Tech

  • LibreOffice 5.3 released

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    Yesterday The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 5.3 for Windows, macOS and Linux, as well as for the private cloud for the first time.

    LibreOffice 5.3 represents a significant step forward in the evolution of this free and open source office suite: it introduces new features such as online collaborative editing and at the same time provides incremental improvements to make the program more reliable, interoperable and user-friendly.

    New features

    LibreOffice 5.3 offers a number of interesting new features in every area including:

    • a new cross-platform text layout engine that uses HarfBuzz for consistent text layout on all platforms, with significant advantages across languages and alphabets;
    • a revised Help menu, with new quick links to user guides and community support forums; and

      • better import/export filters for new and legacy MS Office documents.

    New features in Writer include:

    • Table Styles, for applying formatting to a table which is preserved when edited; and
    • new Go to Page Box (activated by keystrokes Ctrl+G) makes it possible to jump to another page in the document with fewer keystrokes.
    LibreOffice 5.3 Writer in action
    LibreOffice 5.3 Writer in action

    Turning to spreadsheets, Calc provides a new set of default cell styles, with greater variety and better names than in previous releases, whilst in fresh installations, “Enable wildcards in formulas” is now the default option, rather than regular expressions, to improve compatibility with other spreadsheet software.

    Impress, LibreOffice’s presentation package, now opens with a template selector to get the user off to a quick start. In addition, a new Slide Properties Deck is now available in the sidebar while in slide master mode.

    A list of the most significant new features is available in a separate document, in addition to which a series of short presentation videos has been produced.

    Experimental UI features

    As of this release, the LibreOffice UI has been extended with the addition of an experimental Notebookbar, which offers another UI option in addition to the Default UI (with two toolbars), the Single Toolbar UI and the Sidebar with a Single Toolbar. Each UI layout has been thought to serve a different cluster of LibreOffice users.

    LibreOffice Online

    LibreOffice 5.3 features the first source release of LibreOffice Online, a cloud office suite enabling basic collaborative editing of documents in a browser by re-using the LibreOffice “core engine”.

    LibreOffice Online is fundamentally a server service and should be installed and configured by adding a cloud storage and a SSL certificate, which are not included in the package.

    Builds of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are available as Docker images.

    Availability

    LibreOffice 5.3 is available for immediate download (your correspondent has already moved onto an as yet unreleased development version. Ed.).

    However, for large scale and commercial deployments, The Document Foundation recommends the more mature 5.2.5 version (posts passim), preferably with professional support.

  • LibreOffice 5.2.5 released. 5.3 coming soon

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    The Document Foundation (TDF) blog has today announced the release of LibreOffice 5.2.5 “still”, the fifth minor release of the LibreOffice 5.2 family and is inviting all users to update to this latest release from LibreOffice 5.1.6 or previous versions.

    LibreOffice 5 splash screen

    This latest release comes with over 70 bug fixes and improvements compared with the previous version.

    As usual, TDF recommends professional support for large-scale deployments of LibreOffice in major companies and public sector organisations.

    Besides this latest release, LibreOffice 5.3, the next version of the more cutting edge LibreOffice “fresh” line, is due out on 1st February.

    Download LibreOffice

    LibreOffice 5.2.5 is available for immediate download, whilst the latest release candidate (RC) for LibreOffice 5.3 is available for download from the pre-release server.

    Donate to LibreOffice

    As is customary with every new release, free software advocates and community members are invited to support the work of The Document Foundation with a donation.

  • LibreOffice 5.2.2 now available for download

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    Yesterday the LibreOffice project celebrated its sixth anniversary since the project forked from OpenOffice.org.

    Just one day later The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced on its blog the release of LibreOffice 5.2.2, the second minor release of the 5.2 series.

    LibreOffice 6th anniversary banner

    LibreOffice 5.2.2 is targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users and features a number of fixes over the major release announced in August. Those interested in release’s technical details about the release can consult the change log to discover the bugs fixed in RC1 and those fixed in RC2.

    For more conservative users and enterprise deployments, TDF recommends using LibreOffice 5.1.5 “still”, complete with the back-up of certified professional support.

    A summary of the most significant new features of the LibreOffice 5.2 family is also available on the LibreOffice website.

