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Monday, 07 Dec 2009
A new configuration
Stephan Bergmann

For 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/:

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Posted by Stephan Bergmann on 07 Dec 2009  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this  |  Comments[3]

Project Renaissance Status Update for November/December
Frank Loehmann

The thinning out process for Impress 3.3 is in full progress. Please find the Project Renaissance status presentation for November/December at the OOo Wiki. The presentation provides first mock-ups of  the planned changes.

Feedback welcome.

Best regards,

Project Renaissance Team

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Posted by Frank Loehmann on 07 Dec 2009  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this  |  Comments[2]

Friday, 04 Dec 2009
Building OpenOffice.org with GNU make
Bjoern Michaelsen
As 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:
Also, with the move to cygwin on windows, it is possible to use a toolchain that is available cross platform and reduce the reliance on "homegrown" tools that require additional maintenance effort. This toolchain consists of:
Dependencies are intended to be generated directly with the compiler of the platform (gcc, Sun Studio compiler) where possible. Only the Microsoft compiler has no suitable way to generate dependencies, but mcpp, a small and standards-compliant preprocessor, will be able to help us out there.

By using the toolchain described above we can get rid of a large set of self-made or self-maintained tools:
In cws gnu_make, we created such an alternative as a proof-of-concept. It:
The current implementation currently supports one platform: Linux 64-Bit. Adding support for other Unix platforms should be rather trivial, while Windows will need some special care. If you are a port maintainer for a platform not built by Hamburg Release Engineering, we are also interested in your cooperation and advice.
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,

Bjoern Michaelsen

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Posted by Bjoern Michaelsen on 04 Dec 2009  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this  |  Comments[13]

New: OOo-DEV 3.2.0 Developer Snapshot (build OOO320_m7) available
Marcus Lange

Developer 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:
http://download.openoffice.org/next

Release Notes:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/OOO320_m7_snapshot.html

MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/md5sums/OOO320_m7_md5sums.txt

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Posted by Marcus Lange on 04 Dec 2009  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this  |  Comments[0]

Thursday, 03 Dec 2009
New UI for OpenOffice.org? When?
Elizabeth Matthis

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.”

Before you read the more important stuff below this, let's just take a quick look at three basic questions.

1) Is there going to be a new UI for OpenOffice.org?
Yes. Improvements in interaction design (usability) will result in changes for the user interface. Good interaction design considers how fast you can do tasks which occur quite frequently and how easy you can figure out things you've never done before. BTW, "New UI" isn't a very exact term. We could just as easily say "revised UI" or "updated UI".

2) When will it be done?
Slowly but surely; over a long time; bit by bit. We will only change things if there is a good reason. And gathering and analyzing data (the "reason") takes time, as does designing improvements.

3) What is the goal of Project Renaissance?
To know and to understand our users as they are, and to help them accomplish what they want to, by providing efficient access to valuable functionality through a desirable user interface.

That said, the following is an elaboration on those three points and an attempt to clarify any incorrect interpretations of Project Renaissance.

There is a great deal to do within the scope of Project Renaissance, and since the OOo community regularly comes out with a new version of the OpenOffice.org office suite, each version is an opportunity to improve the interaction design. Slowly but surely. This usually involves UI changes, but sometimes may only result in performance or other intangible changes not visible on the UI. A motto for Project Renaissance is "form follows function".

In keeping with the goal of providing efficient access to valuable functionality, experience thus far has lead us to focus first on solving some fundamental problems so we can build on those solutions in later stages of Project Renaissance. One of the fundamental problems now in focus is reducing the complexity of the very large number of graphic elements on the UI. This is a big problem and so it will take time and many steps to work on it. Improvements will be noticeable here and there as we go.

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.

For an excellent explanation, I would like to quote UX Architect, Matthias Müller-Prove:

"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.

So, fully aware of the challenge to keep the UI problems we address manageable, our current focus is the task-oriented optimization of interaction in Impress, due to be out in version OOo 3.3. More unfolding of Project Renaissance will continue, bit by bit, step by step. This is one of the first bits to reach the implementation stage.

To get a better idea of what "task-oriented optimization of interaction in Impress" means, to see which issues are in this "manageable chunk" so far, and to follow how the work is progressing, see the new pages in the OOo Renaissance wiki.

Best regards,
The Renaissance Team

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Posted by Elizabeth Matthis on 03 Dec 2009  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this  |  Comments[12]

New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300_m66) available
Marcus Lange

Developer 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:
http://download.openoffice.org/next

Release Notes:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/DEV300_m66_snapshot.html

MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/md5sums/DEV300_m66_md5sums.txt

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Posted by Marcus Lange on 03 Dec 2009  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this  |  Comments[0]

Friday, 27 Nov 2009
New: OOo-DEV 3.2.0 Developer Snapshot (build OOO320_m6) available
Joost Andrae

Developer Snapshot build OOo-Dev OOO320_m6 which installs as OOo-DEV 3.2.0 has been uploaded.

ATTENTION:
Due to P1 issue http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=107239 the Java based installer will not work on all platforms where it is used. This issue will be fixed within the next milestone OOO320_m7.

