Welcome Juan José González, TDF’s new Web Technology Engineer!

Photo of Juan José

Here at The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind the LibreOffice community, we have many websites and services: this blog, the LibreOffice website, our wiki, the extensions website, Weblate and many more.

To improve them and keep them up-to-date, TDF now has a new Web Technology Engineer! So let’s get to know him…

Tell us a bit about yourself!

My name is Juan José and I am from México. I moved from my beautiful hometown to Guadalajara nearly thirteen years ago looking for a good job as a developer and I fell in love with the city. In Guadalajara I met my wife, my friends and many free software enthusiasts.

Since the first day, I realized that there were local communities around free software so I like to keep in contact with them, and contribute with technical talks about various topics.

I studied a masters degree in Computer Science, where I got interested in the semantic web and the automated reasoning discipline behind it. I’ve been working as a web developer for more than a decade now.

I am so happy that I found this position at The Document Foundation – I am determined to contribute as much as I can to improve our existing web sites and web apps that support the foundation’s efforts.

Were you using LibreOffice before you joined TDF?

I used LibreOffice to write the final project of my bachelor degree, I can say that LibreOffice was the first application for what I consider myself a power user (that was 10 years ago – but I have lost most of my talents sadly). I also remember writing an essay about the importance of open document formats, and my references included many people from the LibreOffice community.

This role marks my first time actively contributing to LibreOffice – so I hope I can help the project significantly.

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What’s your new role at TDF?

I joined the Foundation as the new Web Technology Engineer, where I will dedicate my time to support, fix and improve the experience of our websites.

I believe it’s a great role since the web has become the default entry point to all people that want to interact with LibreOffice, from being an end-user, to collaborate on the software’s development. I have adopted the mission to facilitate this interaction.

What are you working on?

I am starting on the extensions site – it’s the place where you can get templates and extensions for LibreOffice. I am replying to reported issues by improving the web experience. I also want to keep an eye on the experience of the end user, taking care of both ends: extension developers and the users.

We’re really happy to have Juan José on board! LibreOffice users and community members can give him feedback and help via the website mailing list. Looking forward to seeing all the great things to come 😊

Community Member Monday: Afshin Falatooni

Afshin Falatooni

Today we’re talking to Afshin Falatooni, from the Persian-speaking LibreOffice community!

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I am from Iran, the city of Mashhad. I speak Persian (Farsi), and I love to contribute to LibreOffice! This January, I have just turned 46 years old. My favorite hobby is climbing, and if I have time, I usually go to the mountains on Fridays, which is the weekend holiday in our country.

I work as a book editor, typesetter and layout designer. I became interested in the LibreOffice project because of my job. Many editors and typesetters use Microsoft Word more than any other program, and I was one of them before I got acquainted with LibreOffice. But, now that I know the advantages of LibreOffice as a free software project, I use Writer as much as the norms of the publishing market allows me.

What are you working on in the LibreOffice project right now?

I write regularly on the Persian LibreOffice blog. My goal is to provide educational contents around LibreOffice there. Additionally, if I find a bug that is either directly or indirectly related to Persian language, in addition to reporting it to Bugzilla with the necessary screenshots and documents, I post it to the blog to make others aware of the important bugs.

We also have a Persian-speaking group in Telegram, where I answer questions as far as I can, alongside the other admin of the group.

Many years ago, I added a large collection of Persian words to OpenOffice.org project, which were likely to be written incorrectly. Using that word list, the Persian language was added as part of the OpenOffice.org auto-correction feature. The word bank continues to exist in LibreOffice, and is useful for the Persian speaking users.

Many thanks to Afshin for all his contributions 😊 All LibreOffice users are welcome to build up our native-language communities and reach more people around the world!

Carlos Parra Zaldivar, 1961 – 2022

Sad news from the Hispanic LibreOffice community. Carlos Parra Zaldivar, a long-time collaborator in the community, member of The Document Foundation and advocate for Free Software, passed away on November 20th.

The commitment that Carlos showed to the LibreOffice project, Free Software and document freedom, from his native Cuba, transcended the borders of that island. We in the global LibreOffice community are very grateful to Carlos for all his work, and hope his loved ones can find strength in this difficult time.

Rest in peace, Carlos.

Czech translation of LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.4

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Zdeněk Crhonek (aka “raal”) from the Czech LibreOffice community writes:

The Czech team translated the Calc Guide 7.4 – and it’s now available on the documentation page. Our team consist of three translators: Petr Kuběj, Radomír Strnad and Zdeněk Crhonek, along with localized screenshot maker Roman Toman, and Miloš Šrámek, who prepared machine translations. The team is now working on the Base Guide 7.3.

Indeed, many thanks to everyone in the Czech community for their work! Learn more about LibreOffice’s documentation project here.

Video: LibreOffice project and community in 2022 💪

Here’s a quick recap of what we did in the LibreOffice community in 2022! Well, just a few of the many things 😉 Thanks to everyone who contributed last year! (PeerTube version of this video here.)

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LibreOffice project and community recap: December 2022

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Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…

  • We started by announcing the winners in the Month of LibreOffice, November 2022. Thanks to everyone who took part – and if you requested your stickers or extra merch, it’s on its way! (The post is quite slow at this time of year, so it may take a while longer.)

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Book cover

Kevin Suo

Meetup photo

Team photo

  • Finally, we wished everyone in the community a happy new year – and want to say a huge thank you for everyone’s contributions in 2022. LibreOffice keeps going from strength to strength, thanks to your help 😊

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Keep in touch – follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Mastodon. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join us and help to make LibreOffice even better!