Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Author: Mike Saunders
LibreOffice Community Week: Documentation
The LibreOffice project is made up of many communities working on different aspects of the software: source code, documentation, quality assurance, design and other matters. Some people are working full time, many others are volunteers, and we always try to make new contributors feel welcome.
So throughout October we’ll be running LibreOffice Community Weeks, looking at the different sub-projects in LibreOffice, what they do, and how to get involved. We start off this week by looking at the documentation project, and chat to Olivier Hallot, who is leading the effort to improve LibreOffice’s guide books and online help…
What is your role in the documentation project?
My role in the documentation project is to elaborate plans, coordinate and increase the collaboration of the community and improve the contents of the documentation of LibreOffice.
How did you get involved in LibreOffice?
I am involved in LibreOffice since its beginning, and even before during the OpenOffice.org times in 2001. In the last decade I had an active position in the Brazilian community as member of the BrOffice NGO, and also because I coordinated and translated OpenOffice.org’s User Interface and Help Content to Brazilian Portuguese, a task I carry on to date with LibreOffice. I also took job on OpenOffice.org migration consulting in very large companies in Brazil and later I participated in the creation of The Document Foundation (TDF) in 2010, being member of its Board of Directors from 2010 to early 2014.
Having an experience in the corporate arena, I was concerned that gap between the documentation and Help Content of LibreOffice with respect to its features was dangerously growing, and that has to be reverted so the software and its collateral documentation has to go ideally hand on hand. On presenting the issue in our LibOConf in Aarhus (Quo Vadis HelpContent?), TDF understood that it was necessary to take action and here I am.
What does your typical workday look like?
Since I live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I must admit that when I wake up, people in Europe are already working full steam ahead and I have a feeling that I am always late and sleepy (laugh) in the job. Anyway, usually I check my mails just after my breakfast, and I get ready for the online meetings that for me are in the morning.
Then with the list of task from the meetings, which I cross-check with the off-line mails, I start at least one task to get it done in the day. That includes support in chats, answering e-mails in lists and off-list, and also updating a document, a wiki page or a web page.
You see, writing documentation on LibreOffice is a task that requires several hours or days of concentration and we must be focused all the time. To be able to write or review a specific feature, you must test the feature in your installation, understand the implication of the feature and even add some of your personal knowledge to give the reader a quality text and content.
How many people are involved in the doc project?
The doc project has two main lines: The literature and the Help content. The Help content is itself divided into contents and technology modernization.
On the literature, we are about three to five people contributing once in a while and this is an exposure. We need to update our books in timely fashion because they are considered as the official TDF books for LibreOffice and are translated into several languages. Since the license is Creative Commons, these books are also sources for other books on LibreOffice in many languages and communities.
On the help content, we have the valuable contribution of many individuals (from 10 to 20 persons), from translators to developers that help us to correct the contents and adjust the help pages to the new features and UI changes. The accuracy of the help pages is also an exposure we carry and our task is to close the gap. It must be noted that the correct description of a new feature is important for legacy purposes: if later on in the LibreOffice project, the feature does not work anymore, we still have a description of its existence and normal behavior.
Finally we consider that the current Help system, which is based on XML files transformed into HTML3.2 pages displayed as Writer/web documents can evolve to a modern browser-based technology. There are some tech issues yet to solve, especially because the Help system translation process is consolidated, works satisfactorily and its content must be preserved.
What’s been the biggest success so far, and the biggest challenge?
We updated the Getting Started Book to version 5.1 of LibreOffice, and we managed to put the help pages directly into a web server, at least as proof of concept, showing that we can evolve and achieve a better, richer help content.
My personal challenge is to produce the TDF LibreOffice Guides as a genuine companion product of the software, where the LibreOffice brand provides not only the software but also the collateral products for those migration or training professionals that support the deployment of LibreOffice in organizations.
I also pretend to close the distance between the user and the documentation. The usual way for the user is to hit F1 to get help but if the help is not enough, users go to Google and try a search for contents he is looking for. This is a time consuming task and we have already put entries in the software Help menu to link the software to the documentation website and to community forums. We expect an increase of visits to these services in benefit for our installed base.
But then the challenge is to get more contributors to help with documentation of LibreOffice, in all areas above. Authoring, reviewing and updating a book is a task that can be carried by non-developers, provided they have good knowledge in the software as advance user and have time do dedicate to the LibreOffice literature. The same is for the local communities if they want to translate LibreOffice books.
On the technology of the Help, the challenge is to select a viable technology to replace the current Help system.
What sort of help are you looking for?
