with neither joy nor saddness can we depart.
Apache OpenOffice
Thursday Mar 24, 2016
Apache OpenOffice Extensions and Templates New Sites
Since 2012 SourceForge has been distributing Apache OpenOffice downloads and actively maintaining both Apache OpenOffice Extensions and Templates sites. I wrote a couple of short blog posts about the changes that affect end- users. Extensions
that have not been updated in a while report the following message:
"Warning message This extension was not updated recently. It might not
work with latest versions of OpenOffice." See for example how looks like the old Oracle PDF Importer. Registered
users see an additional notice on unmaintained extensions that allows
them to contact the original author and apply for a co-maintainer role.
Co-maintainers can edit the extension description and create releases. Registration
emails and password related communications are now delivered in the
language chosen by the user. It worth to add that we are more than happy
to provide .po files to whoever is willing to help with translations.
If need will arise we'll consider the possibility to upload localization
files to the Apache Pootle server so that existing translation teams
can help and the site can be translated into more than the current three
languages (English, French, German). Recovering passwords has
been simplified to cover cases where users had difficulties in resetting
their passwords: users receive an email in their language with a simple
link to reset their password with no further steps. Sites have
been converted to use a more efficient anti-spam system that will
improve handling by extensions maintainers: the system will not trigger
anti-spam warnings and page unpublishing when the author modifies a
popular extension.
Changes users facing. The new extensions home has
a strong focus on the search box, a brand new logo, and an overall
redesigned look and feel, where all menu items have icons for better
readability.
The new templates home is similar to the Apache OpenOffice
Extensions site, with a similar redesigned look and feel and different
colors to highlight which application a given template can be applied
to.
The new administrative interface includes a navigation bar
at the top for Extensions’ authors that links to the most common
actions. We also improved the GUI, making it more intuitive for
uploading extensions.
Search has been completely redesigned too. It’s worth
mentioning that there are other changes sprinkled here and there,
including an alert for outdated extensions that provides an easy way to
contact the original author.
Posted at 05:46PM Mar 24, 2016
by galoppini in General |
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Sunday Dec 06, 2015
Apache OpenOffice at FOSDEM 2016: Submit your talk now
FOSDEM 16 will be held at the ULB Campus
Solbosch, Brussels (Belgium) on Saturday, January 30, and Sunday,
January 31, 2016. Open document editors are coming again to
FOSDEM with a shared devroom which gives every project in this area a
chance to present ODF related developments and innovations. The devroom
is jointly organized by Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice. We invite submission of talks for the Open Document Editors devroom, to be held on Saturday, January 30, from 10:30AM to 6:30PM. Length
of talks should be limited to 20 minutes, as we would like to have
questions after each presentation, and to fit as many presenters as
possible in the schedule. Exceptions must be explicitly requested and
justified. Technical talks (code, extensions, localization, QA,
tools and adoption related cases) about open document editors or the ODF
document format are welcome. Submissions must be done by the speakers using the Pentabarf system: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM16/While
filing your proposal, please provide the title of your talk, a short
abstract (one or two paragraphs), some information about yourself (name,
bio and photo, but please do remember that your profile might be
already stored at Pentabarf) and specify what topic (Apache OpenOffice,
LibreOffice, other ODF editors, ODF in general...) your talk is about. You do not need to create a new account if you already have one. If the password has been lost, you can easily recover it. Presenting at FOSDEM implies giving permission to be recorded. The recordings will be published under the CC-BY license. The deadline is Monday, December 7, 2015. Accepted speakers will be notified by December 15, 2015. You can send any questions to the devroom mailing list: open-document-devroom-AT-lists.fosdem-DOT-org
Posted at 12:05AM Dec 06, 2015
by pescetti in General |
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Wednesday Oct 28, 2015
Announcing Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2
28
October 2015 - The Apache OpenOffice project is pleased to announce the
immediate availability of OpenOffice 4.1.2. You can download it from the official website http://www.openoffice.org/download
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2 brings stability fixes, bug fixes and enhancements. All users of Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 or earlier are advised to upgrade.
Main improvements include:
- Bug fixes in Writer, Calc, Impress/Draw, Base.
- Better
WebDAV and file locking support: OpenOffice is now able to properly
interact with Microsoft Sharepoint. These enhancements were funded, and
contributed upstream, by the Emilia-Romagna regional administration
(Italy), where OpenOffice was adopted a few years ago.
- Redesign of the PDF export dialog for better usability on small laptop screens.
- Updates of underlying libraries, for better performance and increased security.
- Security vulnerability fixes, with details eventually disclosed at the security announcements page.
A complete list of the issues fixed in this release can be found at http://s.apache.org/9uI
For a complete list of available languages and language packs see: http://www.openoffice.org/download/
Details of new features and enhancements in this release are described in the Release Notes.
Those interested in the source code can download it at http://s.apache.org/Bsr.
You
are encouraged to subscribe to the Apache OpenOffice announcement
mailing list to receive important notifications such as product updates
and security patches. To subscribe you can send an email to: announce-subscribe-AT-openoffice.apache-DOT-org.
You can also follow the project on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
The
OpenOffice community dedicates version 4.1.2 to the memory of Ian
Lynch, a member of the OpenOffice Project Management Committee and a key
contributor to marketing and education efforts, who passed away earlier
this year.
