Re: Thoughts on a new build system for AOO

[Pedro Giffuni]

Looking at SCons ...

( ...or at least just the main page)

I will give it a +1.

I was particularly bought by this:

Built-in support for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and past Visual Studio 
versions, including generation of .dsp, .dsw, .sln and .vcproj files.


Gradle looks interesting too but we should just go for SCons.

Pedro.

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Re: A Complaint

[donaldupre .]

On Sun, Feb 7, 2016 at 7:35 AM, J. Myers  wrote:

>  I installed the Open Office 4.1 thinking I was doing a good thing ---
> just adding a processing program that was cheaper than Word.


How can Word be compatible with Star Writer?


> Now
> I regret it and I am more than angry.  I am furious.  Before loading
> Open Office 4.1, I had and was using Star Writer (from Sun).  I was
> using that particular program because it let me do things "outside
> the box".
>
>   I am a writer and I had hundreds of manuscript pages stored
> onto my computer.  In addition to that there were many records
> and account pages stored in Star Writer.  I don't use a template
> for my account pages.  I do my own so that I can get more on
> one page.  Some of my documents were written  for children's
> books and did not fit any normal template because the words
> went around some of the illustrations. Not any more.  I will need
> to make corrections on hundreds of documents and that will take
> me many hours and many days.
>
>  When I installed Open Office  my Star Writer program completely
> disappeared out of my computer.  Who gave you the right to destroy
> my property that I paid for?


You did during installation, when accepting the license agreement!


>   And when I called up my records,
> they had gone crazy. The lines and numbers were scattered all over
> to fit some Open Office template, I presume.  What was one page is
> now 5 pages and all my formatting is gone.
>
>  To describe my emotions toward Open Office as RAGE is putting it
> mildly.  The Open Office 3.1 tolerated Star Writer.  I had installed
> both and used both.  Why did you change it?  Why is Open Office 4.1 so
> intolerant and oppressive?  Also, why can't Open Office offer the
> option of NO AUTOMATIC SETTINGS or FUNCTIONS?  People like me
> who have their own ideas should be able to work outside the box
> if they want to, but still be able to forward the program or store the
> program as an Open Office document.
>

IMO your rage should be directed towards yourself for not creating backups
of your work.
and also for being naive to expect no compatibility issues with an ancient
software like Star Office.
This is just my personal opinion as a neutral reader of this mailing list.

Re: A Complaint

[Patricia Shanahan]

This does not seem like a very constructive response - I suggest reading 
Regina Henschel's message instead.


Unlike much of Apache's software, OpenOffice is intended to be used by 
normal end users. I wish every computer user used backups and revision 
control, avoiding a lot of misery. It is reasonable to expect a user of 
e.g. Hadoop to know about, and use, those things. It is not realistic to 
expect that of every OpenOffice user.


On 2/7/2016 3:05 AM, donaldupre . wrote:

On Sun, Feb 7, 2016 at 7:35 AM, J. Myers  wrote:


  I installed the Open Office 4.1 thinking I was doing a good thing ---
just adding a processing program that was cheaper than Word.



How can Word be compatible with Star Writer?



Now
I regret it and I am more than angry.  I am furious.  Before loading
Open Office 4.1, I had and was using Star Writer (from Sun).  I was
using that particular program because it let me do things "outside
the box".

   I am a writer and I had hundreds of manuscript pages stored
onto my computer.  In addition to that there were many records
and account pages stored in Star Writer.  I don't use a template
for my account pages.  I do my own so that I can get more on
one page.  Some of my documents were written  for children's
books and did not fit any normal template because the words
went around some of the illustrations. Not any more.  I will need
to make corrections on hundreds of documents and that will take
me many hours and many days.

  When I installed Open Office  my Star Writer program completely
disappeared out of my computer.  Who gave you the right to destroy
my property that I paid for?



You did during installation, when accepting the license agreement!



   And when I called up my records,
they had gone crazy. The lines and numbers were scattered all over
to fit some Open Office template, I presume.  What was one page is
now 5 pages and all my formatting is gone.

