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Author: Mike Saunders

LibreOffice project and community recap: October 2021

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

  • Meanwhile, we have a new LibreOffice development blog thanks to Hossein Nourikhah, who recently joined us as a Developer Community Architect. He’ll be posting regular tips and tutorials for making changes to the software’s source code, and submitting patches.

  • During the month, we uploaded more videos from our recent LibreOffice Conference 2021. Check out the full playlist on YouTube – and we’re also adding them to PeerTube as well. Most of the videos are online now, but a few more are still to come – we’ll post updates here on the blog.

  • And on the topic of the conference: although it was online again this year, due to the pandemic, the local German community in Hamburg organised a small “hybrid” event. They could meet in person, but also take part in the online sessions. Hopefully we’ll have more face-to-face meetings early next year!

  • The Free Software Foundation Europe is starting a new competition: Youth Hacking 4 Freedom. This gives young people the chance to receive cash awards for participating in free software project, and to travel to Brussels to meet the other winners.

  • In the middle of the month, we announced LibreOffice 7.2.2, the second bugfix release in the 7.2 family. It includes 68 bug and compatibility fixes.

  • Got an idea for a great project or event that could benefit the LibreOffice community? We at The Document Foundation can give you financial support from our budget. For example, you may want to organise a localisation sprint to translate LibreOffice into your native language, or want to buy merchandise for an upcoming event. Whatever it is, if it benefits the community as a whole, we want to hear your ideas!

  • As part of our regular “Community Member Monday” series, we talked to Hlompho Mota who’s working on the Sesotho LibreOffice translation project in Lesotho. He also told us about the challenges facing adoption of free and open source software in his country.

  • LibreOffice took part in the Google Summer of Code 2021, and in October we summarised the results. Thanks to Bayram Çiçek, Sary Nasser, Akshit Kushwaha, Balázs Sántha, Panos Korovesis, Anshu Khare and Tushar Kumar Rai for their great work!

  • And finally, Rafael Lima from the Brazilian LibreOffice community is working on an extension to remove blank cells in LibreOffice Calc. It has four modes (single column, single row, blank rows and blank columns). Rafael is looking for more help to test and improve the extension, so if you find it useful, please give him a hand!

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!

LibreOffice extension to remove blank cells – Help to improve it!

Rafael Lima from the Brazilian LibreOffice community is working on an extension to remove blank cells in LibreOffice Calc. It has four modes (single column, single row, blank rows and blank columns). Here’s a quick animation of it in action:

So far, the main functionality is there, but Rafael would like to improve it. We asked him for some more info…

What does the extension do?

The main purpose of this extension is to remove blank cells to easily compact data. For instance, suppose you have a table with data and then you delete the contents of some rows. The next thing you might want to do is remove these blank rows to compact your table. By using the Remove Blank Cells extension this can be done with a single click.

Currently the extension supports four modes to remove blank cells. The simplest one is when you select a single row or column, then the extension will detect the selection and compact the data removing all blank cells. However, if a matrix is selected, then a message will be displayed and you can choose if blank rows or blank columns are to be removed.

When did you start making it?

I started writing the extension in February this year and finished the first version in less than one month. Then I kept testing it and working on improvements and the final version was finished in July.

At first the extension focused on my use case, because in my work with data analysis I often have to remove blank rows and columns. However, after seeing many people asking about how to remove blank cells in LibreOffice, I decided to pack it and make it available for everyone since it might be useful for other people.

What are the current limitations of it?

The main limitation of the extension is when the user wants to process very large tables (with tens of thousands of rows), which might take some time to finish. In these cases a progress bar is shown so the user can keep track of the data processing.

Moreover, the extension still does not support translations, so the user interface is only available in English. I plan to support translations in the next release.

How can people help to improve it?

Because this is the first released version of the extension, I would appreciate having more people testing it and reporting issues on the extension’s GitHub page.

I would also like to invite the community to create a better icon for the extension, so that it would be more in line with the default icon theme in LibreOffice.

In the future I will also need some assistance with translating the extension’s strings.

So, everyone is welcome to try out the extension – and if you have some technical knowledge, jump in and help Rafael and the community to improve it! Check out the wiki for more information on extension development.

Ten more videos from the LibreOffice Conference 2021

Here are some more videos from the LibreOffice Conference 2021! Check out the playlist, using the button in the top-right – or scroll down for links to individual videos:

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Individual links

Note: many of these are also available on PeerTube, and more will be added…

Stay tuned for more videos from rooms 2 and 3 of the conference!

Announcing the election for the next TDF Board of Directors

Marina Latini, on behalf of the Membership Committee, writes:

On October 18, we officially announced the upcoming election for the next Board of Directors of The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice.

