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OPENOFFICE.ORG NEWSLETTER
Volume 05 - Issue 01 - 07/2007
Please send news clippings to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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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_07_01_ooonewsletter_archive.html
ATOM feed:
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/atom.xml
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Contents
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1. Announcements
================
* PC with OpenOffice.org pre-installed at Wal-Mart
* Zonbu includes OpenOffice.org
* OpenOffice.org pre-installed on $250-laptop from Asus
2. Success Stories
==================
* Dutch city Heerenveen saves 135,000 Euro with OpenOffice.org
* Italian parliament adopts Linux (and probably OpenOffice.org and/or ODF)
* Many German schools will switch to OpenOffice.org
* l'Ecole Centrale Marseille (Central School Marseille) evaluating
OpenOffice.org
3. Featured News
================
* Highlights of OpenOffice.org 2.3 Writer
* New Application for Status bar control to display/change the language
* Completing PDF support in OpenOffice.org
* Improving Calc Usability
* New OpenGL Slide Transition: Tiled Flipping
4. Tips & Tricks
================
* Ensuring Unique Entries With Cell Validation
* Flash demo of the OpenOffice.org API plug-in
* Generating PDF files from OpenOffice.org via Ant
* Interview with Sophie Gautier about release QA
* Interview with Andre Schnabel about release QA
5. OpenDocument News Roundup
6. Clippings
All news for this month can be found at:
http://ooonewsletter.blogspot.com/2007_07_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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PC with OpenOffice.org pre-installed at Wal-Mart
================================================
"Everex, a world leader in the design and production of personal
computers, today unveiled its first PC featuring open source productivity
software from OpenOffice.org.
Powered by the energy-efficient VIA C7-D processor, the model GC3502
comes preloaded with the Microsoft Windows Vista(TM) Home Basic operating
system, 1GB of system memory, 80GB hard disk drive and DVD-ROM/CD-RW
optical drive. For the first time, Everex has also included
OpenOffice.org 2.2, the critically acclaimed open-source office suite
for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases
and more.
...
The Everex IMPACT GC3502 is available at Wal-Mart stores throughout
the US. Everex also offers consumers a full line of desktop and
notebook computers, available at these leading retail outlets:
Best Buy, Circuit City, OfficeMax, TigerDirect and Newegg.com"
http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20070718/AQW07818072007-1.html
Zonbu includes OpenOffice.org
=============================
"CNet reports reports that the Zonbu will sell for $99 with a $12.95/month
subscription charge. The company say that the deal is better than it looks
because the 15-watt PC can save up to $10 a month in electricity compared
with a standard 200-watt PC.
...
The Zonbu PC also uses a Gentoo version of the Linux operating system
and will come with a range of software applications like the Mozilla
Firefox browser, Skype voice-over-Internet service, OpenOffice software
suite and many games. An additional 25GB of free online storage is
available, with more offered for purchase."
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1642
OpenOffice.org pre-installed on $250-laptop from Asus
=====================================================
"The $250-laptop Asus Eee PC apparently has OpenOffice.org pre-installed.
You can find details about the laptop at NotebookReview.com. Very cool to
see Linux and OpenOffice.org being pre-installed on laptops these days!"
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/openoffice_org_pre_installed_on
Success Stories
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Dutch city Heerenveen saves 135,000 Euro with OpenOffice.org
============================================================
"According to the Dutch article below, the Dutch city Heerenveen saves
135,000 Euro with OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org has been installed on
100 of the 350 computers already. Users are ready to use OpenOffice.org
after one day of training."
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/dutch_city_heerenveen_saves_135
Italian parliament adopts Linux (and probably OpenOffice.org and/or ODF)
========================================================================
According to the German, French article, and Italian articles below, the
Italian chamber of deputies (one part of the Italian parliament) will
deploy Linux on the 3,500 computers of the congressmen/deputies and
expects to save 3 million Euro. Considering that Linux typically comes
with ODF implementations like OpenOffice.org and KOffice, it's quite
likely that this move also includes the adoption of OpenOffice.org
and/or ODF.
http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2007/11441.html
http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/37610-gourvernement-italien-migration-linux.htm
http://www.repubblica.it/2007/07/sezioni/scienza_e_tecnologia/linux-parlamento/linux-parlamento/linux-parlamento.html
Many German schools will switch to OpenOffice.org
=================================================
According to the German Computerwoche article below, a survey conducted
with 1,200 German schools revealed, that Microsoft is still the dominant
software provider for German schools, but close to 25% of the interviewed
schools plan a switch to OpenOffice.org and StarOffice.
http://www.computerwoche.de/job_karriere/595874/
l'Ecole Centrale Marseille (Central School Marseille) evaluating
OpenOffice.org
================================================================
According to the French article below, "l'Ecole Centrale Marseille"
(Central School Marseille) is evaulating OpenOffice.org and put
together a study. According to the article it's expected that the
study will lead to a migration to OpenOffice.org.
http://linuxfr.org/2007/07/12/22720.html
Featured News
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Highlights of OpenOffice.org 2.3 Writer
=======================================
"OpenOffice.org 2.3 is coming soon and last week the last new features
for this version have been integrated into the milestone m221 .