Posted at 07:22PM Oct 28, 2015
by pescetti in General |
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Sunday Sep 27, 2015
Coming soon... Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2
A new OpenOffice update, version 4.1.2, has been in preparation for a
while. Born as a simple bugfix release, it became an occasion for some
deep restructuring in the project: several processes have now been
streamlined (and some are still in the works), new people are on board
and infrastructure has been improved.
Now the wait is almost over, and we are approaching the final
phases before the 4.1.2 release. But we still need help with some
non-development tasks, like QA and final preparations (press release,
release notes and their translation).
OpenOffice is driven exclusively by volunteers, and everyone is welcome to volunteer. See https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/AOO+4.1.2 for a list of opportunities and please contact our main development mailing list if interested.
Here's a quick summary of where we are at the moment.
Code and building
Most of the code changes for OpenOffice 4.1.2 have already been
integrated. Dozens of old and new developers contributed in recent
weeks.
For users, improvements are expected in stability (fixes in all
modules: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base), Microsoft interoperability
(Sharepoint) and documents import.
For developers, OpenOffice 4.1.2 is designed to be easier to build
on modern systems and on non-mainstream systems, thus respecting the
Apache OpenOffice mission of providing a solid codebase that people can
adapt and customize.
Quality Assurance
We welcome testers for bugfixes. If you can volunteer some time,
helping is easy: you will have to download one of our development
builds, you will receive a short list of bugs from our bug tracking
system and be asked to verify that they are fixed. It is especially
important for us to get coverage of all operating systems (so not only
Windows, but Mac OS X and Linux too) and all languages (a few bugs are
to be checked by native Chinese-Japanese-Korean speakers).
In order to help, please read http://openoffice.apache.org/orientation/intro-qa.html and contact our QA list as explained there.
Release preparation
We already have volunteers for the main tasks, such as updating the
website and preparing the Release Notes. But we could use more help, at
due time, for translations of Release Notes and press releases. Please
contact our main development mailing list if interested.
Posted at 02:17PM Sep 27, 2015
by pescetti in General |
|
Wednesday May 13, 2015
Authoring e-Books in Apache OpenOffice: An Interview with Jon Swords-Holdsworth
A
few months ago we received an email from Jon Swords-Holdsworth, an
author of "slipstream and hard science fiction" from Melbourne,
Australia. He was finishing up a new volume of short stories, Stories of an Awkward Size and was seeking permission to mention Apache OpenOffice
in the book's colophon. Since I know the topic of e-book production is
of interest to many OpenOffice users, I asked Jon if he'd consent to an
interview (via email) on this topic, to which he agreed. I certainly
learned a lot from Jon about what is involved in using OpenOffice and
other open source tools together to produce an e-book. I hope you do as
well!
Rob: Hi Jon, I read a little bit, to get a feel for your writing. I couldn't put down "Black Prince" once I started.
Jon:
Ah that's fantastic! A lot of people seem to *love* that story (if I
may be so bold). The others seem to be getting very good responses, but
Black Prince is the one that makes 'em jump up and down.
Rob:
A little about the book, before we get started on the technical side.
You describe the book as "Slipstream and Hard Science Fiction". Even
as a casual science fiction reader I've heard of hard science fiction
before, but what is
"slipstream"?
Jon: This bears some discussion. I am going to write a small piece on it up on my GoodReads blog,
but I don't know when, so please take the below as my views.
'Slipstream' is a neologism and may be regarded as somewhat dubious, but
it is getting used more and more. A number of authors identify
themselves as Slipstream authors, and it is starting to appear as a
genre/category on book listing sites.
I personally - and I'm not alone - see Roald Dahl
as the grandfather of Slipstream, particularly with regard to his
'Tales Of The Unexpected' works. The 'unexpected', is most important in
Slipstream.
Slipstream, at least as I see it, is the modern approach to the
Mystery/Macabre genre. But, being modern, it has some important
differences. It tries to be subtle, usually, and avoid things being
'epic'. No giant conspiracies, no huge space-faring or mine-dwelling
empires, poised to take over the world or anything like that. Instead,
it often concentrates on the everyday, and things becoming very strange,
or out of place. Of course it can be backed-up by anything you like:
science fiction, fantasy, deviant psychology, whatever you want.
In traditional, ye-olde, Mystery fiction, the mystery is all-important
and the characters and atmosphere are fleshed out as a by-product, if
indeed they get fleshed out at all. The same is true of older Detective
or Thriller fiction.
With Slipstream, the entire package, taken holistically, is the genre. A
strange atmosphere is brewed - and not necessarily a dread one! - as
the story unfolds, and the story usually happens in the most mundane of
settings.
An external example: the excellent film Nightcrawler,
with Jake Gyllenhaal, is something I strongly regard as Slipstream.
Though it is a thriller, it concerns itself purely with news crews
trawling a city for events, and no further! Though it is a psychological
character-study, it achieves all its aims by demonstration, not by
dwelling or by inner monologues! And though it is just a series of
events (which don't start to shock you until later in the piece), by the
careful unfolding of those events it manages to have atmosphere you can
cut with a knife.
Several people commented that my story 'Black Prince' is, strictly
speaking, a Slipstream tale, even though it is rooted in hard-SF. I'd
like to think that is not only true, but true of all my stories, and
hence the sub-title of my book.