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link:
http://download.openoffice.org/next

Release Notes:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/OOO320_m6_snapshot.html

MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/md5sums/OOO320_m6_md5sums.txt

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Posted by Joost Andrae on 27 Nov 2009  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this  |  Comments[1]

Thursday, 19 Nov 2009
Opening up Another Time Capsule: Community Visit in Hamburg
Elizabeth Matthis

As Christoph Noack opened a time capsule, let me do the same. Mine goes back 2 months to Sept 17/18/19 when specially invited members of the German-language OpenOffice.org community came to Hamburg. The visitors pictured above, plus me and Marcus Lange from Sun who joined the photo, were (l to r): Marcus Lange, Florian Effenberger, Daniel Stoni, Christian Lohmaier, Elizabeth Matthis (aka Liz), Thomas Hackert Uwe Altmann (not pictured: Gerald Geib, Volker Merschmann)

It was so wonderful to meet face to face people otherwise only known from email and to be able to thank them for their dedication and support. They each traveled here at their own cost (from far corners of Germany and even from Switzerland), which further shows their enthusiasm and dedication to our thriving open source product. On Thursday evening, those who were already in Hamburg met at a pub (Max&Consorten) for a first get-together. Afterward, most of us concluded the evening with a round of beers and more talk at my home---which I jokingly called "Motel Matthis".

Friday started out with a heartfelt word of welcome and thanks from Michael Bemmer, Senior Director of StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Engineering, and unfolded with a series of talks and snacks, including lunch and several smaller group meetings about special topics, until concluding at approximately 5:30 PM.

There were entertaining and informative talks by Stefan Taxhet on OOo in general, Gerd Weiss on infrastructure---including a personal tour of the server rooms to underline some of his points about the hardware, Andreas Bartel on Renaissance and Uwe Fischer on documentation, as well as tours of the engineering facility and opportunities to say hello to many of the OOo developers in real life.



At the end of the very busy but fun day, those of us who still had time went out to eat together at an Italian restaurant (maybe this was to get in the mood for the OOoCon in Italy!) and, several courageous visitors even spent a second night at Motel Matthis! This time Uwe made sure we had enough beer to let us talk long into the night. Thanks, Uwe!

Some comments I received after the visit are:

thackert: "It was interesting to become acquainted with some people I'd only known the mail address or nick of, and to hear really interesting talks as well to "sightsee" SUN. All in all a nice trip and - the best of all - a really nice stay at "Motel Matthis" with a perfect hostess (Liz!)"

floeff: "Thank you very much to everyone who made this visit in Hamburg possible! I'd never been at Sun Hamburg before, and it was a really nice day meeting old and new friends, getting insight on how the OpenOffice.org development works, and after all, we also had a lot of fun and a real great time. Liz is a wonderful hostess and we all enjoyed some very special days in a community that more and more becomes a real family."

VolkerMe: "Thank you again for such a nice day, which was very much too short for me. The opportunity to have personal talks with the engineers at SUN was so interesting, I wasn't able to discuss everything, so I hope I can come back another time. And although it has been said so often: Thanks Liz for hosting the meeting, for the well-prepared accommodation and for being our always smiling guide!

Saturday came too quickly and I had to say goodbye to my delightful guests. I hope to organize another visit to thank additional and like-wise dedicated community members in 2010.

Kind regards,
Liz

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Posted by Elizabeth Matthis on 19 Nov 2009  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this  |  Comments[2]

Improved websites to download OpenOffice.org builds
Marcus Lange

The current setup of websites for downloading OpenOffice.org installation sets provides builds for several languages and operating systems. But nowadays a lot more are built. Unfortunately they are not that easy to find as they are on mirror servers. The most users do not know this or how to come to these mirrors.

Furthermore there was no comfortable way to download language packs (currently for 96 languages !).

Another reason is that many native language teams have only a small staff or do not have the time to test all available Release Candidate (RC) builds on all platforms for their language. However, these are very close to a final release but have not got the latest tests. But why not offering these to the users with a hint to be carefully when using?

To improve this situation and to deliver more choice we have created a new download website layout.

Main Download Page

http://download.openoffice.org

This website was enhanced to download easily the build you want. Of course the well-known (green) One-Click download remains the same easy way to get your favorite version. The same for the orange button for Developer Snapshots. The new thing is the yellow button that will guide you to the website for Release Candidates.

Full Installations and Language Packs

The improvements were done here to provide all available stable builds:

http://download.openoffice.org/other.html

The first table provides all full installation sets as stable release of the current OpenOffice.org version. The second table provides all stable language packs.

BTW:
A language pack contains only resource files for a specific language and platform to show, e.g., menus, dialogs and error messages in your language. If translated it may contain also the help content. It's a comfortable way to get several languages without to install the applications double and triple. After installation change the languages via menu "Tools - Options - Language Settings - Languages - User Interface".

Release Candidates

A complete new website was created to offer all Release Candidates. Also here the first table has links to the full installation sets and the second to all language packs:

http://download.openoffice.org/all_rc.html

Some days ago the 100 millionth download of an OpenOffice.org build was announced. We hope to increase this impressive number with the new download websites.

Happy downloading. :-)

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Posted by Marcus Lange on 19 Nov 2009  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this  |  Comments[2]

Wednesday, 18 Nov 2009
New: OOo-DEV 3.2.0 Developer Snapshot (build OOO320_m5) available
Joost Andrae

Developer Snapshot build OOo-Dev OOO320_m5 which installs as OOo-DEV 3.2.0 has been uploaded.

If you find severe issues within this build please file them to OpenOffice.org's bug tracking system IssueTracker.

Please use the following link:
http://download.openoffice.org/next

Release Notes:
http://development.openoffice.org/releases/OOO320_m5_snapshot.html

MD5 checksums:
http://download.openoffice.org/next/md5sums/OOO320_m5_md5sums.txt

tags:

Posted by Joost Andrae on 18 Nov 2009  |  PermaLink |  Bookmark to Delicious To Delicious |  Digg this Digg this

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