Export the Feeds as an OPML file
New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m73) availableDeveloper Snapshot OOo-Dev DEV300_m73 is available for download. DEV300 is the development codeline for upcoming OOo 3.x releases. If you find issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Download: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: Netbeans plugin for editing VCLTesttool scriptsI have written a Netbeans plugin for editing test scripts for the VCLTesttool. Here is a screen shot showing Netbeans where the plugin is used. 
As you can see there is a result file viewer and the navigator to navigate in the script. The Spec to this plugin can be found at the openoffice.org wiki page. The plugin can be downloaded at kenai.com. 01/03/2010, source: GullFOSS New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m72) availableDeveloper Snapshot OOo-Dev DEV300_m72 is available for download. DEV300 is the development codeline for upcoming OOo 3.x releases. If you find issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Download: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: ODFDOM 0.8 - The new Release of the OpenDocument Java LibraryThe new version of ODFDOM - the OpenDocument Java library - has been released! Most people might know about ODFDOM, for the others: ODFDOM is an Apache 2 licensed Java library to easily create, access and manipulate the ODF documents. In biggest feature aside of a more than a dozen patches for ODFDOM 0.8 is the complete revised new ODF table API.
The design is stable now, but as often the devil is in the details. One of our greatest challenges is to find an agreement on an API. There are already some ODF libraries following different API approaches. Our idea is to find agreement with the others providing ODF users a unified ODF API, which is much more worth than the sum of all libraries. (Note: When I say unified API then I mean identical aside of the still desirable language specific differences (e.g. Java vs. Python), which follow a generic pattern and could be still bridged by automation). To archive a common API we had the idea to break down the complexity by splitting the API finding process in two steps:
Seems even API design is a test driven development. The creation of ODF test documents and test description might be addressed by the OASIS Open Document Format Interoperability and Conformance (OIC) TC and was already described on the TC list in more detail [1, 2, 3]. If there are any further question on ODFDOM, I would happy to answer them on one of our ODFDOM mailing lists. Svante Weekly Links #3Danish Open Source Vendors declares victory in open standards war The mood at this year’s general meeting was joyous. In late January 2010, OSL could declare victory in maybe the most important and hard fought battle that OSL has been part of since its formation. On 29 January 2010 the Danish Parliament (Folketinget) decided unanimously to place [...] 21/02/2010, source: Rob Weir: An Antic DispositionQUASTe now supports writing Test Case Specifications
Hi, [2]http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Quaste_TCS_Tool_Specification [3]report issues/features to: Component: qa Subcomponent: www Owner: es Start summary with "[QUASTe-TCS]"
OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 released todayOpenOffice.org 3.2.0 (build OOO320_m12) was released today. A lot of new features have found its way into the new version. Here are just a few of them:
Much more details can be found in the New Features documentation and in the technical Release Notes. See here for the full press release. And now go and get the latest and greatest on the download website. Have fun with the new great stuff. Extension deployment
Currently, extensions programmers have no access to the deployment process of an extension. With CWS tkr35 the new interface XDeploymentHooks was introduced. An extension programmer may uses this interface to get a notification and execute custom code during the deployment and undeployment process. To activate the deployment hooks simple add the
<deploymentHook>-Tag to your description.xml. The tag contains
the service name of the XDeploymentHooks implementation. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> For more information see wiki. Weekly Links #1Advogato: Proprietary File Formats conflict with Equal Opportunities tags: standards Bob Sutor: What would ODF support for WordPress look like? tags: ODF Lotus Solutions Development Lab: Lab 04: ODFDOM: Generating ODF Documents from a Notes Agent tags: ODF, Notes Gwennel A WYSIWYG and WYSIWYM editor Gwennel is a free WYSIWYG and WYSIWYM editor for Windows supporting natively the Open Document Format. tags: [...] 07/02/2010, source: Rob Weir: An Antic DispositionNew: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m71) availableDeveloper Snapshot build OOo-Dev DEV300_m71 is available for download. DEV300 is the development codeline for the upcoming OOo 3.x releases. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Please use the following download page: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: New: OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 5 (build OOO320_m12) availableOpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 5 is now available on the download website. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker: Download website: Release notes: MD5 checksums: New: OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 4 (build OOO320_m11) availableOpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 4 is now available on the download website. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker: Download website: Release notes: MD5 checksums: ODF 1.2 Part 1 Public ReviewA major milestone was reached for the OASIS ODF TC today. The latest Committee Draft of ODF 1.2 Part 1 was sent out for a 60-day public review. What does this mean, and why should I care? you might be asking. Thats a fair question. First, a quick review of the OASIS standards approval process. The stages [...] 26/01/2010, source: Rob Weir: An Antic DispositionNew Print UI now integratedBarely one and a half years after the initial plan, a new print UI has now found its way into OpenOffice.org with the integration of CWS printerpullpages into the latest developer milestone DEV300m70. This took a while longer than intended, but I think the result is worth the effort. Many thanks to all the many people who made this possible (in no particular order): Mathias Bauer (Sfx), Andre Fischer (Impress), Thomas Lange (Writer), Christian Lippka (Impress), Niklas Nebel (Calc), Christoph Noack (User Experience), Regina Henschel, Hasan Ilter (QA), Jörg Skottke (QA), Thorsten Bosbach (QA), Oliver Craemer (QA), Eric Savary (QA). (I hope I didn't forget anyone). The new UI and the underlying printing infrastructure (which change quite a bit under the hood) can now be tested; if you find any issues (of which there undoubtedly will be some, in such a large change there are invariably some bugs that eluded our best efforts of finding them), please report them. The most prominent new end user features are