Rob: Is this your first published book?
Jon: It is indeed.
Rob: OK. Let's get into the nitty-gritty details of what tools you used for creating the book. First, what OS do you work with?
Jon:
Ubuntu. I started off on an ancient 11.04 install, but eventually it
couldn't support the late versions of applications that I needed. I
therefore decided to upgrade to 14.4.02 LTS (Long Term Support). Unless
you are a dabbler, I would recommend only using LTS versions of Ubuntu.
Rob:
Did you start off your work in Apache OpenOffice, or did you use
something else for research notes, idea sketching, outlining, etc?
Jon: I use KWrite for
taking notes, and keeping notes about stories. But eventually
everything lands on the launchpad of Apache OpenOffice (Writer).
Rob: Did you use the default named styles in OpenOffice or did you modify them?
Jon: Unfortunately, the default named styles in OpenOffice weren't of any use. I had to make my own templates with my own styles.
Rob: What kind of modifications did you make and why?
Jon:
The reason for this is that manuscript-publication has very strict
requirements, and there is almost no leeway: they must conform or else!
What I did was take some MSWord Templates published (unconditionally) by
Amazon CreateSpace, and
transform them to OpenOffice Templates. This took a lot of
experimentation.
Along the way I settled on the 6" x 9" page-size, or "Trim", as all
publishers recommend it as being the most flexible. You can get from a
6"x9" Trim to almost any other format quite easily, and many processes
and printers out there in the world are already set up for it.
My OpenOffice template for 6"x9" Trim, for use on CreateSpace (it could
be used for any publisher, really) is freely available (with no
restrictions) at: http://jonswordsholdsworth.com/templates/openoffice/
All the styles in that template that have names that begin with "CSP - "
are the ones to use.
DISCLAIMER: if it doesn't work for you or does something bad - so sorry
but it's not my responsibility - it's your responsibility, for
downloading it!
I'll put some detailed instructions up at some point, but basically if
(in Page Styles) you set the first page to "CSP - Chapter Verso", then
start typing on the second page, it all starts to become obvious.
You need to read up on and understand the page concepts of Verso and Recto
- this is very important, particularly in paper versions of a book.
I have several Page styles defined in my template (as opposed to
Paragraph styles, which my template also defines). Verso should always
be blank, with no content in it, and your First Page should start a
chapter.
There is too much detail to describe here, but if you read up on the
necessary styles required in a book - particularly a work of fiction -
it will all start to make sense. Then you can look in my OTT template
and you'll see where I have defined the appropriate styles for you to
use. You are, of course, free to modify them in any way you like. But do
bear in mind that you still need to conform to CreateSpace's
requirements (in this case for a book in 6"x9" Trim), which the Page
styles are particularly relevant to, and you will still need the
Paragraph styles looking good for eBook publication.
Note one other thing: I live in Australia and abhor Imperial units of
measurement, but unfortunately the world of printing and publishing is
still firmly using them. You need to set OpenOffice - at least Writer -
to use inches for everything. It will save you much pain!
Rob: While working on the book did you come across any features in OpenOffice that were new to you and which made your work easier?
Jon:
The ability to have, and edit, per-document dictionaries was very
useful! And the fact you can have them in parallel with the standard
dictionary.
Another thing was OpenOffice's memory management, it's rather good.
I edited this book as individual chapters, initially - I highly
recommend doing this, even if you are writing a Novel. Keeping the
chapters separate gives you a lot more flexibility.
However, when it came time to merge them - something I was dreading - it
actually went very smoothly. The Page Styles adapted more or less
automatically, and where they needed some nudging they obligingly
nudged. But most importantly of all the program itself effortlessly
handled a 322 page document.
I've heard that most commercial word-processors (OpenOffice Writer is
regarded as closer to a true DTP system), really struggle with large
documents.
Also I made use of two external tools:
LanguageTool -- This tool has a few issues,
and either the Java engine or the search-base or both, make it very
slow. It's a case of set it doing something, walk away, come back, set
it on the next thing, rinse repeat.
Nevertheless,
it spotted the odd thing here and there made it 'pay' for itself (it's a
free tool!) - things I wouldn't have seen. In the absence of human
proof-readers (well, I only have a limited population of them, and as
they are unpaid they tire of the work quickly - fair enough too!) tools
like this are priceless, provided they work.
Writer2xhtml
-- Another free tool, part of the Writer2latex suite. I used its
Writer2epub sub-tool. Suffice it to say, the eBook would not have
happened without this tool.
Rob: What features do you wish OpenOffice had that would have made your work easier?
Jon:
A built-in grammar checker that was fast would be lovely. Also I
don't like the Navigator tool. Actually, that's not entirely true. It's a
very useful tool indeed, but some of its features should be one
key-combination away. Eg. if I type ctrl-G I want a 'Go To Page' window
to come up! Otherwise, OpenOffice Writer is quite a nice environment
to write a book in.
Rob: I understand you did the hard copy of the book first. What did the pipeline for that look like? ODT->PDF?
Jon: OpenOffice Writer, and then use the internal Export To PDF
function. Despite some naysayers out there on the web, the internal PDF
exporter works fine and produces a beautiful PDF that perfectly mirrors
the ODT. Just make sure you have your Author details set in the
Settings of OpenOffice (it's a general setting), and make sure the
document has a Title set - these are used by the exporter to build the
PDF's own metadata.
