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OPENOFFICE.ORG NEWSLETTER
Volume 05 - Issue 09 - 03/2008
Please send news clippings to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Contents
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1. Announcements
================
* OpenOffice.org 2.4 is released
* New License and Contributor Agreement
* The OpenOffice.org Annual Conference goes to Beijing
2. Success Stories
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* "MAMPU Migrates to OpenOffice.org"
* More Open Source at the European Commission
* German county adopts OpenOffice.org
* Laptops with OpenOffice.org pre-installed becoming popular
3. Featured News
================
* Reminder: "A maximum total of $175,000 USD may be awarded"
* OpenOffice.org 3.0's new features, an early look
* Error Bars from Cell Ranges in OOo 3.0
* The Multiple Page View
* First OpenOffice.org extension crossed 100,000 downloads
4. Tips & Tricks
================
* "Creating a Contacts Database in OpenOffice"
* Writing long documents with OpenOffice.org
* Statistics with OpenOffice.org
* SugarCRM and OpenOffice.org
* OpenOffice.org Plugin for Alfresco
* sage Classic Line works with OpenOffice.org
* Per-incident support available for OpenOffice.org
* Controlling OpenOffice.org with a cell phone
5. ODF News
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* Germany upgrades ODF to "recommended"
* World’s first Document Freedom Day
* OpenIndexer 3.0 Beta is out
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Want to help OpenOffice.org? Find out hot to contribute or see our
To Do List!!
http://contributing.openoffice.org/index.html
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/To-Dos/index.html
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Announcements
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OpenOffice.org 2.4 is released
==============================
"Users will appreciate changes such as usability improvements in
printing, and further enhancements to PDF handling (OpenOffice.org
creates PDF files 'out of the box' to ISO standard). The default font
is now DejaVu, which supports more languages/localisations than the
previous BitStream Vera -part of a raft of localisation improvements
covering languages from Hiligaynon to Quechua. Mac OS X users will
appreciate the use of the native Quicktime player and spell-checker."
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=356
New License and Contributor Agreement
=====================================
"* The license for code is changing from the early LGPL v 2.1 to 3.0
effective the Beta of OpenOffice.org 3.0. (The actual date of this
beta has not been finalized.)
* The Joint Copyright Assignment form (JCA) is being replaced by the
Sun Microsystems Inc. Contributor Agreement (SCA). This change is
effective immediately with this announcement."
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=355
The OpenOffice.org Annual Conference goes to Beijing
====================================================
"Members of the OpenOffice.org Community have selected Beijing, China as
the venue for their 2008 Annual Conference (OOoC0n), which will be held
between October 15th and 17th (provisional dates)."
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=354
Success Stories
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"MAMPU Migrates to OpenOffice.org"
==================================
"The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning
Unit (MAMPU), today officially adopts a policy to migrate to the
OpenOffice.org open source productivity suite. This is in line with
the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Master Plan, which calls for
government agencies to reduce costs, increase freedom of choice and
interoperability. From April 1st, MAMPU will start adopting the
OpenDocument Format (ODF), standard for all new documents created."
http://www.oscc.org.my/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=189&Itemid=128
More Open Source at the European Commission
===========================================
"The commission will soon release a "strategy paper" on using more
open-source software, says Valerie Rampi, spokeswoman for Siim Kallas,
the European commissioner responsible for administrative affairs. The
paper will say open-source software should be pursued, provided it
does not cost more and is in the best interests of European citizens,
she says."
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23351911-15322,00.html
German county adopts OpenOffice.org
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According to this German article, the German county "Friesland" is
adoption open source including OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org will be
installed on the majority of the client systems.
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/german_county_adopts_openoffice_org
Laptops with OpenOffice.org pre-installed becoming popular
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As can be read in the two following articles, laptops and desktop
computers with Linux and OpenOffice.org are becoming popular:
http://www.linuxpr.com/releases/10444.html
http://www.pcw.co.uk/personal-computer-world/news/2211200/mini-laptops-challenge-eee-pc
Featured News
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Reminder: A maximum total of $175,000 USD may be awarded
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This is just a short reminder that the OpenOffice.org Community
Innovation Program is still accepting projects and that a
maximum total of $175,000 USD may be awarded. Thus, check out the
links below for ideas and background information and submit your
project!
http://development.openoffice.org/community_innovation_program.html
http://contributing.openoffice.org/programming.html
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/To-Dos
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2008/proposals
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi (query for high votes)
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice_NetBeans_Integration
OpenOffice.org 3.0's new features, an early look
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"One of the most ever voted issues is viewing multiple pages in writer.
Notice the two new controls in the statusbar (bottom-right-hand corner)
of the first screenshot: the "View Layout" mode selection and the zoom
slider. The "View Layout" control switches between a single page,
several pages side by side, and book layout."
http://www.oooninja.com/2008/03/openofficeorg-30-new-features.html
Error Bars from Cell Ranges in OOo 3.0
======================================
"Did you ever want to take the values for error bars in a chart from
cells in a spreadsheet? Then you are maybe one of those who voted for
Issue 366. As you can see by the issue number this is quite an old one.
And it has over 130 votes. So, if you are interested in this feature,
there are good news: it is implemented, integrated into the DEV300
code-base and thus will make it into OpenOffice.org 3.0!
...