We look for more contributors, people that can write, review, advanced contents on LibreOffice. It is important that we see the TDF LibeOffice Guides as a genuine companion product of the sofware, where TDF provides not only the software but also the collateral products for those professionals that support the deployment of LibreOffice in organizations.
Stay tuned to the blog for more about the documentation team this week – including a list of who’s who in the project, the tools being used, and how to get involved yourself! See here for more information on the docs team.
Document Liberation Project interview: Alex Pantechovskis
While most of our recent interviews have been focused on LibreOffice, this week we’re talking to someone involved in our sister project, the Document Liberation Project (DLP). If you’ve never heard of DLP before, watch our short video for an overview.
Alex Pantechovskis is a new contributor to the DLP, and has been working on libzmf, a library for importing Zoner Callisto/Draw documents.
Where are you based, what’s your IRC nickname, and GitHub profile?
I live in Lithuania, Vilnius. My IRC nick is AlexP11223, and my GitHub profile is at https://github.com/AlexP11223.
What prompted you to start work on libzmf?
It was a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) project. I thought that this project is interesting for me and the most suitable for my skills, so I contacted the mentor (David Tardon) via IRC and started working on it.
What was the biggest challenge working on the library?
ZMF4 is not the most complex file format (ZMF2 for example is much more complex, and this is one of the reasons why only ZMF4 is supported in libzmf so far), so working with it was not very difficult. But still there were some challenges, mostly related to reverse engineering: in binary formats it is often difficult to understand the exact structure of each element. Some small pieces such as vertical text align in tables are still not covered. Sometimes first attempts are found to be wrong as more details are uncovered, requiring rewrites of related code in the library.
Another challenge is: in some cases, when a feature doesn’t work as expected, it may be difficult or time-consuming to determine what causes this: wrong format understanding, wrong implementation, incorrect usage of librevenge and other libraries, bugs in libodfgen, bugs in LibreOffice…
What do you want to do next? (Either with libzmf or another library)
I don’t know – currently I am busy with studying at university, and some other things. It is possible that I will continue working on libzmf later, to add some of the missing features, or one of the other libraries.
What does the Document Liberation Project mean to you?
A great community doing important work.
How can others help to contribute to the DLP and open up proprietary files?
There are many ways to help. The most obvious is of course development: creating a new import library for some file format or improving one of the existing libraries or tools.
Also, most proprietary file formats do not have published specifications, so in order to work with them the structure needs to be reverse engineered and documented (preferably by contributing to OLE Toy project).
Another way, that does not require any programming skills, is creating and contributing sample documents for regression testing. It is an important but time-consuming task, because the documents should cover all format features (such as all parameters that can be set for a shape in a drawing application, or all text formatting options) and also many formats have more than one versions, so a separate set of documents is needed for each version.
What’s your favourite text editor and why?
For simple text, config files etc. I usually use whatever is available such as gEdit and Vim – on Windows I usually use Notepad++.
For coding I prefer IDEs like Visual Studio (C/C++, .NET) or JetBrains products (web development, Python, Java). I like the features offered by IDEs such as powerful refactoring, code completion, error/warning highlighting, convenient integrated debugging etc., and I have a powerful PC with SSD and a lot of RAM, so performance is usually not an issue. But I understand why many developers prefer editors like Vim (better text editing productivity, consistency, available everywhere), and it is especially relevant for big projects with complex build systems like LibreOffice, where it is hard/impossible to fully integrate (and maintain) an IDE.
During libzmf development I worked on Linux because it would be much more difficult to set up the needed environment on Windows (acquiring/building dependencies like Boost, librevenge, libtool, Autotools), so I used Qt Creator IDE. It allows developers to easily create a non-Qt C++ project from source files – and it worked fine most of the time.
Thanks Alex! And to anyone reading this who wants to get involved, join us and help to free the world from closed, proprietary file formats.
LibreOffice Conference 2016: video roundup
A short video roundup of this year’s conference in Brno – thanks to everyone who attended, and see you next year in Rome!
Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
LibreOffice contributor interview: Regina Henschel
Now that the LibreOffice Conference has finished, we’re back to our regular contributor interviews. This week it’s the turn of Regina Henschel who helps LibreOffice users by answering questions, testing new features and working on bug reports.
What is your IRC nickname / location / social media page?
I live in Dortmund (Germany). You can best contact me via the mailing lists. I don’t have any account on Twitter or Facebook or similar, and I seldom use IRC (nickname pppregin).
Do you work for a LibreOffice-related company or just contribute in
your spare time?