  To describe my emotions toward Open Office as RAGE is putting it
mildly.  The Open Office 3.1 tolerated Star Writer.  I had installed
both and used both.  Why did you change it?  Why is Open Office 4.1 so
intolerant and oppressive?  Also, why can't Open Office offer the
option of NO AUTOMATIC SETTINGS or FUNCTIONS?  People like me
who have their own ideas should be able to work outside the box
if they want to, but still be able to forward the program or store the
program as an Open Office document.



IMO your rage should be directed towards yourself for not creating backups
of your work.
and also for being naive to expect no compatibility issues with an ancient
software like Star Office.
This is just my personal opinion as a neutral reader of this mailing list.



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Extension website: older URL give wrong CSS

[FR web forum]

By example see:
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/
This kind of URL is still indexed by search engines.

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Re: A Complaint

[Regina Henschel]

Hi J. Myers,

J. Myers schrieb:

  I installed the Open Office 4.1 thinking I was doing a good thing ---
just adding a processing program that was cheaper than Word.


OpenOffice is not a clone of Word and does not intend to be a clone of Word.

 Now

I regret it and I am more than angry.  I am furious.  Before loading
Open Office 4.1, I had and was using Star Writer (from Sun).  I was
using that particular program because it let me do things "outside
the box".


Go back to the recovery point set by your operating system. If Star 
Writer does not work out-of-the-box then, use the "repair" feature or 
the StarWriter installation. And as you have bought it, you should have 
got a CD, and therefore you can install it again.


If you have a lot of .sdw files, then the version 4.1 of OpenOffice is 
not suitable for you. Use a portable version of OpenOffice 3.4. That 
does not make any changes to your computer and it is able to read and 
write .sdw files. The support of .sdw files has been removed in 
OpenOffice 4.


If you will have a look at new features of OpenOffice 4.1 without making 
changes to the registry of your operating system, then you can do an 
"administrative" installation of the OpenOffice.


For using a recovery point, read the help of your operating system or 
ask a user group according your OS. If you need help in doing things 
with OpenOffice, we will try to assist you. Please write, which 
operating system do you use, and what do you want to achieve. Perhaps 
before you actual do it?




   I am a writer and I had hundreds of manuscript pages stored
onto my computer.  In addition to that there were many records
and account pages stored in Star Writer.  I don't use a template
for my account pages.  I do my own so that I can get more on
one page.  Some of my documents were written  for children's
books and did not fit any normal template because the words
went around some of the illustrations. Not any more.  I will need
to make corrections on hundreds of documents and that will take
me many hours and many days.


The installation of OpenOffice does not change anything in that files 
unless you save and therefore you overwrite the files. You can still 
read and edit the files with StarWriter.




  When I installed Open Office  my Star Writer program completely
disappeared out of my computer.


What makes you thing so? I bet, it is still there in folder program and 
you can still use it. Only some connection between file name extension 
and application might have changed.


  Who gave you the right to destroy

my property that I paid for?  And when I called up my records,
they had gone crazy. The lines and numbers were scattered all over
to fit some Open Office template, I presume.  What was one page is
now 5 pages and all my formatting is gone.

  To describe my emotions toward Open Office as RAGE is putting it
mildly.  The Open Office 3.1 tolerated Star Writer.  I had installed
both and used both.  Why did you change it?  Why is Open Office 4.1 so
intolerant and oppressive?  Also, why can't Open Office offer the
option of NO AUTOMATIC SETTINGS or FUNCTIONS?


It does. If you need help in doing an "administrative" installation, 
then ask here or in a forum.


  People like me

who have their own ideas should be able to work outside the box
if they want to, but still be able to forward the program or store the
program as an Open Office document.



Calm done. We can surely help you, to get a satisfying working environment.

Kind regards
Regina


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[DISCUSS][POLICY?] Lost Features When Saving to ODF

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

[BCC to AOO Project Management Committee]

A. THE SITUATION

We have some situations of the following kind:

 1. An user is working in Apache OpenOffice and makes use of various features 
that appear to succeed and the desired result is visible in the presentation.