    Download LibreOffice

    LibreOffice 5.2.2 is available for immediate download.

    LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can also support The Document Foundation with a donation.

  • Google Translate fails again

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Tech

    James Casson headshotIn Hamilton, New Zealand, mayoral candidate James Casson’s bid to appeal to Maori voters went terribly wrong, NZ news site Stuff reports.

    Why?

    Mr. Casson used Google Translate to get his message across in te reo Maori.

    As a consequence, his election address dropped through the letterboxes of Maori voters made an impact for all the wrong reasons, with the unintelligible jumble of words and phrases being described by Waikato University language expert Tom Roa as “very, very, very poor“.

    Another Waikato University lecturer, Te Taka Keegan, who teaches computer science and worked on Google Translate remarked: “The gibberish that is written in the second part of this bio is barely recognisable as te reo Maori, it is disrespectful to the Maori language.”

    When queried, Mr. Casson said he was unaware of how his profile was translated, stating that he gave his English version to a “Maori woman” at his office to get it done.

    Stuff carried out its own test, copying Casson’s English language text into Google Translate and receiving in return “a word-for-word, error-ridden version of the official Hamilton City Council“, missing prepositions, articles and connecting words.

    According to Newshub, another New Zealand news site, a translation back into English of Mr. Casson’s botched Maori translation reads as follows:

    Work James 26 years inside New Zealand Police, before officer Charge of Northland, Hamilton community Police centre Flagstaff.

    Work overseas like a peace keeper in Bougainville, Papua new Guinea, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Timor to the United Nations.

    Return the good community, work the people work to safe. James worked for Police to build safe Hamilton for you.

    Straight ahead [the text then seems to be another Pacific language]. faitotonu mo e angatonu aia takitahi. KORE ki Mita Water, paying Rate for dinner Council/feast for councillors using a free Corporate Box at Stadium Waikato or by councillors.

    Free waka on some of the adds being used of Auckland.

    Working towards finishing vagrants in Auckland.

    Resources HCC maintenence, paddlers trying to hold into a beautiful looking Hamilton.

    The moral of this story is that if you want a decent translation, you’re still better of with a human being than machine translation and this is likely to be the case for many years to come.

  • Free digital skills session at J3

    Steve WoodsBristol, Social Media, Tech

    Your ‘umble scribe has today received an email from Kurt James, Neighbourhood Partnership Co-ordinator at Bristol City Council, announcing an event next month in east Bristol.

    get online at J3 with the Neighbourhood Partnership and local volunteers

    Bristol Libraries is organising a free (as in beer. Ed. 😀 ) digital skills workshop next month in collaboration with the Ashton, Easton and Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Partnership and local volunteers to help local residents who haven’t already done so get online.

    The event will be held at Junction 3 Library, Baptist Mills Court, Easton, Bristol, BS5 0FJ (map).

    The date and time: Tuesday 11th October, 1.30 p.m. – 3.30 p.m.

    Attendees will learn how to:

    • Get online for the first time;
    • Shop and bank online;
    • Access government services online;
    • Use social media.

    Those interested can book a space at the workshop by contacting the library by telephoning 0117 9223001. Call that number too if you want more information on the workshop.

    Originally posted on Bristol Wireless.

  • Call goes out for new OpenOffice developers

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    Speculation about the demise of Apache OpenOffice may be premature (posts passim).

    German IT news site heise reports that a mailing list for new developers has been set up.

    By establishing this new list, the OpenOffice team wants to make entry to the open source project easier for programmers.

    OpenOffice menu
    OpenOffice 4.0- not quite the end of the line, possibly.

    After recent discussion of a possible end for the free and open source OpenOffice productivity suite, more developers who are interested in helping with future development have approached the project. The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has now established a recruitment mailing list to facilitate their access to the source code. Via the list, newcomers will receive answers to questions and suggestions about their next steps from more experienced developers.

    The situation does remind your correspondent of the predicament of one Samuel L. Clemens, better known to the world as the author Mark Twain.

    Mark Twain's note remarking on his assumed death
    Mark Twain’s note remarking on his assumed death

  • 10th LibreOffice release of 2016 coincides with LibreOCon

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

    The Document Foundation (TDF) has celebrated the opening session of LibOCon (which is currently taking place in Brno. Ed.) with the announcement of LibreOffice 5.2.1, the latest release of the LibreOffice 5.2 family.