As per § 7 II of our statutes (binding German version and non-binding English translartion) the Board’s term lasts two years. The current Board started its duty on February 18, 2020. Therefore, the old Board remains in charge until the end of February 17, 2022, so the new Board will be in charge the day after that, which is February 18, 2022.

That upcoming term will then (regularly) end on February 17, 2024, so the next election of the Board of Directors will take place before.

As per § 6 III, only members of the Board of Trustees of The Document Foundation, as well as current members of any of its bodies, are eligible to be elected into the Board of Directors, and the election is prepared and supervised by the Membership Committee (§ 7 II).

The active electoral right is reserved to those who have been members of the Board of Trustees before this announcement (§ 7 II).

§ 6 III also states that members of the Board of Directors or their deputies may not be members of the Membership Committee and vice versa. This means that current members of the Membership Committee are eligible to be elected, but with the acceptance of their new role they lose their current role in the MC. For clarification, they have to step down from the Membership Committee, with effect no later than to the beginning of the new term of the Board of Directors, the minute before accepting to become a member of the Board of Directors.

There is one more notable limitation: Per § 8 IV of the statutes, a maximum of 1/3 members of the Board of Directors is allowed to work on an employment basis for the same company, organisation, entity or one of its affiliate organisations.

Nomination of candidates fulfilling the above requirements, as well as self nomination is welcome. In total, at least seven Board of Directors members are required, and given there are enough candidates, up to three deputies can be elected (§ 7 II). As deputies are on duty quite often, we encourage many candidates to participate.

Re-election of current members of the Board of Directors is permitted (§ 7 II).

Please send nominations and self-nominations via e-mail to elections@documentfoundation.org (which reaches the Membership Committee in private) and at the same time to board-discuss@documentfoundation.org (which is a public mailing list).

We kindly ask nominees who would like to stand for election to provide a statement of up to 75 words – longer statements will be cut off at the maximum – on their candidacy as continuous text (so no bullet lists or multiple paragraphs). In addition, you have to provide and keep up to date your full name, e-mail address and your corporate affiliation, if any, or state the lack of an affiliation, and please announce that you will provide information on all future changes as soon as possible. Specifically, it is necessary to indicate all information regarding § 8 IV of the statutes.

Discussions with the candidates and questions to them as well as questions about the election should take place on the public board-discuss@documentfoundation.org mailing list. For details on how to use the mailing list, see here.

Eligible voters will receive further details via email prior to the start of election, including a summary of the candidates, details on how to access the voting system, and instructions on how to independently verify the vote count. Please ensure the Membership Committee has your recent and correct e-mail address on file. For questions, you can reach the Membership Committee in private at elections@documentfoundation.org.

Following the timeline set forth in § 7 II, requiring a 45 day advance notice, we hereby announce the following timeline for the election:

(00:00 is beginning of the day, 24:00 is end of the day)

  1. Monday, 2021-10-18: announcement of the election; and start of the nomination phase
  2. Thursday, 2021-11-25, 24:00 CET/UTC+1: end of the nomination phase (one week before the election starts, as per § 7 II)
  3. Friday, 2021-12-03, 00:00 CET/UTC+1: official start of the election (at least 45 days after announcement of the election, as per § 7 II)
  4. Monday, 2021-12-13, 24:00 CET/UTC+1: end of the election
  5. Tuesday, 2021-12-14: announcement of the preliminary results of the election and acknowledgement of role
  6. Wednesday, 2021-12-15, 00:00 CET/UTC+1: start of the challenging phase
  7. Monday, 2021-12-20, 24:00 CET/UTC+1: end of the challenging phase
  8. afterwards: official announcement of the final results
  9. Friday, 2022-02-18: new Board of Directors officially in charge, and election of a Chairperson and a Deputy Chairperson from among its members

Live sessions with the candidates: Between the end of the nomination phase (Thursday, 2021-11-25, 24:00 CET/UTC+1) and the official start of the election (Friday, 2021-12-03, 00:00 CET/UTC+1), the Membership Committee will organise public – and if possible recorded – live sessions, where members of the Board of Trustees can ask questions to the candidates. Everyone, also non-members, is invited to join these sessions. We will also make available to the general public the recordings and the answers given.

Questions to the candidates: In addition, after the end of the nomination phase (Thursday, 2021-11-25, 24:00 CET/UTC+1), the Membership Committee will provide a set of questions to all the candidates. All candidates are kindly invited to send their answers, which will also be made available to the general public.

Be advised that the newly elected Board of Directors will only be in charge from February 18, 2022 on. The current Board of Directors will however include them in the decision making process, to ease up the transition.