Rob: For the e-book edition, what formats did you target?
Jon: There are only two - EPUB (all eReaders except proprietary
ones), and MOBI (Amazon Kindle. This format is being replaced by KF8 and
AZW, but like all proprietary formats it has inevitably started running
into marketplace and technical issues).
Rob: What did the pipe-line look like for conversion to e-book?
Jon: I was able to use FOSS software all the way up to and
including EPUB.
For MOBI I had to use a different machine (running the 'dreaded 8') and
Amazon's own closed-source 'Kindle Previewer' tool (important note:
'Kindle Previewer' is a different tool to 'Kindle For PC' - this tripped
a lot of people up). But that tool did an excellent conversion.
To get to EPUB from ODT I used the Writer2epub tool, mentioned above.
The EPUB that it produces is nearly perfect, but I still had to do a few
tweaks to it - the full details are out of scope for this interview,
but I promise I will put them up on my blog. The tool I used for
tweaking the EPUB was Sigil, which
is an excellent tool.
EPUB is basically an on-disc website, in a particular
directory-hierarchy, wrapped up in a ZIP file. So to edit one you need
to be familiar with XHTML and CSS Styles. That's a big ask for a lot of
authors! I am lucky in that I have a deep software-development
background, including a good chunk of website building, so I knew what I
was doing. For anyone else, I have to say the forums are the place to
look.
Side note: Forget about Calibre. Calibre is an excellent eBook library
tool, but it's EPUB editor is an added-on afterthought. It can't do the
job. Sigil, on the other hand, is a dedicated EPUB editor and makes
things very easy.
Big note - and apparently ALL word-processors that use XML based formats
suffer from this: extraneous <span> elements in the text.
If you look at the XHTML that is produced by exporting your ODT to EPUB,
you will notice something odd. All through the text, you will find
blocks of text that are wrapped in <span> tags, and these
<span> tags usually have their own font-definitions and other
style information. They can also be nested inside one another.
Nobody know what causes these! And all XML-format word-processors have
this issue! It's not unique to OpenOffice Writer.
When you are looking at, and editing, your ODT in Writer, these
<span>s are not a problem - because inside Writer it uses absolute
font-sizes.
However, to create a proper EPUB, you need to export with relative
font-sizes. This means that <span>s that are nested inside one
another, each with different font-size information, will start
doubling-up or tripling-up font-sizes! For example, an outer
<span> specifies a font-size of 83% (a relative font-size). Nested
inside that <span> somewhere is another <span> and it too
specifies a font-size of 83%. That inner span, will actually have a
font-size that is 83% of 83%, or about 70%. This causes the font-size to
wander up and down, all over the document.
It's also subtle. I was looking at an export of my EPUB onto a Kobo Glo,
and couldn't work out why some of the pages looked terrible. It was
difficult to put my finger on. Eventually, by a lot of visual
comparison, I realised that the font-size was jumping randomly all over
the page.
To fix it, you need to come to grips with regex expressions and how to
use them in Sigil (or your EPUB editor of choice). Sigil's regex support
is rather good. These allow you to globally search-and-replace these
annoying <span>s, or at least their style information. After doing
this my EPUB was perfect (or as close to as I could see, anyway).
Rob: What did you use for designing your book cover?
Jon: I used Inkscape to do
the layout, blocking and writing, and I used The Gimp to process the
photograph.
The final export to PNG, at 300 DPI, was from Inkscape.
I would advise that if you are going for PoD - Print on Demand - ie.
paperback, as I did first, then be careful with cover-art. Smooth
things. Up the chroma, and up the contrast. Even to the point where it
starts to look a little 'cartoony'.
The reason is that PoD processes, whilst they are 'good', are not
'great', and suck a lot of the life out of complex pictures and make
them look a little grainy too. If the input image already has vibrancy
to spare, it will survive better.
Another thing - temporarily reduce it to the size of a postage stamp and
look at it. This is how it will look on Amazon's book listings and
other publishers' book listings. Think about how you want it to stand
out (or blend in, depending on how you operate).
Rob: Any other tips for readers of our blog who might want to start writing their own e-book with OpenOffice?
Jon:
- Ignore
the naysayers, OpenOffice is one of the best environments around for
writing professionally. I have not tried the 'Scribus' program, but as
far as I can tell it and OpenOffice Writer are the only games in town,
unless you want to spend a lot of money.
- Strongly
recommend either use my template, or one from some other author you
trust - or by the time we finish speaking it is possible that
CreateSpace has got with the times and started publishing OpenOffice
Templates to use with their site.
- Get
to understand Styles properly! You need to be using Styles, and that's
why I recommend getting a template which has useful ones already
built-in. It
is painful going back and trying to fix a document that was created
without using Styles (e.g. indents were done with tabs, titles are
hand-bolded and have arbitrary definitions, etc). It
is not hard to understand Styles - it is often made out to be a
complex, mystical process, but really they are quite simple things and
quite easy to get to grips with.
- Make
sure your OS is up to date: trying to get older versions of apps to do
things is not recommended, and they often won’t install under older
environments.