A comprehensive list of all new features and enhancements can be found
in our Wiki. Though the most remarkable changes in 2.3 surely are the
improved Chart component (a complete reimplementation and replacement
of the old one) and the new Database Report Designer the other teams
of course didn't rest and so also provide a lot of bug fixes,
enhancements and new features. As the Writer project lead I want to
show you some of the improvements from the Writer perspective (and of
course also from my own one)."
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/highlights_of_openoffice_org_writer
New Application for Status bar control to display/change the language
=====================================================================
"This project wants to improve the handling of languages in Writer
documents. Currently OpenOffice.org doesn't provide an easy way to change
the language of a word, paragraph or text selection within the Writer
application. The user has to use the menu and a multi-tab dialog to
choose the appropriate language. A status bar control which provides
this function would greatly enhance usability for people who have to
work with multiple language documents. We are making good progress and
at half-time our student, Lili Sun from California (USA), implemented
most of our required features for the status bar control. If anybody is
interested to see the new control just try to build the CWS langstatusbar.
I am sure that we can provide this great control for OpenOffice.org 2.4.
To have an impression about the look of the feature you can find a
screen shot from the latest CWS version below:"
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/update_from_our_framework_writer
Completing PDF support in OpenOffice.org
========================================
"Having a very well working and mature PDF export filter in OOo for
several years now, it's time to take the final steps regarding full PDF
support. Yes, you're right, we're speaking of implementing a native PDF
import filter for OOo within the Sun OOo Graphics development team."
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/completing_pdf_support_in_ooo
Improving Calc Usability
========================
"A new i-team has been founded to improve the usability of
OpenOffice.org (OOo) Calc in June 2007. The i-team members are Niklas Nebel,
Thomas Benisch, Frank Stecher and me. The goal of that team is to improve
the usability of OOo Calc from release to release.
...
Furthermore we have added a list of ux issues we want to address for
OOo 2.4 to this wiki page last week."
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/improving_calc_usability
New OpenGL Slide Transition: Tiled Flipping
===========================================
"Behold the new OpenGL Slide Transition! Tile Flipping! The transition
splits the slide into an n by m field of rectangles, and then flips each
rectangle over to reveal the the entering slide on the back side! TA-DA!
...
If you'd like to find out how much difficulty (or lack there-of) I had
adding a 3d transition system to Impress, come to my Case Study
presentation at OOoCon2007 entitled: 3D Slideshow Transitions: Adding
OpenGL-Accelerated Transitional Effects For Impress.
And without further ado. PICTURES!"
http://codecoffee.blogspot.com/2007/07/new-opengl-slide-transition-tiled.html
Tips & Tricks
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Ensuring Unique Entries With Cell Validation
============================================
"In Calc, validity settings that are defined for a cell range are
verified for cell input before actually writing to the cell. Because of
this, a “custom” option, with a formula specifying if the input is valid,
isn't available – the formula wouldn't see the new value yet. The good
news: In many cases, it isn't needed. With the addition of dynamic
ranges, “cell range” validation can now (in version 2.3, or recent
developer builds) be used to prevent duplicate entries in lists. This is
possible because the formula can return an array as well as a cell range."
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/ensuring_unique_entries_with_cell
Flash demo of the OpenOffice.org API plug-in
============================================
"The first flash demo showing how to use our OpenOffice.org API NetBeans
plugin is available online. Roman Strobl (his blog about it) a colleague
from the NetBeans team in Prague has created this cool flash demo showing
how you can use our plugin to create quite easy a new built-in function
for the Spreadsheet application. I met him last week in Zurich during
the Jazoon conference and we talked about it and wow he has really fast
created the demo. Many thanks Roman, you did a great job."
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/flash_demo_how_to_use
Generating PDF files from OpenOffice.org via Ant
================================================
"At work we've been writing all our big documents in OpenOffice.org
format, .SXW files, then pumping them through Apache Forrest to create
the site. This has some nice features
* Creates PDF and HTML pages from XML source documents
* Can produce a static site for documentation redistributions,
and a dynamic site for iterative document development.
* Can insert link aliases across all documents
* Can detect broken links
However, I don't think the PDF pages are on a par with what OpenOffice
can do itself, because OOO is very much WYSIWIG. So I spent an afternoon
working out how to get Ant to generate the PDFs by way of OpenOffice.