I do all of my work for LibreOffice in my spare time. In my daily job I’m teacher of mathematics.
How did you get involved with LibreOffice?
That is a wide range: I’m member of the Open Document Format Technical Committee (ODF TC), I answer questions on ask.libreoffice.org and on the mailing lists, I discuss and test new features and work on Bugzilla issues, and sometimes I contribute code.
What areas of the project do you normally work on? Anything else you want to tackle?
Currently I watch the development of some new features coming in from the Google Summer of Code, including testing, and I need a lot of my time for to prepare me for ODF TC meetings.
I would like to do much more coding. But especially in Draw, which I like most, the code is complicated and I don’t have enough spare time to learn it quickly. My special interest is in the 3D features of Draw.
What was your initial experience of contributing to LibreOffice like?
I started with user support for StarOffice in Usenet newsgroups more than sixteen years ago, and have got a lot of product experience with OpenOffice.org. A really surprising aspect of LibreOffice was how much easier it has become to build on Windows. Using Gerrit was unfamiliar for me, but help on IRC or mailing list was always there.
What areas of LibreOffice do you think need to be improved?
We need more volunteers to look after the increasing amount of users, and manage the growth of questions and bug reports. Also, we need more testers for new features and people to document user interface changes and new features.
Which is your preferred text editor? And why?
A lot of my work is creating test files and examining file formats. For that I use XML Notepad 2007, where I can work directly on the nodes, without need for all the quotes and angle brackets, which are needed in a simple editor. And I use Notepad++. It has syntax highlighting for XML and C++ (among lot of other languages), folding, it reformats XML, and makes diffs. Sometimes I use PSPad, mostly as a notepad, because of its quick starting, or I use its HexViewer. That is all on Windows, as you might have noticed.
What do you do when you’re not working on LibreOffice?
Besides my daily job, all the other time goes to my family.
Thanks Regina! And thanks indeed to our whole community – if you’re reading this and want to get involved, join us today and help to make LibreOffice even better.
LibreOffice contributor interview: Susobhan Ghosh
In this week’s interview, we talk to Susobhan Ghosh, who got involved in the project earlier this year and has been working on tasks for the Google Summer of Code (GSoC).
First off, what’s your IRC nickname, nationality and blog URL?
- IRC: susobhang70
- Nationality: Indian
- Blog: https://susobhang70.github.io (it’s very recently set up, after GSoC)
Where are you currently based, and do you work for a LibreOffice-related company or just code in your spare time?
I’m currently living in Hyderabad, India. I’m a third year Computer Science and Engineering student at IIIT Hyderabad. I’ve been coding full time throughout the summer for LibreOffice as a GSoC student – otherwise I code in my spare time.
How did you get involved with LibreOffice?
I started in January 2016, with bug tdf#95845 – I had to replace methods for labels/tooltips with CommandInfoProvider. I ended up causing a regression, which I later on fixed with help from samuel_m. I started contributing more frequently in March, and learnt a lot while fixing the Firefox persona search (tdf#88502).
What was your initial experience of contributing to LibreOffice like?
Initially I had trouble building the suite, and also pushing patches due to network restrictions, but I received good support from the developers like JanIV and chris_wot on IRC, and also samuel_m for submitting my first patch. Overall, the initial experience was pretty nice.
What areas of the project do you normally work on? Anything else you want to tackle?
I’m currently working on the sidebar for GSoC, and I’m familiar with the Firefox personas search. I’d personally like to work on adding theming support for LibreOffice (similar to other office suites) apart from the Firefox themes and color changing options, to provide better customization options.
What is your vision for the future of LibreOffice?
I’m very much looking forward to quite a few things: LibreOffice Online, LibreOffice for Android, the NotebookBar, and added customization and themes for LibreOffice – all of which are under development right now.
What was the very first program you wrote?
My first program was in C++, similar to a Hello World program, except I printed my own name instead of “Hello, World”.
Which is your preferred text editor, and why?
I’m not really a fan of the command line when it comes to editing. My favorite editor would be Sublime Text 3. I won’t bring up the debate as to whether it’s better than Vim or Atom or Emacs – I choose this just because I’m familiar with it have mastered it.
What do you do when you’re not working on LibreOffice?
I’m generally busy with studies and research throughout the year. Otherwise during my holidays, I like to play games – FIFA, Assassin’s Creed, Pokemon etc. Other than that, I watch football (FC Barcelona fan), go out for movies and hang out with my friends.
Thanks Susobhan! And thanks indeed to our whole community – if you’re reading this and want to get involved, join us today and help to make LibreOffice even better.