- Make sure your OpenOffice environment is configured:
- Set
the date, your author name, set the units to Imperial and inches (yes,
yes, I know), set the directory where it is picking up Templates from.
- SET YOUR OS'S JAVA RUNTIME UP PROPERLY!
- Make sure you set your dictionary and other languages to your native language (e.g. everything on mine is English(AU)).
- Turn
Smart Quotes ON! This is very important - your conversations in your
documents should have proper opening and closing quotes, not 'straight'
quotes unless there is a requirement that they be so.
Rob: Where can readers find your book?
Jon: Stories Of an Awkward Size (A Slipstream and Hard-SF Anthology) is currently available on Amazon, as Paperback and Kindle (It will also be available on iBook and other places, though currently I can't put a firm date on when.)
Posted at 11:51AM May 13, 2015
by robweir in Writer |
|
Monday Apr 13, 2015
Collaboration is in our DNA
Apache OpenOffice is living in interesting
times, and this is a good moment to reflect on future scenarios.
The
old OpenOffice.org project spawned numerous derivative products and we
are proud to see how the OpenOffice ecosystem, taken as a whole, has
grown so far.
Apache OpenOffice is distributed under a license
(the Apache 2 license) that by design permits anyone to reuse the code
and create derivative products almost under any license, ranging from
copyleft to proprietary. The Apache Software Foundation has been really
successful in creating and nurturing open source communities leveraging
code distributed under the Apache License, and we aim to be one of those
successes.
When considering collaboration between a project and
its derivatives one important aspect is how and if upstream changes are
submitted to the original project. Basically, permissive licenses like
the Apache License are forward-compatible with nearly any other kind of
license, but backward-compatible only with other permissive licenses.
We
are really glad to be able to provide other open source projects as
well as proprietary products with a rock solid platform to build on top
of. Projects like AndrOpen Office, LibreOffice, NeoOffice, Ooo4Kids and others
are all benefiting from our work, and we’d love to be able to keep
releasing new versions at a steady pace and make all of this possible. We
fully understand that some of these projects rely on their
customizations as an “added value”, but it is also true that
collaborating with the main OpenOffice project - if the partnership is
limited to working on the common functionality - would be a win-win,
since needs are basically identical. Considering that OpenOffice
is currently in the need to expand the number of its developers, we
believe that seeing our release cycle slow down would damage the whole
OpenOffice ecosystem. We want to continue serving all those
different communities, and to do that we need your help. We invite all
the most relevant OpenOffice derivative products and their communities
or vendors to join us in discussing further ideas for collaboration and
improvements. For example, we could organize what would be the first
"OpenOffice Ecosystem Meetup", but we are open to explore all options.
Posted at 10:24PM Apr 13, 2015
by pescetti in General |
|
Wednesday Dec 31, 2014
Apache OpenOffice in 2014: a year in review
2014 has been an exciting year for the OpenOffice project and community. Click on the picture below to start a slideshow with highlights from 2014. A text-only version is under the picture. 
- January: The Apache OpenOffice community starts the year by adding new localizations.
OpenOffice
supports 120+ languages, but only those that are 100% translated and
maintained are officially released.The 100% complete localizations in
2014 doubled the ones from 2012.
OpenOffice also participated, as usual, in the initiatives for UNESCO's International Mother Language Day in February.
- February: OpenOffice comes back to FOSDEM, one of the
most popular Free and Open Source Conferences in Europe, with a devroom
and a dedicated stand.
For the first year, the devroom is open to all ODF Editors.
- March: the Apache OpenOffice community prepares for ApacheCon Denver (7-11 April) by designing a dedicated track.
Selected
topics include: work toward a new translation workflow and a new build
system, Open Source marketing and security testing.
- April: Apache OpenOffice 4.1.0 is released, with much
improved accessibility, support for comments on text ranges, a new
interface for editing input fields and many improvements in handling of
graphics.
Hundreds of community members participate in testing, with dedicated tests by accessibility experts.
The code, distributed under the Apache License 2.0, is promptly reused by other projects.
- May: Apache OpenOffice downloads hit the 100 million mark in less than 2 years.
By the end of 2014, downloads are more than 130 millions, from virtually all countries and territories in the world.
- June: A new initiative allows to quickly and easily
localize the OpenOffice website. New translations like Lithuanian and
Hebrew are published and updated.
Website translations are made more visibile using a language dropdown and browser-based language negotiation.
- July: The social media presence of Apache OpenOffice grows.
The Facebook fan page at https://facebook.com/ApacheOO grows more than 30% from 2013, to 13,000 fans.
The
official Twitter account at https://twitter.com/apacheoo has more than
3,500 followers, with a 75% increase over the previous year.
- August: Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 is released, with several
important bugfixes, full support for three additional languages,
security improvements and support for gestures under Mac OS X.
- September: The Apache OpenOffice Forum and Wiki receive
hardware upgrades by the Apache Infra team to be able to sustain the
ever-growing traffic.
The official forum at
https://forum.openoffice.org is the most used channel for user support,
averaging over 100 posts per day and accumulating 320,000 posts about
Apache OpenOffice and all derivatives.
- October: A community survey is launched to understand how
we can better exploit the potential of our several hundreds
contributors. Results will set the priorities for community development
in future.
The user community continues to grow thanks to increased
adoption, with Udine (Italy) joining the long list of public
administrations that migrated to OpenOffice.
