF plug-in for Microsoft Word makes opening and saving ODF files with Microsoft Word 2003 a seamless task. A version of the Sun ODF plug-in that supports Excel and Powerpoint as well as older office versions is currently being tested by beta customers, with increasingly positive feedback. Thus, ODF can be used independent of platform, application and vendor preferences. Sure, interoperability between different ODF implementations is not 100% perfect yet, either because a few applications don't implement every ODF feature or because ODF still needs some optimization. However, considering the current ODF momentum, ODF can be expected to evolve and mature very quickly! " http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/why_odf_is_a_safe Yet another ODF implementation ============================== I was told by Rick Walker, the President of Thoughtslinger Corporation, via email that Thoughtslinger implements ODF. Here is a quote from his email: "We're a small Toronto-based startup and we've built a new simultaneous group editor that heavily uses the .odt format. Everyone in a team works on the same document at the same time, and everyone sees what everyone else is doing as they do it." http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/yet_another_odf_implementation More software with ODF support ============================== "New Web Services support enables organizations to easily build their own applications on top of the BioXM server, further leveraging this central inventory of information based on a user-created, extendible scientific knowledge model. The updated BioXM client application ensures a highly personalized work experience, adding new support for Mac OS X(R) as a client platform and extended data exchange capabilities now supporting OpenDocument formats." I found the news herehere. Please let me know when you find new applications supporting ODF! Thanks! http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/more_software_with_odf_support The Standards Council of Canada is asking for comments regarding Ecma Office Open XML ================================================================ As can be read here, the Standards Council of Canada is asking for comments regarding Ecma Office Open XML. This is an interesting and smart move, I think, because any committee will always have only limited knowledge and expertise. For example, I'm a member of the SC34 mirror committee at the German national standards body DIN, but I fully admit that I don't know exactly what all the short, mid and long term needs of private and public sector users are. Most likely no vendor representative will! Unfortunately most private or public sector organizations don't want to or cannot join standards bodies simply because they don't have the time or money, or at least they believe they don't. Therefore, I think it's great to see that the Standards Council of Canada opens up the process and invites non-members to provide input into the process. Since standards decisions often lead to national standards recommendations and thus can have a huge impact on how tax money is spent and competition evolves, it's important that as many parties as possible participate in the standards process. It's like with national elections. If citizens don't vote and thus express their opinion, powerful minorities will be able to take over. Therefore, people should participate, independent of their point of view, so that all opinions are being heard. http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/the_standards_council_of_canada Picture of the Open XML spec ============================ Pavel Janik has a nice picture of the Open XML spec on his blog: http://blog.janik.cz/archives/2007/05/19/T20_32_07/ The Pointless Office Converter Delay ==================================== "Right now, Microsoft is pushing hard to get ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards certification for OOXML. How is it that OOXML can be a standard if Microsoft doesn't even fully support the format in a major version of Office? Irreconcilable is the push for standards and not fully supporting the format up for standards approval. Meanwhile, Microsoft makes big noise about interoperability. What kind of example does Microsoft set when the formats for its Mac and Windows Office suites aren't interoperable? Irreconcilable is the position of increased Microsoft-and-other platform interoperability and the decreased interoperability between Office file formats across two platforms. Microsoft can argue that there will be interoperability later this year. For enterprises mixing Office 2004 and 2007, later isn't soon enough." http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_applications/the_pointless_office_converter_delay.html?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535 ODF to be recommended in Norway =============================== "Norway is the latest European country to move closer to mandatory government use of ODF (and PDF). According to a press release provided in translation to me by an authoritative source, Norway now joins Belgium, Finland, and France (among other nations) in moving towards a final decision to require such use. The text of the press release, as well as some of the statements made at the press conference where the announcement was made, are appended at the end of this blog post. The Norwegian recommendation was revealed by Minister of Renewal Heidi Grande Roys, on behalf of the Cabinet-appointed Norwegian Standards Council. If adopted, it would require all government agencies and services to use these two formats, and would permit other formats (such as OOXML) to be used only in a redundant capacity. Reflecting a pragmatic approach to the continuing consideration of OOXML by ISO/IEC JTC 1, the recommendation calls for Norway to "promote the convergence of the ODF and OOXML, in order to avoid having two standards covering the same usage." According to the press release, the recommendation will be the subject of open hearings, with opinions to be rendered to the Cabinet before August 20 this summer. The Cabinet would then make its own (and in this case binding) recommendation to the Norwegian government." http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20070513180219689 Happy Birthday ODF! =================== ODF just turned two! Happy Birthday! Michael Brauer wrote a longer blog entry about what happened around ODF over the last two years. http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/happy_birthday_odf Interoperability by Design ========================== "So any future operations the user performs on the document, such as mailing, saving, posting to a web server, etc., will be in OOXML format. The only way to get back to an ODF format file is to manually and explicitly go back to the Office menu, go to the ODF submenu and choose to save it to ODF format. At that point you will be presented a default name based on the DOCX temp file name, not the original name. In this case, it suggested “sampler_tmp1.odt”. The “Save as ODF...” dialog will default to the directory last used to save a file, not necessarily the same as where your document was loaded from. So to save you must first navigate to your original document, select it and choose “yes” when warned about overwriting an existing document, and then the document is converted back into ODF format." http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/05/interoperability-by-design.html So where are all the OOXML documents? ===================================== "As you can see, ODF has a nice upward trend. OOXML is also trending upwards, though it is somewhat lost at this scale. If you do the analysis it comes out to around 300 new ODF documents per day versus 6 for OOXML. So, two years later, ODF adoption, in terms of documents per day, is 50-times greater than OOXML is, at a time which should be OOXML's high-growth period, considering all the great news that is coming out of Redmond. So I'm a somewhat at a loss to appreciate the significance of Novell or Corel adding OOXML support to their editors. With only 63 OOXML spreadsheets out there, wouldn't it be cheaper just to hire someone to retype the documents in the destination application? The average user is more likely to find a Buffalo Nickel in their lunch change than to find an OOXML document outside of captivity." http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/05/so-where-are-all-ooxml-documents.html Clippings ######################################################################### * New Zealand could invest the $100M in OpenOffice.org development http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/new_zealand_could_invest_the * Simon Phipps about software patents http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2135483,00.asp * Jonathan Schwartz blogs about OpenOffice.org http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/censoring_free_media_or_fighting * The Register, Groklaw and CBR about the Microsoft news http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/the_register_and_groklaw_about * Jonathan Schwartz about the power of open source http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/jonathan_about_the_power_of * Greg Papadopoulos blogs about software patents http://blogs.sun.com/Gregp/entry/are_software_patents_useful * Japan's IPA Accepts List of Requirements http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2007/05/japans-ipa-accepts-list-of-requirements.html Newsletter Archive ######################################################################### 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) ######################################################################### [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]