 2. When the working document is saved in the default OpenDocument format, the 
save occurs and there is no observed indication that the saved document is in 
any way different than what the user sees.

 3. On later opening the document from the saved file, the thought-to-be 
successful feature result is corrupted to something else.  

 4. There are three flavors of this condition:
a. It is a bug (e.g., change-tracking in AOO Writer that is not preserved 
across a save in OpenDocument Text file format).
b. A feature that works if saved to Microsoft Office format yet silently 
fails without any indication when the document is saved to OpenDocument format. 
 E.g.,
.
c. Situations, similar to (a), where a document is saved in an Office 
format such that it is opened successfully in Office, but not back in AOO.  
There is no problem with saving as OpenDocument though, and it is apparently an 
inconsistency between export and import. I've seen this; I don't have an 
example handy. 


B. THE POLICY QUESTION

Category (4a) and (4c) cases are essentially defects.

Category (4b) presents policy questions concerning interoperability.

THE QUESTION IS, should the policy be that interoperability in interchange via 
OpenDocument Format has precedence and is by default?

Please [DISCUSS].

 - Dennis

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS

C. COMPLICATIONS

The background principle is that any silent loss of features in saving to 
default, native formats is a serious usability issue, since it occurs as 
loss/corruption to the user. It is necessary to consider how to prevent such 
confidence-undermining behaviors while also supporting users in what we want 
them to be able to accomplish.

Using the example from (4b), the problem is that the illustrated feature is 
found in .xls documents.  

 1. The feature works in Excel and is presented by AOO Calc as expected on 
import of the .xls.  The feature can be applied in AOO Calc by an user with an 
opened .xls, .ods, or brand new document.  

 2. The feature can be preserved on saving to a .xls document but it cannot be 
preserved in OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) document.  Instead, saving to .ods 
*silently* alters the document to a form that is acceptable in the OpenDocument 
Spreadsheet format.

 3. Note that on saving to .xls, the rubber-stamp warning about possible loss 
of features occurs, but in this case the feature is not lost.  There is no such 
warning when the feature in its unsupported form is transformed and saved as an 
.ods file.

D. ALTERNATIVES

These are not proposals.  They are just to illustrate the complexity of the 
policy question.

 1. In the specific case of the (4b) example, it is pretty clear that the 
feature adjustment happens during Save and there is no good way to know, before 
Save starts, that such a condition will arise without prior detection.  We 
would then be faced with warning an user, either prior to or after the save, 
that a feature was not preserved and saving as an .xls should be done to retain 
it.  If we instead did a reload so that the altered form can be seen, the 
original will be lost from the still-open document.  (Note that there is 
nothing to be done if the save happens as part of a shut-down of AOO or even 
the computer.)

 2. Another approach is to restrict features to those that are preserved in ODF 
formats by AOO and to not allow their exercise otherwise. This means that the 
formatting done in the example of situation (4b) would not be allowed.  It also 
means that, on import of an Office document where features are not preserved, 
the user be warned that has happened.

 3. There is a middle case.  If a feature such as that of (4b) is preserved on 
round-trips from an AOO non-native format (such as .xls) but not OpenDocument, 
there could be a warning on opening of such a non-native format when there are 
features of the document that are only preserved if the document is only saved 
back to the same format.  (Those should be documented somewhere, of course.)  
If the feature is not supported at all, alternative (2) here could apply.  
  Warning could also pop-up when an user relies on such a feature in an edit, 
if not already warned.  If the document is saved to AOO-native OpenDocument 
format, then alternative (1) above could kick in.  Since more is known, in this 
case, the warning in (1) could happen before the save is carried out, just as 
there are (unfortunately rubber-stamp) warnings on saves to non-native formats.

E. IMPLEMENTATION

Except for doing nothing or rejecting documents in some heavy-handed way, any 
improvements in this area will likely have to be gradual and will all depend on 
our 

RE: Extension website: older URL give wrong CSS

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

FR web forum,

I see the same (English) page when going to either of 

 

and 

 .

I am using Internet Explorer 11 from Windows 10 Pro.