- November: Apache OpenOffice has a strong presence at
ApacheCon Europe, held in Budapest. A dedicated track is the occasion to
reason about upcoming developments, our community, migration,
integration with mobile technologies and web projects.
- December: Thanks to the work of Apache Infra and
investments from the Apache Foundation, Apache OpenOffice has technology
available to sign its releases in a way compatible with Windows
security settings, thus allowing also non-technical users to immediately
verify that they downloaded the genuine version of OpenOffice and
confirming the continued commitment from Apache and OpenOffice to
protect users.
The new digital signing will be available in the next OpenOffice releases.
Have a nice 2015!
Posted at 06:50PM Dec 31, 2014
by pescetti in General |
|
Wednesday Dec 24, 2014
Presentations and videos from ApacheCon EU 2014, Budapest
It's already two years since OpenOffice graduated as a
Top Level Project at Apache. We have more than 100 million downloads
and a stable, working community at Apache. In an overall "state of the
project" talk, we will see what we accomplished so far, what worked,
what can be improved... Full Description - Slides
At the Denver ApacheCon last April, I presented on
the evolution of OpenOffice, and the need for a good quality, compatible
solution for mobile devices. Participants suggested establishing a project in Apache Labs to address this problem... Full Description - Video - Slides
Developing code within the huge, and sometimes
daunting, Apache OpenOffice code can sometimes be very difficult,
specially if you only want to add a very specific piece of code that few
people want. As part of an ongoing effort to improve the Operation
Research capabilities within Apache OpenOffice, I will try to document
the different parts of an Apache OpenOffice extension... Full Description - Slides
Apache OpenOffice (AOO) defines a scripting framework
that can be exploited to add any programming language to Apache
OpenOffice as a macro language. This presentation introduces the
necessary overview and knowhow to become able to assess the effort to
add your own favorite programming language to AOO... Full Description - Slides
The sun never sets on the OpenOffice localization
community. Volunteers from all continents help translating OpenOffice,
its documentation and its website into dozens of languages... Full Description - Slides
A well-known XKCD comic parodies the industry's solution to standards
proliferation: a new, "universal" standard to replace all its
predecessors. We all know where that leads. In this talk, I'll discuss
an alternate approach that deals with the mess without creating more of
it, in the context of word processing... Full Description - Video - Slides
In 2013 the Municipality of Trieste (Italy) decided
to migrate to Apache OpenOffice. The main goal was to adopt ODF as the
document standard format for all the 1800 users on about 1550 PCs... Full Description - Slides
The OpenDocument format (ODF) consists of compressed XML
files. ODF is read and written by many Office applications; the Apache
ODF Toolkit (incubating) provides the ability of an easy automated
access... Full Description - Slides
Posted at 10:08PM Dec 24, 2014
by pescetti in General |
|
Monday Nov 03, 2014
Call for talks: Open Document Editors Devroom at FOSDEM 15
FOSDEM 15 will be held at the ULB Campus Solbosch on Saturday, January
31, and Sunday, February 1st, 2015.
Open document editors are coming again to FOSDEM with a shared
devroom which gives every project in this area a chance to present ODF
related
developments and innovations. The devroom is jointly organized by Apache
OpenOffice and LibreOffice.
We invite submission of talks for the Open Document Editors devroom, to
be held on Saturday, January 31, from 10AM to 6PM.
Length of talks should be limited to 20 minutes, as we would like to
have questions after each presentation, and to fit as many presenters as
possible in the schedule. Exceptions must be explicitly requested and
justified.
Technical talks (code, extensions, localization, QA, tools and adoption
related cases) about open document editors or the ODF document format
are welcome.
Submissions must be done by the speakers using the Pentabarf system:
https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM15 While filing your proposal, please provide the title of your talk, a
short abstract (one or two paragraphs), some information about yourself
(name, bio and photo, but please do remember that your profile might be
already stored at Pentabarf) and specify what topic (Apache OpenOffice,
LibreOffice, other ODF editors, ODF in general...) your talk is about.
You do not need to create a new account if you already have one. If the
password has been lost, you can easily recover it.
The deadline is Sunday, December 14, 2014. Accepted speakers will be
notified by December 28, 2014.
You can send any questions to the devroom mailing list:
open-document-devroom-AT-lists.fosdem-DOT-org
Posted at 10:23PM Nov 03, 2014
by pescetti in General |
|
Saturday Aug 23, 2014
Announcing Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1
21 August 2014 - The Apache
OpenOffice project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of
OpenOffice 4.1.1. You can download it from our website.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 is a micro update with many useful and critical
bugfixes including 2 security relevant fixes (details will come
separately).
Bugfixes include:
- better compatibility with Microsoft Office files,
- better support for Mac OS X gestures and scrolling,
- enhanced compatibility with Linux desktop environments.
A full list of the issues fixed in this release can be found at http://s.apache.org/AOO411-solved.
With 3 additional supported languages, OpenOffice 4.1.1 increases
again the number of released languages which is now 41. The released
languages are Asturian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Calalan (Valencia AVL),
Catalan (Valencia RACV), Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English (GB +
US), Spanish, Basque, Finnish, French, Scots Gaelic, Galician, Hebrew,
Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Lithuanian,
Norwegian Bokmal, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese Brazil, Russian,
Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian Cyrillic, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish,
Vietnamese, Chinese (Simplified + Traditional).
