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Recap of LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023 in Nepal

LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023 in Nepal

Suraj Bhattarai, our Liaison for the LibreOffice Nepali Community, sent us this report:

In October 2023, the LibreOffice Nepali Community organized an online localization event. They called it the “LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023” with a tagline “Unlock Native: LibreOffice Speaks Nepali”. The localization sprint was mentored by localization expert Saroj Dhakal, our liaison in Nepal (me – Suraj Bhattarai) and Kathmandu University engineering student Aadarsha Dhakal.

In order to build excitement around the event, they invited key open source community and student clubs from different locations in Nepal. The invitation was generously accepted by AskBuddie, Kathmandu University Open Source Community (KUOSC), Birendra Open Source Club (BOSC), and Nepal Open Source Klub (NOSK) – and they all joined the collaboration. Following the immediate announcement, many volunteers came forward and expressed their willingness to join in and contribute to the LibreOffice project.

LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023 in Nepal

LibreOffice’s Nepali Community started their sprint on 11th of October. 42 people appeared on the first day orientation. Since many of the involved people were absolutely new to localization, expert Saroj Dhakal begin with an introduction to LibreOffice and The Document Foundation’s Weblate instance. Later, the mentors made participants familiar with the localization process in our tools, with a quick demonstration on how to proceed with strings, checks, and different glossary terms.

The webinar was hosted by Satya Raj Awasthi from NOSK and facilitated by Saroj, Suraj, Adarsha from KUOSC, Abhishkar Aryal from AskBuddie, and Kushal Pathak from BOSC. The sprint was initially considered for a span of two weeks – but the participants showed strong interest, and carried it on for the full month.

The localization sprint had a hard choice with clashing timelines, due to two of the approaching major festivities affecting the consistency of the sprint. Indeed, the sprint had to take a break for 10 days, so effectively the sprint only took place for 19 days. Still, some very committed participants still utilized some of their time in between.

LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023 in Nepal

Each day, the participants met online in a video call, querying mentors about difficult translations. Those who were inexperienced with localization were suggested only to proceed for one hour a day while in the group call with mentors. But other, more experienced people were free to utilize any appropriate time of the day based on their flexibility.

Most students thanked the LibreOffice Nepali Community for organizing the localization on such an open scale. At the same time, they admitted that they could effectively utilize their vacation time in learning new things, all thanks to the sprint. The event finished on the10th of November. So the effective hours each participant contributed to the project was around 19. With this, the LibreOffice localization Sprint 2023 officially counts as the third longest LibreOffice localization sprint organized by the Nepali Community.

LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023 in Nepal

Summary

  • Name: LibreOffice Localization Sprint 2023
  • Event Duration: 11th October- 10th November
  • Active Participation: 16 (until the end date)
  • Involved from the community: 4

First half

  • Winners: 7
  • Prize: LibreOffice printed 750ml Aluminum Water Bottle
  • Strings localized: 6,817+

Breakdown

  • Translated: 4025
  • New strings suggested: 2792
  • Checks corrected: 12

Second half

  • Winners: 3
  • Prize: LibreOffice printed 750ml Aluminum Water Bottle
  • Strings localized: 4,118+

Breakdown

  • Translated: 2316
  • New strings suggested: 1802
  • Checks corrected: 6

Leaderboard winners

  • Winners: 6
  • Prize: Event logo printed T-Shirt

In total

  • Winners: 16
  • Prize: Event logo printed T-Shirt
  • Strings localized: 10,935+

Breakdown

  • Translated: 6341
  • New strings suggested: 4594
  • Checks corrected: 18

The participation and appreciation certificate for the involved communities were issued on 18th of November. The prizes to all the winners were shipped by Dec 4th. The individual communities invited winners and participants in their own campus space and celebrated in-person handover and closing of the sprint, promising members to introduce more LibreOffice activities in their space.

TDF says: huge thanks to everyone involved! What a fantastic effort, with great results 😊

Community Member Monday: Dominique Prieur

Map of LibreOffice community members

Today we’re talking to Dominique Prieur, who recently became a member of The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice…

Hi! Tell us a bit about yourself…

I’m French (and my English is too poor and too bad). I live in Orléans, 120 km south of Paris. I was in the army for 18 months and then a civil servant for 44 years. I’m now retired. I read a lot, listen to music, play with Python and look at the sky and the stars 🙂 Oh yes, I take a lot of photographs.

What are you doing with LibreOffice right now?

I used to work for the Direction générale des finances publiques (French Treasury). We used LibreOffice exclusively. I managed the finances of large hospitals and had lots of very large CSV files to reprocess. Today, I only do basic office automation. Occasionally, I give free courses on LibreOffice, particularly on styles and regular expressions. I’m working with the Orléans prison to develop office automation workshops with prisoners.