Challenges to this announcement with respect to the deadlines outlined have to happen no later than seven (7) days after this announcement, via e-mail to elections@documentfoundation.org (which reaches the Membership Committee in private).

Challenges to the preliminary results of the election have to happen until the deadline set forth above, via e-mail to elections@documentfoundation.org (which reaches the Membership Committee in private).

Community Member Monday: Hlompho Mota

Today we’re talking to Hlompho Mota, who’s working on the Sesotho LibreOffice translation project in Lesotho…

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I am a native of Lesotho, and a dreamer and a person who aspires to make changes. Currently I’m working in a business that serves other businesses in Lesotho to get recognition in the market, and generally grow to become more self-reliant. Other than my business, I do try and dabble in technology and try to understand how it works – and get a sense on how it can be relevant in the area of life that I live in at this moment.

But besides that, I consider myself as lifelong learner and I hope that the learning will continue for the rest of my life. Currently, I’m a self-taught developer trying to participate in as many open-source projects as possible, with the hope of bringing much-needed development to my part of the world.

How did the Sesotho LibreOffice translation project get started?

I’ll refer to a few individuals who I came across, who grew the seeds to contribute to this project.

  • Mamako Mota: My wife, who was somehow able to believe in some of my vision, and hopes that the vision will become reality someday. She was willing to help me get the word out to people.
  • Edwin R Brown: One of the most intelligent people that I had the honour of meeting. He lived by his philosophy of trying to make the world a better place. During the times that he came to Lesotho, we were able to talk about some of the many ways that we looked at the world. However, given that there are some serious changes that need to be brought about with developing the country, I feel that we need some changes in the outlook in my part of the world, and only then will we be able to understand this man’s vision.
  • Vincent D. Warmerdam: A machine learning practitioner and another person I was humbled enough to meet. From how he hold his talks on in the Python community, right down to how he does his work – it all radiates a purpose that has inspired me to have an outlook on what can happen when people have enthusiasm for the work that they do. Besides that, he has shown me some of the ways that vision can be used to develop language, and has shared the tools and resources that he personally developed.
  • Maele Neko: One person who I originally spent time with, where we had hoped to make significant developments in Lesotho and Sesotho. But we were originally came across the challenges that came along with translating, due to the differences in Lesotho and South African dialect. The challenges in life and the discussions I’ve had with him have inspired me to continue. However, he was able to contribute to Sesotho knowledge and language on Twitter.
  • Lastly, Red Hat, the company: I see it as a company that was driven to make a business model out of open source projects. In time, I would either hope to work with this organization, or build one like it – in the hope that I can be the change that is needed in Lesotho and Africa in total.

Is free and open source software widely known/used in Lesotho? Are there any challenges there to wider adoption?

This is where there is a tragedy, yet I aspire to help with creating a solution. Given some of the dynamics that are involved in the size and demographics of the the population, there has been little support from many of the profit-driven organizations. To make matters worse, the adoption of open source is yet to reach ideal levels because of the lack of understanding – because technology as a whole in our part of the world has been slow. The drive to do better is something that still needs to be developed.

With that being said, there are other parts of the my world where my work and passion cross paths – mainly in terms of developing businesses to become better, and helping them to become technologically savvy. So in that light, the aim of this project would be realised in time, when businesses begin to embrace technology, and the language barrier will be tackled in one way or another. In this case, my vision is that Lesotho will become a home of open source – and will become more of a player in the tech sector, rather than just a spectator.

How can people help with the translation or general promotion in your area?

The vision is not just in translation, but that we go though this process and that Lesotho has a better understanding of open source and technology. The open source community needs to understand that the vision of open source (or at least from my view) has always been about making progress more relatable to society as a whole, than just about competing with closed source software.

However, I hope to do my bit to make sure that open source spreads to as many people as possible. Translation is the first part of this, but in time I hope to be an ambassador and developer. (After fumbling with C and C++, hopefully I can help there as well.)

From this point onwards, I hope that we can not only just translate, but have a contextual discussion on why some ideas are named the way that they are – and hopefully then, open source can then make the impact that it’s meant to make.

Many thanks to Hlompho for his work, and sharing his thoughts! Check out our Native Language Projects for LibreOffice in many other languages around the world – and if yours is missing, you can help us to add it!

Next batch of videos from the LibreOffice Conference 2021

Here are some more videos from the LibreOffice Conference 2021! Check out the playlist, using the button in the top-right – or scroll down for links to individual videos:

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.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

Individual links

Note: many of these are also available on PeerTube, and more will be added…

Stay tuned for more videos from rooms 2 and 3 of the conference!

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