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 is the next key milestone to continue the success of OpenOffice.
Details of new features and enhancements in this release are described in the Release Notes.
Those interested in the source code can download it via the links on this page.
Juergen Schmidt - Apache OpenOffice Release Manager and member of the
Project Management Committee
Posted at 08:00AM Aug 23, 2014
by pescetti in General |
|
Saturday Jul 05, 2014
Presentations and videos from FOSDEM 2014
   
Presentations and videos from the Open Document Editors Devroom at FOSDEM 2014 are now available.
The OpenOffice presence at the event was strong and well-received,
with a number of interesting talks and many visits at the booth. And the
devroom was a nice way to get together with other projects focused on
the ODF format.
Make sure you don't miss the following talks about improvements that are coming (or already came!) to OpenOffice:
The full list of talks from the Open Document Editors devroom is available as well. Most have a presentation attached.
Posted at 11:44AM Jul 05, 2014
by pescetti in General |
|
Monday May 05, 2014
Apache OpenOffice Weekly News #3
Translations: ( de)
Major Discussions
Juergen, our Release Manager, announced the release of Apache OpenOffice 4.1.
The winPenPack team updated their portable version, x-ApacheOpenOffice 4.1.
Marcello has updated the unofficial Debian repository for Apache OpenOffice. It now " provides the version 4.1 of Apache OpenOffice with all available languages."
OpenOffice in the News
" The Apache OpenOffice project announce the release of Apache OpenOffice 4.1" in the official Apache OpenOffice Blog.
"Improvements to graphics, charts, forms, text annotations and
accessibility feature in this 23rd release of the 14-year old
community-run open source project."
" Apache OpenOffice 4.1 improves support for visually impaired users" is the headline of an article by Nick Peers in PC & Tech Authority (Australia).
" Apache OpenOffice – Why 100 Million Downloads Matter" by Kramer Reeves in Social Biz User Group.
" Updated OpenOffice 'good news for administrations'" by Gijs Hellenius on the European Commission's JoinUp website.
"Apache OpenOffice for Mac" a new review (4 1/2 stars) on CNet Download.com by Ben Markton. "Bottom Line: Apache OpenOffice is a very good free, accessible alternative to expensive
office software. It is loaded with tools; downloads and installs
quickly; and handles all the basic functions you could need from an
office suite."
More from ApacheCon
" Apache OpenOffice by the Numbers" is a reprise of the Lightning Talk by Andrew Rist and Rob Weir at ApacheCon in Denver.
Use Cases, Questions and Answers
We
received another report on the users mailing list from someone who had
downloaded what he thought was OpenOffice, but instead got a bunch of
malware. That wasn't us, obviously. Apache OpenOffice does not bundle
any other programs in its package. Absolutely none. Our downloads are
carefully scanned for viruses and are accompanied by digital signatures
and cryptographic hashes to allow users to verify their integrity. However,
there are third parties that sometimes take OpenOffice and bundle it
with objectionable and intrusive applications. In some cases they put
up fake websites, or purchase advertisements in search engine search
results, to lure people to their website. It is unfortunate that
such sites often come top of the hit list on search engines;
inexperienced users download from them and their computers become
infected with adware/viruses/trojans. When we know the exact URL of any
such sites we do our best to have these removed or flagged, but it is an
uphill battle. We recommend to download only from www.openoffice.org/download
which will redirect to SourceForge, whose secure content distribution
network we use. A download from there will usually start within five
seconds. Typically an OpenOffice download is about 145 MB; we do
not use downloader applications, so any site offering a much smaller
download should immediately be suspect. If in any doubt about a download
it is best to check its integrity using MD5Sum; details are given at http://www.openoffice.org/download/checksums.htmlOpenOffice is a complex and powerful software. If you have difficulties, our User Forums at https://forum.openoffice.org/ in several languages will do their best to help.
Three new translation teams have been established: Catalan,
Valencian AVL, Valencian RACV. If you want to help with these, or any
other translation, you can find more information on our website.
The
Project Management Committee (PMC) for Apache OpenOffice has asked Tal
Daniel to become a committer and we are pleased to announce that Tal has
accepted and taken the ID "tal".
Posted at 12:24PM May 05, 2014
by robweir in General |
|
Tuesday Apr 29, 2014
The Apache OpenOffice project announce the release of Apache OpenOffice 4.1
Improvements to graphics, charts, forms, text annotations and
accessibility feature in this 23rd release of the 14-year old
community-run open source project
29 April 2014– The Apache OpenOffice project, a Top Level Project (TLP) of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), announced today
the release of Apache OpenOffice 4.1, now available for free download from http://www.openoffice.org.
A highlight of this release is support for the IAccessible2 interface,
an open standard for communicating with assistive technologies, enabling
more effective use of OpenOffice by persons with visual impairments.
Other additions to OpenOffice 4.1 include in-place editing of text
fields, interactive crop on
transformed graphics, text selection annotations, support for 64-bit Mac
and translations for six new languages.
Apache OpenOffice is the leading open-source office software
suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics,
databases and more. Apache OpenOffice has been downloaded over 100 million times.