    LibOCon is a showcase for the LibreOffice project’s activity and will feature over 60 talks in three days, covering development, quality assurance, localisation, Open Document Format (ODF), marketing, community and documentation, a business session in Czech focused on major LibreOffice deployments, as well as a meeting of the Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA).

    LibreOffice conference Brno logo

    LibreOffice 5.2.1, which is aimed targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users, provides a number of fixes over the major release (5.2) announced in August. For all other users and enterprise deployments, TDF suggests LibreOffice 5.1.5 “still”, with the backing of certified professional support.

    Download LibreOffice

    LibreOffice 5.2.1 is available for immediate download, whilst LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support the work of The Document Foundation with a donation.

    In addition, development versions of LibreOffice are available for those wishing to become involved in testing.

  • Goodbye to OpenOffice?

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

    When your ‘umble scribe first started using the GNU/Linux operating system over a decade ago, the default office suite for most Linux distributions was OpenOffice.

    However, it now looks as if OpenOffice just could be heading towards the software graveyard if other members of the development team concur with an email from the chairman of the OpenOffice Project Management Committee, Dennis Hamilton, as reported by LWN.net.

    OpenOffice menu
    OpenOffice 4.0. The end of the line?

    A long history

    To find the earliest origins of OpenOffice, one has to go back nearly 30 years to 1985 and an early office suite called Star Office. The timeline below shows the genesis of OpenOffice and other packages from StarOffice 1.0. StarOffice itself survived as a proprietary software package until discontinued by Oracle in 2011.

    timeline showing Open Office and other derivatives of Star Office
    Timeline showing Open Office and other derivatives of StarOffice. Click on image for the full-sized version. Timeline courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    To understand the various twists in the OpenOffice story, one also needs to know that StarDivision, the creator of StarOffice, was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999, whilst Sun Microsystems was in its turn taken over by Oracle Corporation in 2010.

    After the 1999 takeover of StarDivision, Sun released a free and open source version of StarOffice as OpenOffice.org under both GNU LGPL and the SISSL (Sun Industry Standards Source License). OpenOffice.org supported proprietary Microsoft Office file formats (though not always perfectly), was available on many platforms (Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris) and became widely used in the open source community. OpenOffice.org had native support for the OpenDocument format (ODF).

    Following Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems in 2010, some members of the OpenOffice.org project became worried about its future with Oracle. As a consequence they formed The Document Foundation and created the LibreOffice fork. The LibreOffice brand was hoped to be provisional, as Oracle had been invited to join The Document Foundation and donate the OpenOffice.org brand to the foundation.

    Oracle’s response was to demand that all members of the OpenOffice.org Community Council involved with The Document Foundation step down from the Council, citing a conflict of interest. This prompted many community members decided to leave for LibreOffice, which already had the support of Red Hat, Novell, Google and Canonical. LibreOffice produced its first release in January 2011.

    In June 2011 Oracle donated the OpenOffice.org trade marks and source code to the Apache Software Foundation, which Apache then re-licensed under its own open source licence. IBM donated the Lotus Symphony codebase to the Apache Software Foundation in 2012. The developer pool for the Apache project was seeded by IBM employees and the Symphony codebase was incorporated into Apache OpenOffice.

    However, Apache OpenOffice has not flourished, whilst LibreOffice has gone from strength to strength, OpenOffice has languished. LibreOffice releases updates every few months, whereas the last major update to Apache OpenOffice was in September 2015. Furthermore, a hotfix released at the end of August to remedy a memory problem has still not been announced by the project on its home page.

    Apache applies pressure

    In the meantime the Apache Software Foundation has been applying increasing pressure due to security concerns and has since demanded monthly reports (instead of the previous quarterly reports. Ed.) as to how problems can be solved.

    In his email Hamilton describes in detail what the retirement of the OpenOffice project could look like and what consequences will be involved for the source code, downloads, website, mailing lists and other matters. For the time being Hamilton only wants to start a discussion. A decision to end the OpenOffice project has still not been taken, although it is already being suggested that the project should consider donating the OpenOffice trade mark registration to the LibreOffice project.

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