results of automated tests from OOO320m8 to OOO320m10Automated tests on release candidates have been finished and all results of automated tests are green state. All Cat0-Tests required for a release finished without errors or warnings (except #108549 on MAC) testing english language builds. See the following graphics for details:
Enjoy OpenOffice.org 3.2 once released.... New: OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 3 (build OOO320_m10) availableOpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 3 is now available on the download website. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker: Download website: Release notes: MD5 checksums: User Experience F2F Day Two
Please read Christoph Noack's second blog posting on his visit in Hamburg, which he begins with: "This is my second – and last – posting which covers my two days stay “UX meeting in Hamburg”. In the last posting, I've talked about non-disruptive messages and the common goal for OpenOffice.org. Now, we will have a look at Impress and the printing improvements." BTW Kind regards, Liz
New: OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 2 (build OOO320_m9) availableOpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 2 is now available on the download website. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker: Download website: Release notes: MD5 checksums: New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m69) availableDeveloper Snapshot build OOo-Dev DEV300_m69 is available for download. DEV300 is the development codeline for the upcoming OOo 3.x releases. The application will install as OOo-Dev 3.3. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Please use the following download page: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: Top 10 Blog Posts of 2009The 2009 wall calendar is now tossed in recycling bin, and I look to 2010 with renewed energy and dedication. But I did want to take once last parting look at 2009, from the perspective of this blogs server logs. Top Blog Posts Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability (May 2009) ODF Lies and Whispers (June 2009) A Game of [...] 02/01/2010, source: Rob Weir: An Antic DispositionOOo has the holiday spirit all year round
Everyone loves receiving presents, especially presents which are useful. Likewise, giving presents to others feels wonderful. An important part of the holidays is the spirit of giving. This is where OOo fits in: Not only is the OpenOffice.org office suite a great present to the world, but giving and receiving is also experienced in many more ways within the OpenOffice.org community. There are volunteers working in numerous project groups, from
localizations to marketing, documentation to website maintenance, plus
mailing lists.
-------- Original Message -------- [...]
The two photos here are from that school in Hawaii.
Happy holidays everyone! Keep up the spirit ;-) Best wishes from me and everyone at OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun 23/12/2009, source: GullFOSSNew: OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 1 (build OOO320_m8) availableThe next step in the OpenOffice.org 3 series is coming closer: OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Release Candidate 1 is now available on the download website. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker: Download website: Release notes: MD5 checksums: Renaissance in Impress for 3.3: Read the specification and post your feedback BTW, where I live, there is lovely white snow on the ground. Just a dusting mind you, but enough to bring thoughts of hot cocoa and cuddling up in front of warm fireplaces. No video-animated snowfall for me! ;-) Best regards from me and the others on the Renaissance team. Liz Find Bar - Second version of a search toolbar for OpenOffice.orgSeveral months ago I presented the idea to add a search toolbar to OpenOffice.org. The framework team received some feedback where most of them were positive. Unfortunately, due to the feature set the implementation part grew to a non-bearable beast for our volunteer developer. Therefore we had to stop the implementation and thought about the situation. Thanks to the data from the OpenOffice.org Improvement Program the UX team were able to help us to find a good solution. UX team found out that only very few people use more advanced features for searching. They created a new specification where only the most used functions are available. To have a more positive naming scheme it was decided to change the name from search to find bar. This decision was a big help for our volunteer developer Robert Zhou and he can now provide a first version of the find bar. You can see a screen shot from the first version below:  The find bar consists of an edit field which contains the search text and buttons to search down and upwards. A hidden button to open the find & replace dialog can be configured via the context menu. You can find the detailed specification for the find bar here: If you interested to help us we are looking for volunteers for QA, user experience and developers. There is no need to be an experienced open source volunteer. You can start with easy tasks and get familiar as time goes by. Therefore everybody who wants to join the OpenOffice.org community can provide valuable input. This is your chance to actively influence the progress of OpenOffice.org. You can contact me via e-mail or subscribe to the framework development mailing list. Everybody is welcome. The framework team will help you to have an easy start. The Relevancy of ODF 1.0By the time you read this (actually probably by the time I finish writing this post) a ballot approving the Public Review Draft of ODF 1.2, Part 1 will have passed. Part 1 is the largest of the three parts of ODF 1.2, and reaching a Public Review Draft status is a major accomplishment. [...] 15/12/2009, source: Rob Weir: An Antic Dispositionresults of automated tests from OOO320m5 and OOO320m7Automated tests on milestone OO320m7 are finished. Automated testing team reported a 'green state' for all automated tests. Just a small problem in w_updt.bas bother the consistent picture of all platforms marked green in QUASTe. This issue wasn't easy to find but at the end we solved the problem in showstopper CWS 'jl146' with issue 107038. Depending on desktop respectively OpenOffice.org window size the document is middle or left aligned with automatic view layout (which is default). This lead to the problem sometimes the objects in writer document were drawn outside of the documents area by autotest. Finally we found and fixed it by correcting view layout before testcases run. Some additional minor fixes for more stability were also done in this CWS. Punctually with release of RC1 next week the autotests are expected to deliver a 'green state' on initial testrun.