Was this a temporary problem?

What details are different for you?  Is it about internationalization?

 - Dennis



> -Original Message-
> From: FR web forum [mailto:ooofo...@free.fr]
> Sent: Sunday, February 7, 2016 06:24
> To: dev@openoffice.apache.org
> Subject: Extension website: older URL give wrong CSS
> 
> By example see:
> http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/
> This kind of URL is still indexed by search engines.
> 
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HELP WANTED! (RE: [MENTORING?] Guiding volunteers)

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

There has been some useful mechanical assistance toward guiding volunteers to 
projects.

There is an experimental, alpha-level proof-of-concept "help-wanted" operation. 
 It seems very encouraging and if AOO participates with it, that could be very 
useful (and worthy of blog and social-media posts at the time).

Here is my summary:

 1. Interested volunteers looking for projects to contribute to will be 
directed to 
.  (IMPORTANT: This is a sample, not "real" 
data.)
   Try clicking "Community Outreach", then check English and click "Find me 
something to do!".
You will see a typical list of projects, title of projects, and other 
information.
   Clicking on an entry expands the information and offers another button: "I 
am interested in this."  This will provide more information and direct you to 
the project in some manner.

 2. ASF Committers can add tasks to the system by clicking [Edit tasks] on the 
top Help Wanted page.  This brings up a form that can be used to identify the 
project, the type of task, a title for the task, any language (programming or 
human) required, level of difficulty, a URL for more information, an indicator 
if this is expected to be collaborative (as opposed to solo) work, and a 
description to include in the help-wanted entry.

 3. Apache Projects can promote this arrangement in two ways.  
   a. There is a widget,
< https://helpwanted.apache.org/wtest.html> that can be customized to list, on 
a web page, just the current help wanted items for a specified project (e.g., 
openoffice).  When this system is live, this can be put on the "I want to 
contribute" page or other places on web sites, wikis, and forums where the 
widget is usable.  (Don't believe the current sample of the HTML needed.)
   b. The widget does link back to the full list for someone who decides to see 
what else there is.  There can also be a link to the main help-wanted page as 
part of inviting contribution for those who might want to know more about 
Apache projects and generally what is available.
   c. If we put FAQ messages up on our mailing lists from time to time, as the 
project has done in the past, they could point to the global help-wanted and 
the page with the AOO help-wanted material, as well as provide guidance about a 
given list and the related services/activities (e.g., the QA list and QA use of 
the bugzilla).

This is all the work of Daniel Gruno (humbedooh) and the discussion is on dev@ 
community.apache.org.  Comments are welcome there.  Patricia Shanahan has 
already done so.

After looking around in this, I can imagine a ton of small to medium tasks that 
could be advertised and coordinated in this way.  

 - Dennis



> -Original Message-
> From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamil...@acm.org]
> Sent: Saturday, February 6, 2016 10:21
> To: 'dev@openoffice.apache.org' 
> Subject: [MENTORING?] Guiding volunteers
> 
> It is now time that folks start looking at right-sized projects that
> could be mentored and made available to students participating in Google
> Summer of Code (GSoC).
> 
> There is also a discussion, as part of community development, on
> mentoring generally and finding ways to make opportunities for
> volunteers widely-known, since many inquisitive beginners do not know
> about individual projects and how to find out what project opportunities
> for mentoring newcomers in various projects might be.  That may also
> give rise to generic support for what it means to be working on an
> Apache project and what to expect.
> 
> It would be useful to find a way to guide eager volunteers to an
> available AOO mentoring, GSoC-related or not.
> 
> For that, we need a way to mark tasks in the bugzilla for which there is
> mentoring available for interested volunteers.  (We also need the
> capacity to do this.)
> 
> Then there might need a way to cross-couple with what may be a community
> entry-point where volunteers who don't have a project in mind can find
> opportunities in Apache projects, including AOO if we choose to visibly
> offer something.
> 
>  ??? Thoughts ???
> 
>  - Dennis
> 
> PS: Although GSoC is all about coding projects, there is no reason to
> limit ourselves generally.  There are many other volunteer-ready areas
> of AOO, including documentation, QA, internationalization, and various
> user-focused activities (e.g., mailing lists, forums, etc.).
> 
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Ross Gardler [mailto:ross.gard...@microsoft.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, February 4, 2016 23:23
> > To: d...@community.apache.org
> > Subject: RE: Guiding volunteers
> >
> [ ... ]
> > 2) Pick your favourite project. Drop a mail to the dev list. Explain
> > your motivation. Ask them to mark issues according to the guidelines
> in
> > http://community.apache.org/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html
> >
> > 3) Get the message out to those who need a little guidance that they
> can
> > find such issues in JIRA 