In addition to this long awaited feature, the automatically calculated
error-bars now also support standard error (also known as standard
deviation of the mean). So now, there are the error types:
* constant value (positive and negative)
* percentage (one parameter for both, positive and negative)
* standard error
* standard deviation
* variance
* error margin (one parameter)
* cell-range (one for positive and one for negative values)"
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/error_bars_from_cell_ranges
The Multiple Page View
======================
Finally it’s done. After integrating the new notes feature, another
one of the most requested enhancements (168 votes) has been implemented
on our way towards OOo 3.0: The Multiple Page View. This feature allows
you to arrange two (or more) pages side-by-side instead of having all
pages stacked top-to-bottom:
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/the_multiple_page_view
First OpenOffice.org extension crossed 100,000 downloads
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As you can see in the OpenOffice.org extension repository, the English
version of the Professional Template Pack has been downloaded more than
100,000 times. In total there are already 80 extensions listed in the
repository. Very cool!
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/most_pop_ext
Tips & Tricks
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"Creating a Contacts Database in OpenOffice"
============================================
"Last week we learned how to make pages of labels, business cards, and
form letters using OpenOffice Writer and Base. The steps for setting up
any mail-merge document in OpenOffice are easy; the one potentially
gnarly bit is creating your contacts database in the first place. Your
contacts list must be in Base, which is a bit of a pain. But the good
news is Base can import data from most other databases, spreadsheets,
text-delimited files, and email address books."
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/6469/1/
Writing long documents with OpenOffice.org
==========================================
I recently had an email exchange with students about writing
a thesis using OpenOffice.org. It became apparent from that email
thread that many people are still not aware of the master document
feature in OpenOffice.org. In case you also don't know how to use
the master document feature, you should check out one or all of
the following links:
* Create A Master Document
* Use master documents
* Combining OpenOffice.org text documents using master files
* Chapter 13 - Working with Master Documents
* Creating and Using Master Documents
The other area where both more tools and documentation are needed is
the area of bibliographic and reference management tools. Here is a
list of different applications that have varying support for
OpenOffice.org and ODF:
* Zotero
* Bibus
* Citavi
* Endnote
If any of these vendors or projects don't yet provide the level of
integration that you need, either use the feedback forms to submit
your feature requests or contribute to the projects!
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/writing_long_documents_with_openoffice
Statistics with OpenOffice.org
==============================
People who have to do all kinds of statistical analysis might want to
check out the new extension that provides an integration between the
R project and OpenOffice.org. Documentation is also available and
Niklas Nebel provides additional information in his latest blog entry.
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/statistics_with_openoffice_org
SugarCRM and OpenOffice.org
===========================
People who want to do mail merges with OpenOffice.org based on SugarCRM
data should check out this blog entry about the OpenOffice.org Extension
for SugarCRM.
http://blogs.sun.com/vanga/entry/openoffice_extension_for_sugarcrm
https://sugarcrm-ooo-integration.dev.java.net/
OpenOffice.org Plugin for Alfresco
==================================
"The purpose of the plugin is to provide Alfresco functionality from
within OpenOffice.org. This functionality includes the ability to:
navigate Alfresco spaces, search and open documents; check documents in
and out; view document details; and invoke some actions, such as work
flow steps."
https://oo-plugin-for-alfresco.dev.java.net/
sage Classic Line works with OpenOffice.org
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Cool! I just learned that the German sage Classic Line, a popular ERP
solution for SMB's, works with OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org was even
featured in one issue of their user magazine. It's very encouraging to
see more an more ISV's support OpenOffice.org and ODF. With about one
million downloads per week, OpenOffice.org simply can't be ignored
any longer.
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/sage_classic_line_works_with
Per-incident support available for OpenOffice.org
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If you are really stuck with a terrible problem, and if you are unlucky
and don't find the right answers to your problem in the public user
forums, you might want to try out the new per-incident support for
OpenOffice.org.
http://www.support-central.org/openoffice
Controlling OpenOffice.org with a cell phone
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"The objective of the Project is to create a set of tools that make the
user able to create/update ODF documents in mobile devices such as cell
phones and PDA's and also interact with the OpenOffice.org suite through
these devices."
https://mooo.dev.java.net/
ODF News
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Germany upgrades ODF to "recommended"
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The new version 4.0 of the document "Standards and Architectures for
eGovernment Applications" (SAGA) by the German Ministry of the Interior
now recommends ODF for text documents. In SAGA 3.0 ODF was listed as
"under observation". Nice to see ODF being upgraded by the SAGA
expert group!
http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/germany_upgrades_odf_to_recommended
World’s first Document Freedom Day
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"MARCH 26 (THURSDAY) was Document Freedom Day (DFD): Roughly 200 teams
from more than 60 countries worldwide organised local activities to
raise awareness for document freedom and open standards. To support the
initiatives surrounding the first day to celebrate document liberation,
DFD starter packs containing a DFD flag, t-shirts and leaflets have
been sent to the first 100 registered teams over the past weeks."
http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=131358
OpenIndexer 3.0 Beta is out
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"OI3 allows to search the complete textual content of the ODF file,
inclusive its meta data. Also PDF files containing text can be rapidly
found with the OI3 fulltext search. New supported file formats OI3
expands its fulltext search to HTML, MHT, XML, EML, TXT and CSV files.
Also Fax/TIF files can be searched in fulltext mode. As recognition
language can be set english, german, french, italian, spanish
and portughese."
http://www.sancom.eu/pages/en/oi.htm
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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