Stay tuned for updates on this....
Project Renaissance Impress Improvements - Found the required slide layout yet?
As indicated in the previous posts, we have started to redesign a few really basic interactions in OpenOffice.org Impress in order to reduce the overall complexity of the UI. Currently, we focus on navigation through slides in various contexts, the visual appearance of different slide selection states and the handling of slide layouts. Today, I want to share some thoughts about a different way how to assign slide layouts. The Challenge.At present, OpenOffice.org Impress offers five ways how to change the layout of an existing slide. However, four of those merely trigger or point to the task pane. Consequently, there is only one “real” way how a user can pick and apply a slide layout, and there is no way doing that without the task pane. Thinking about a common scenario of creating a presentation, adding new slides, modifying existing ones, adjusting their layouts, one can imagine that switching the task pane on and off over and over again is an unwanted interruption. Keeping the task pane permanently alive is of course an option. Yet, if you want to concentrate more on the content of your work instead on the tools at hand, you’d rather prefer to disable the task pane since it consumes quite a lot of screen real estate.
In addition, there is no way to insert a slide with a favored layout in only one step. Currently, the default work flow requires a user to insert a slide first, decide if the layout meets the expectations and then assign the preferred layout if expectations are not met. From our point of view, there should be a more elegant solution to that, too. Another drawback of the current implementation of slide layouts is that their sheer number exceeds a practical amount that covers most use cases without getting too difficult to work with. Including the vertical layouts OpenOffice.org Impress 3.2 Beta offers 27 slide layouts. That is challenging for two particular reasons. The 27 slide layouts have to go somewhere in the UI, namely into the task pane, where they consume a lot of space. Since they are so many, it is often necessary to scroll through the task pane in order to get an overview what is available and during search. Picking one is also not always easy because in a worst case a user has to look through 27 options and then decide which one to pick. That takes time. Possible Solutions.Since OpenOffice.org Impress already has a dedicated “Presentation” toolbar that contains an “Insert Slide” and a “Slide Layout” button, the Renaissance i-Team started working on a solution that offers a technique to change slide layouts without the necessity to constantly use the task pane. Motivated by the visual concepts in our prototypes, we will try to add a preview pane into the toolbar such that users can directly pick a layout from a drop down toolbox, in the context of the task (insert slide, change slide layout). In parallel, we have decided to add more value to that particular “Presentation” toolbar by reducing its functionality to support the most important tasks only (insert slide, change slide layout, change slide design, set slide transition, start presentation).
We have also considered options to handle slide layouts from various mouse context menus. However, this seems to be very challenging from an implementation point of view. Although we already have some design mock-ups, we need to explore the feasibility of that solution first on all platforms. So for now, the development team is investigating our options.