There is some discussion about a macro to do this, macros I took and
turned into ones I could call from Ant. One to convert a single file,
another to convert an entire directory"
http://www.antbook.org/display/antbook/Generating+PDF+files+from+OpenOffice+via+Ant
PDF signing tool for OpenOffice.org
===================================
"According to the German article below, the City of Vienna created a tool
for signing PDF files created with OpenOffice.org. The "PortableSigner"
tool can be found at SourceForge."
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/pdf_signing_tool_for_openoffice
Interview with Sophie Gautier about release QA
==============================================
"> How many QA testers you can find?
>
> In the best periods, I can have around 30 persons, but usually it's
> about 15."
http://blog.livedoor.jp/maho_nakata/archives/50701358.html
Interview with Andre Schnabel about release QA
==============================================
"> How do you do that?
Hmmm .. not easy to describe. It is a process, not a task. Our QA relies
on two types of contributors.
1st ... the experienced and long-term team members.
2nd ..the "new" members"
http://blog.livedoor.jp/maho_nakata/archives/50701357.html
OpenDocument News Roundup
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Very positive eWEEK review of Sun ODF plug-in for Microsoft Office
==================================================================
"Tiffany Maleshefski of eWEEK has posted a very positive review of Sun's
ODF plug-in. According to her, our ODF Plug-in for Microsoft Office it is
the best option currently available for adding Open Document Format
support to Office's massive installed base. She discusses the fact that
Microsoft's Open XML/ODF Translator project is still in development,
while "Sun's freely-downloadable ODF Plug-in is a bona fide shipping
product — complete with optional paid support from Sun.""
http://blogs.sun.com/chhandomay/entry/very_positive_eweek_review_of
The Sun ODF Plugin turns out to be very popular
===============================================
"As you can read here, the Sun ODF Plugin was downloaded more than
13,000 times in just one week! Very impressive! Oh, and professional
users can get enterprise support for the Sun ODF Plugin from Sun.
Thus, the ODF Plugin is ready for production use!"
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/the_sun_odf_plugin_turns
"Government of Japan Embraces Open Software Standards"
======================================================
http://www.govtech.com/gt/126612?topic=117674
My comments on the ETRM 4.0 draft
=================================
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/my-comments-on-etrm-40-draft.html
The Cookbook
============
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/cookbook.html
OOXML Fails to Gain Approval in US
==================================
"An important factor in the V1 vote was the large number of members who
joined very late in the process. At the start of the year, V1 had only
7 voting members. But by Friday's meeting V1 had 26 voting members.
There was a clear pattern in the voting where the long-time V1 members
voted for the "Disapproval, with comments" position as well as
"Abstention, with comments" while the newer members voted overwhelmingly
"Yes, with comments" and against "Abstention with comments." This is not
surprising since the new members were largely Microsoft business partners.
The following chart makes this trend clear. As you can see, at the start
of the year, V1's membership consisted of seven organizations, six of
whom on Friday voted "Disapproval, with comments", and one (Microsoft)
who voted "Approval, with comments". The membership spurt came at the
very end, in the last month, when 16 new members joined V1. Of these
16 new members, 14 of them voted, "Approval, with comments" on Friday."
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/ooxml-fails-to-gain-approval-in-us.html
The Formula for Failure
=======================
"It has been a boast for around around 6 months now. Microsoft's OOXML
fully defines spreadsheet formulas, and ODF doesn't. The Microsoft boosters
have been parroting the party line for quite some time.
...
There are many other examples, if you care to seek them out. But what you
will not find is an examination of what OOXML actually specifies for
spreadsheet formulas, or confirmation that it was done sufficiently.
Maybe the assumption is that this would be a trivial task, documenting
Excel's behavior? What could possibly go wrong?
Let's find out."
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-failure.html
A File Format Timeline
======================
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/06/file-format-timeline.html
Office Open XML ISO certification process grows even murkier for Microsoft
==========================================================================
"South Africa, for example, voted 13-4 not to approve Office Open XML:
two votes of Yes, With Comments, two votes of Yes, Without Comments, and
13 votes of No, With Comments. Their primary concern was that the standard
had not been discussed widely enough. Interestingly, South Africa stated
that many previous efforts to push ISO standards through had been derailed
by vocal objections from the standard-bearer's direct competitors, which
led the country to typically abstain from voting. However, the country
now believes that voting No is a better solution for standards that are
not adequately understood by their technical committees."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070726-office-open-xml-iso-certification-process-grows-even-murkier-for-microsoft.html
Clippings
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* Positive Sun Weblog Publisher Review
http://blogs.sun.com/chhandomay/entry/sun_weblog_publisher_gets_a
* Current Mac OS X OpenOffice.org versions : a quick inventory
http://eric.bachard.free.fr/news/2007/07/current-mac-os-x-openofficeorg-versions.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
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