Donnerstag April 21, 2005

Be a part of it! - The OpenOffice.org Website Project
I thought I start a little series of blog entries about different OpenOffice.org projects. By doing so, I hope to get the projects some additional visibility and to recruit some additional contributors. It is not necessary to be a C++ or Java guru in order to contribute to the project. A good example is the OpenOffice.org Website Project.

Today I received an email from a member of the website project who had reviewed the OpenOffice.org 2.0 features list that I created a few weeks ago. The "only" thing this person had done was reading my web page and writing down spelling and grammar errors that nobody else had caught, yet. I just implemented the suggested changes and I can say that the quality of the web page has definitely improved. BTW, probably I should ask the same person to review this blog!? ;-)

This example shows that people with good language knowledge/skills can be of great help and can contribute to the OpenOffice.org project. This is just one example of how someone can contribute to the project even without software development skills. The website project is also always in need of people with solid HTML, design and scripting knowledge.

Oh, I forgot to mention the names of the web page reviewer. Peter Blitcher noted the problems, and they were forwarded to me via Akshay Dayal and Louis Suarez-Potts.
( Apr 21 2005, 05:00:29 PM CEST ) Permalink

News about Solaris and AMD Opteron Dual-Core
"Sun is also looking to capitalize on the growing momentum in hardware and software virtualization. AMD is expecting to offer its Pacifica virtualization technology in 2006. Lovell said Sun is looking to match that advantage with Solaris features like Containers, Predictive Self Healing and Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) as well as using open source plug-ins like Xen."
The full article can be found here.

See also: Solaris 10 Now Available for AMD's New Dual-Core Opteron Platform
( Apr 21 2005, 04:03:27 PM CEST ) Permalink

"Ballmer: We'll help you run Linux, if we must"
"Despite his fondness for Windows, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the company will make it easier for businesses to manage a wide variety of machines – including those running Linux."
The full article can be found here.
( Apr 21 2005, 04:01:02 PM CEST ) Permalink

ZDNet about Solaris
"Anyone who still doubts the power of open thinking to change the world need only read our review of Solaris 10. Solaris is a mature, complex operating system that embodies some of the latest thinking on OS design from a company with a long tradition of excellence in computing architecture."
The full article can be found here.
( Apr 21 2005, 03:57:41 PM CEST ) Permalink

Just switch! - Calculations in XML Form Documents - Part I
Today I want to explain to you how you can do simple calculations in XML form documents. Here is what I did:

First, I added three "Formatted Fields" to the form document and set the model and binding names as shown ... for the amount field ...



... for the price field ...



... and for the total field. In order to define the calculation, one simply has to click on the "..."-button next to "Calculation" and type in "../Amount * ../Price" and close the windows. That's it!



With the "Formatted Fields" it is also possible to set the formatting to a currency formatting. In this example I also changed the alignment to right and the font size to 14.



I will talk more about doing calculations in XForm documents in the near future, but as you can already see here, it is pretty easy to do calculations in XML form documents.
( Apr 21 2005, 02:41:21 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

"UBL: Another Opportunity for FOSS in the Enterprise"
"To know more about this UBL standard and how FOSS programmers may add support for it in office applications, starting with OpenOffice.org, we talked to Jon Bosak, chairman of the UBL Technical Committee, and Lars Oppermann, software engineer for the framework and XML projects in StarOffice/OpenOffice.org."
The full article can be found here.

In this context you also might be interested in reading my recent postings regarding XForms support in StarOffice 8. You can find the blog entries here and here.
( Apr 21 2005, 12:54:07 PM CEST ) Permalink

"Open source moves into Microsoft's Office block"
This article talks about OpenOffice.org market share estimations:

"While a handful of large organisations have embraced OpenOffice - including Munich's city authorities and some French government agencies - its worldwide market share is estimated at less than 2 per cent."

I don't know where these guys take their numbers from, but I recently (privately) did some semi-professional surveys and got very different results. I won't tell you my numbers here (because I can't without risking legal trouble), but just do the exercise yourself. Ask among your family members, friends and co-workers what office suite they are using at home and at work (obviously, exclude the open source geeks that you know to get more realistic results!). You might surprised about the numbers that you will get. At least I was!
( Apr 21 2005, 12:43:20 PM CEST ) Permalink

OpenOffice.org used at Access Devices, UK
"Access Devices, founded in 2001, is a digital video equipment designer and manufacturer in the United Kingdom. With the help of open source software consulting company Sirius, Access moved entirely from Windows desktops to Linux and OpenOffice.org. Then, after CEO Anthony Walton discovered how far Linux and other open source software had come in terms of quality and viability, he decided to commit to open source in a different way."
The full article can be found here.
( Apr 21 2005, 12:38:40 PM CEST ) Permalink

"Lack of developers delays OpenOffice.org" - Part II
Apparently many people are still talking and writing about this article.

As a summary I personally like the two following quotes from two long threads on the OpenOffice.org discuss list:

● "We can tell computer world that "it's ready when it's ready"."
● "Or to quote Ernest and Julio Gallo - "We will sell no wine before it's time"."

The statement "Lack of developers delays" is true for every software product. Give me thousands of well-trained developers and I will build you whatever software product you might want to have in a short amount of time (unfortunately the complexity increases in parallel with the number of involved people, too). The relatively small delay can actually be seen as an evidence how well the OpenOffice.org community members contribute to the project. Many bug reports come in from volunteers (especially from those doing porting and localization work), which will lead to a better and more stable product.

People who are interested in more background information and are willing to read quite a few email messages can check out the following threads on the OpenOffice.org mailing lists:

● Has sun ...
● Acute problems ...

At the same time I'd like to use this opportunity to invite all my blog readers to participate in the OpenOffice.org project. There are many ways how people can contribute. It is not necessary to be a great C++ or Java developer. Even users who have no clue about software development can help. Here is a good starting point if you want to get involved with the project.
( Apr 21 2005, 10:45:53 AM CEST ) Permalink