It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It
stores all your data in an international open standard format and can
also read and write files from other common office software packages. It
can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
"After a long wait, OpenOffice 4.1 is finally released!" said
Marlin Rodrigues from Brazil. Marlin is one of the early testers of
OpenOffice 4.1 as well as a translator of the NVDA screen reader into
Portuguese. "This release has great significance for blind people,
representing much more than a simple application update. This update
will bring long-awaited support for IAccessible2. This means that we
will finally have a free, accessible and quality office suite, without
relying on the infamous Java Access Bridge! I’ve tested the development
and beta versions, and it’s so good in several ways. Finally, we can
say that we have the a great office application, with full accessibility
and, even better, without hacking or paying a fortune for it!"
David Goldfield,
a Computer Technology Instructor who works with the blind, and who also
helped test OpenOffice 4.1, explained the significance of
IAccessible2: "Computer users who are blind use software packages known
as screen
readers, which allow the user not only to hear keys which are typed but
also to use the keyboard to read and review everything which is on the
screen. Before OpenOffice 4.1, a blind user could use OpenOffice only
if the
Java Access bridge was installed and enabled. In addition, the user had
to navigate to OpenOffice's accessibility options to ensure that the
built-in assistive technology support was enabled. For some users,
performing these tasks was a challenge. With the new IAccessible2 code,
OpenOffice should be accessible to screen readers right out-of-the-box,
right when the program starts. Blind users with a screen reader that
supports IAccessible2 will be able to
access documents, spreadsheets as well as items which are in the menus
and various dialog boxes without the need to manually enable
accessibility or
install any additional components."
Along with feature additions and enhancements, OpenOffice 4.1 includes six new
translations, including Bulgarian, Hebrew, Danish, Hindi, Norwegian Bokmål and Thai, as well as improvements to the existing
Basque, Dutch, German, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish and
Turkish translations.
These and many other enhancements are detailed in the
Release Notes.
Availability and Oversight
As with all Apache products, Apache OpenOffice is released under
the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a self-selected team of
active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC)
guides the Project's day-to-day operations, including community
development and product releases. To learn how to become
involved with Apache OpenOffice, visit http://openoffice.apache.org/get-involved.html.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1 can be downloaded from http://www.openoffice.org/download.
OpenOffice supports Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X and Linux, in 38
languages. Users are encouraged to consult the System Requirements
and Release Notes for additional details.
About Apache OpenOffice
"Apache" and "OpenOffice" are
trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation. All other brands and
trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Follow Apache OpenOffice on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
# # #
Posted at 11:23AM Apr 29, 2014
by robweir in General |
|
Monday Apr 28, 2014
Apache OpenOffice Weekly News #2
Translations: ( de)
Welcome
Welcome to the second edition of Apache OpenOffice Weekly News. We
welcome your feedback and contributions. You can respond with a
comment on this blog post, of course. You can also send an email to
our public mailing list: dev-AT-openoffice.apache-DOT-org.
Major Discussions
- Marcus has been looking at ways of improving the UI of the download page and has posted a prototype of some changes that make it easier to access different languages and OS versions.
- Juergen has started the vote to release AOO 4.1 RC4. If the vote passes, OpenOffice 4.1 will be released later this week.
OpenOffice in the News
Posted at 12:22PM Apr 28, 2014
by robweir in General |
|
Friday Apr 25, 2014
Apache OpenOffice Weekly News #1
Welcome
Translations: ( de)
Welcome to the first edition of Apache OpenOffice Weekly News.
We're experimenting with a new way to give the OpenOffice community a
look into the project and what we're doing week-to-week. We saw another
Apache project, CouchDB, do something similar, and liked their approach. So in the open source tradition, we're going to borrow their idea.
The exact format and timing of Apache OpenOffice Weekly News will
likely change as we gain more experience with it, and based on your
feedback.
Speaking of which, we welcome your feedback. You can respond with a
comment on this blog post, of course. You can also send an email to
our public mailing list: dev@openoffice.apache.org.
From ApacheCon
Major Discussions
OpenOffice websites at Apache clear of "heartbleed" issues.
What percentage of Linux downloads would you expect for Apache OpenOffice?
Proposal to drop tar.gz source code distribution and just do .bz2 for Linux users and .zip for Windows
OpenOffice in the News
" Four Months on, I'm still not using Office for Mac",
David Braue on ZDNet.com: "While I initially turned to OpenOffice as a
freely available alternative when I couldn't locate my Office for Mac
install disks, the reasons I've stayed with it revolve around
reliability and compatibility."
" Apache OpenOffice Extensions Site Gets Social!", Roberto Galoppini reports on some exciting updates from SourceForge to the OpenOffice Extensions and Templates website
" The Apache Software Foundation Announces 100 Million Downloads of Apache™ OpenOffice™", on the ASF's official blog.
" Apache OpenOffice hits major 100 million downloads milestone in under 2 years", in PC World. " Microsoft's
Office may be the go-to productivity suite in the business world, but
there's apparently plenty of room out there for challengers to thrive:
On Thursday, the Apache Software Foundation announced that the Apache
OpenOffice suite has been downloaded a whopping 100 million times."
Slashdot: Apache OpenOffice Reacher 100 Million Downloads. Now What?
Posted at 02:04PM Apr 25, 2014
by robweir in General |
|
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