Re: svn commit: r1728955 - in /openoffice/trunk/ext_sources: 2e482c7567908d334785ce7d69ddfff7-commons-codec-1.6-src.tar.gz 3c219630e4302863a9a83d0efde889db-commons-logging-1.1.1-src.tar.gz 625ff5f2f96

[Jochen Nitschke]

On Sun, 7 Feb 2016 10:37:11 -0800 Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
> Will this make any earlier AOO source releases unbuildable from the 
> distributed source archive?
The files are still in the repository, checkout earlier versions.

This saves us some bandwidth and source package size, good catch.

The only place where you shouldn't remove packages is ooo-extra on
sourceforge.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/oooextras.mirror/files/
 
>  - Dennis (realizing that this may open up a larger question about 
> repeatability of older source releases)
>
> PS: Hmm, if we undertake changing the build system, there may need to be some 
> work to preserve repeatability of older source releases too.  Hmm 
>



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

RE: svn commit: r1728955 - in /openoffice/trunk/ext_sources: 2e482c7567908d334785ce7d69ddfff7-commons-codec-1.6-src.tar.gz 3c219630e4302863a9a83d0efde889db-commons-logging-1.1.1-src.tar.gz 625ff5f2f96

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

Will this make any earlier AOO source releases unbuildable from the distributed 
source archive?

 - Dennis (realizing that this may open up a larger question about 
repeatability of older source releases)

PS: Hmm, if we undertake changing the build system, there may need to be some 
work to preserve repeatability of older source releases too.  Hmm 



> -Original Message-
> From: dam...@apache.org [mailto:dam...@apache.org]
> Sent: Sunday, February 7, 2016 04:52
> To: comm...@openoffice.apache.org
> Subject: svn commit: r1728955 - in /openoffice/trunk/ext_sources:
> 2e482c7567908d334785ce7d69ddfff7-commons-codec-1.6-src.tar.gz
> 3c219630e4302863a9a83d0efde889db-commons-logging-1.1.1-src.tar.gz
> 625ff5f2f968dd908bca43c9469d6e6b-commons-lang-2.4-src.tar.gz
> 
> Author: damjan
> Date: Sun Feb  7 12:52:12 2016
> New Revision: 1728955
> 
> URL: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?rev=1728955=rev
> Log:
> Delete old versions of Apache Commons JARs we no longer use
> from ext_sources.
> 
> Patch by: me
> 
> 
> Removed:
> openoffice/trunk/ext_sources/2e482c7567908d334785ce7d69ddfff7-
> commons-codec-1.6-src.tar.gz
> openoffice/trunk/ext_sources/3c219630e4302863a9a83d0efde889db-
> commons-logging-1.1.1-src.tar.gz
> openoffice/trunk/ext_sources/625ff5f2f968dd908bca43c9469d6e6b-
> commons-lang-2.4-src.tar.gz


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Re: [DISCUSS][POLICY?] Lost Features When Saving to ODF

[Patricia Shanahan]

On 2/7/2016 11:51 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
...

3. Note that on saving to .xls, the rubber-stamp warning about
possible loss of features occurs, but in this case the feature is not
lost.  There is no such warning when the feature in its unsupported
form is transformed and saved as an .ods file.

...

As an OpenOffice user, I find the rubber-stamp warning useless to the 
point of being annoying. I get it on the most vanilla text documents 
that do not, in practice, lose any features.


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