Daily Archives: Friday, April 11, 2014

  • LibreOffice 4.2.3 released

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    The Document Foundation has announced on its blog the release of LibreOffice 4.2.3, the third minor release of the LibreOffice 4.2 family. Codenamed “Fresh”, LibreOffice 4.2.3 is the most feature rich version to date of this free and open source office suite. The release itself is described by The Document Foundation as being suited for early adopters. For enterprise use and more conservative users, The Document Foundation recommends the more mature LibreOffice 4.1.5 release.

    People interested in this release’s technical details and bug fixes can view the change logs as follows:

    In addition, the released version of LibreOffice 4.2.3 adds a security fix for the Heartbleed bug (CVE-2014-0160).

    screenshot of Calc spreadsheet program
    LibreOffice’s Calc spreadsheet program running on Ubuntu Linux

    Downloading LibreOffice

    LibreOffice 4.2.3 and LibreOffice 4.1.5 are both available for download from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions and templates to increase the software’s functionality and add specific features are available at http://extensions.libreoffice.org/.

  • Political proofreading failure

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

    Below is a picture of part of an actual election leaflet delivered recently to somewhere in South Bristol by the local Liberal Democrats.

    Lib Dem leaflet with the wording Anywhere Council
    Is it a three horse race too, Lib Dems?

    Note that local party hacks have omitted to change this generic national leaflet’s wording from ‘Anywhere Council’ to the name of the relevant local authority.

    I for one would like to wish the candidate involved – [Insert Name Here] – every success.

    Hat tip: Bristol Red.

  • The importance of the space bar and proofreading

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

    The Wig and Pen public house in Truro, Cornwall had some unexpected publicity earlier this week when a badly temporary temporary sign was snapped by an amused regular before being hurriedly removed by embarrassed staff, according to yesterday’s Western Daily Press.

    By the time the sign came down, its fame had spread round the world by social media; and it’s easy to see why.

    sign saying The Wig & Penis Is Open For Business

    However, according to the Western Daily Press article, the sign itself was not the only linguistic clanger involved in the episode:

    But a remember [sic] of staff named Georgie-Tim later took to Twitter to say: “Well, it got you’re attention!