One way to reduce the amount of slide layouts is to offer object placeholders in each layout that can be used to insert images, charts, tables and the like where usually text content would appear. That would make the need to create slide layouts with tables, images or charts separately obsolete. Overall, these changes may seem small or less significant compared to other troubles such as the inability to create own slide layouts. However, having the goal of thinning out the current UI in mind, these redesigns and the sum of all forthcoming incremental improvements of the work flow will eventually keep us on the right track. For details about the ongoing work check out the Renaissance i-Team Wiki. Best, Andreas 10/12/2009, source: GullFOSS New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m67) availableDeveloper Snapshot build OOo-Dev DEV300_m67 is available for download. DEV300 is the development codeline for the upcoming OOo 3.x releases. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Please use the following download page: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: A new configurationFor performance and maintainability reasons, the configuration component of OpenOffice.org has recently been re-written from scratch, see the corresponding Wiki page. (The “configuration” or “registry” of OOo is where many of the per-user settings and corresponding system-wide defaults are stored, like for example settings you change via the “Tools - Options...” dialog and the “File - Recent Documents” list.) The re-write is currently inspected by the OOo QA department, and it will likely make it into the OOo 3.3 release. The one change that people will probably notice is that the plethora of configuration files (with file extensions .xcs and .xcu) scattered across the OOo installation tree has been reduced, to just a handful of files (with new file extension .xcd). While the content and XML format of the original data files has not changed (much), the new files simply concatenate together multiple old files (mostly to reduce disk access costs during cold start). This means that if you used to fiddle with OOo’s private parts by directly modifying some .xcu file in the installation, that hack will need adoption (probably best by turning it into an OOo extension, see next). OOo extensions (i.e., .oxt files) continue to include configuration data in .xcs and .xcu files, nothing has changed there. Similarly, the per-user configuration changes in an existing OOo installation are migrated to the new format on first start. If you would like to give this a try well before it hits the OOo 3.3 master, I made available a number of builds at ftp://qa-upload.services.openoffice.org/sb111/:
Project Renaissance Status Update for November/DecemberThe thinning out pro Feedback welcome. Best regards, Project Renaissance Team 07/12/2009, source: GullFOSSBuilding OpenOffice.org with GNU makeAs part of the Build Environment Effort we did a proof-of-concept reimplementation of the current build system. There was a plethora of reasons for this:
By using the toolchain described above we can get rid of a large set of self-made or self-maintained tools:
With the proof of concept, four modules have been completely built using the new build system: tools, toolkit, framework and sw. The build system currently support the most common tasks:
Thus, the build system in its current state is already able to build most of the modules in OOo (including the "heavy" ones). The Team of the Build Environment Effort (including developers, QA and release engineers) is carefully optimistic that updating the build system in this way would benefit the development of OpenOffice.org. But before commiting additional work to this effort, we are interested in opinions:
Since this a rather broad topic, I also would like to invite you to discuss a possible move to GNU make and its implications on the mailing list dev@tools.openoffice.org. Best Regards, New: OOo-DEV 3.2.0 Developer Snapshot (build OOO320_m7) availableDeveloper Snapshot build OOo-Dev OOO320_m7 which installs as OOo-DEV 3.2.0 has been uploaded. The previously report issue is now fixed in this milestone: i107239 (Java GUI installer doesn't work). If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Please use the following link: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: New UI for OpenOffice.org? When?I know some of you read the title and thought “Oh cool! I'm dying for a
new user interface (UI). When will it finally be ready?” At the same
time, some of you thought “Nooooooo! I like the UI already, even if
there are a few little things here and there that annoy me. I wish they
would stop this talk of a new UI.”
We've always said that Renaissance is a long-term project.
Unfortunately, many people got the wrong impression from the really
real-looking prototypes (probably because our developers are really good
at coding). Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your preference,
those prototypes were exploratory---just ideas we were trying out, not
the real solutions. What they, and the design idea collection before
them, did, was supply us with a lot of feedback that is invaluable in
the continued unfolding of the Renaissance work. "Unfolding" describes
not only the work but also what happens whenever we start to work on an
improvement.
"Most, if not all UI problems get larger during the time you are working on them. To a certain extent this is natural because you get more deeply involved and gain a better understanding of the issue. You discuss the topic with colleagues and incorporate their point of view into the design. You discover new aspects that somehow match your topic. [...] The challenge is to keep the chunks of UI problems you address manageable. At the same time you have to keep an eye on the overall structure of the product." If you have a minute, you really should read the entire text on The
White Water Lily Effect. New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m66) availableDeveloper Snapshot build OOo-Dev DEV300_m66 which still installs as OOo-DEV 3.2 (see i107355) is available for download. If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker. Please use the following link: Release Notes: MD5 checksums: ODF 1.2, Part 3 goes out for Public ReviewA major milestone for ODF 1.2 was reached on Friday. Part 3 of ODF 1.2, which specifies document packaging (how a documents XML, images and metadata are combined into a single file and are optionally encrypted or signed), went out for a 60-day public review period. This public review period will run [...] 16/11/2009, source: Rob Weir: An Antic DispositionODFDOM - the new opensourced multi-tiered API for the ISO OpenDocument FormatODFDOM is the name of the upcoming free OpenDocument framework sponsored by Sun Microsystems Inc. It will be the next evolutionary step after AODL and Odf4j. Designed together with their architects with the intent to provide an easy lightwork programming API for the ODF developer community. ODFDOM is meant to be portable to any object-oriented language. The first pre-version of the Java 5 reference implementation of ODFDOM is planned to become available under LGPL3 in May 2008. 25/04/2008, source: Svante Schubert's blog |
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