Why did you choose to join the LibreOffice project?

I wanted to join the project to find out how it works “from the inside”. I don’t have much experience of it yet…

What does LibreOffice need for the future?

LibreOffice needs to listen to its users again and again. It must remain open source.

Many thanks to Dominique for the support in our community! And LibreOffice will always be free and open source software, so no worries about that 😊

The Calc Guide 7.6 is Published

The Documentation Team is proud to announce the immediate availability of the Calc Guide release 7.6.

The Calc Guide 7.6 update was coordinated by Steve Fanning, with assistance of Olivier Hallot and B. Antonio Fernandez, and is based on the Calc Guide 7.5. Many accessibility issue were addressed and is work in progress.

Steve Fanning
Steve Fanning

This book has been updated from LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.5. It covers changes that are visible in the LibreOffice Calc user interface, including the following areas:
• Detect scientific notation option on Text Import dialog (Chapters 1 & 11).
• Confirmation dialog when deleting empty sheet(s) (Chapter 1).
• Data Entry Form tool (Chapter 2).
• Sort by Color option for AutoFilters (Chapters 2 & 14).
• Poisson distribution option for random numbers on the Fill tool (Chapter 2).
• Chart data tables (Chapter 3).
• Sparklines (Chapter 3).
• Drawing styles (Chapter 5).
• Document themes (Chapters 5 & 15).
• Formula indicator and hint option (Chapters 8 & 15).
• Removed unnecessary statement about taking particular care when using date information in the GETPIVOTDATA() function (Chapter 9).
• Pivot table compact layout (Chapter 9).
• Saving solver settings to file (Chapter 10).
• General comment facility (Chapter 12).
• Error codes (Appendix B).

LibreOffice 7.6 Community also includes many other changes, including improvements in accessibility, change tracking, spell checking, and interoperability with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats.

Release Notes are here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.6

The guide is available for immediate download in PDF format as well as in source format (OpenDocument Format). Soon it will be available as printed book by LuLu inc. and in HTML format for online reading

Download the Calc Guide 7.6 from the documentation websites at: documentation.libreoffice.org and the bookshelf at books.libreoffice.org.

LibreOffice community interview: Robert Cabane, QA project

Robert Cabane

Today we’re talking to Robert Cabane, who helps out in LibreOffice’s Quality Assurance (QA) community:

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I’m now retired (aged 71), living in Bordeaux, France. Formerly mathematics teacher, successively in Paris and Bordeaux, and as such involved in the teaching of computer science (named “informatics” in Europe).

Since my retirement, I have been an active member of the Société Informatique de France. I have also been co-author of some textbooks on mathematics.

In my free time I like to go hiking in the Pyrenées mountains.

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

I like to detect bugs and check for them in Bugzilla! When you encounter something strange using LibreOffice, it’s not immediately clear whether it’s a bug or a feature… so I first look in Ask LibreOffice or the forums.

After that, searching in Bugzilla for a specific bug is a unique experience, because LibreOffice is an enormous piece of software. You have to test various keywords in order to eventually find a more or less corresponding bug description. If the bug is referenced, consider adding useful comments; if it’s not the case, try to propose a new bug, as well-documented as possible.

Why did you choose to join the project, and how was the experience?

I started as a user with StarOffice 5.2 (1999), simply because I needed a good office suite running under Linux, and I followed with OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice since its beginning.

My experience was excellent with Calc, good with Draw, and more difficult with Writer, essentially because of two reasons: writing mathematics with Writer isn’t as easy as it is with LaTeX, and exchanging documents with people who use Microsoft Word can be very frustrating at times.

Anything else you plan to do in the future? What does LibreOffice really need?

I think that some activism is still useful at the citizen level: using LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office is now very common in local, regional and national associations, and should increase for evident reasons. And making donations eligible to tax deductions (as is the case in Germany) would be fantastic!

Big thanks to Robert for all his contributions! Everyone is welcome to join our QA community and help to keep LibreOffice rock-solid.

Winners in the Month of LibreOffice, November 2023 – Get your free sticker pack!

Month of LibreOffice stickers

At the beginning of November, we began a new Month of LibreOffice, celebrating community contributions all across the project. We do these every six months – so how many people got sticker packs this time? Check it out…

Fantastic work, everyone! Hundreds of people, all across the globe, have helped out in our projects and communities. We’re hugely thankful for your contributions – and, of course, everyone who’s listed on the wiki page can get a sticker pack, with the stickers shown above.

How to claim

If you see your name (or username) on this page, get in touch! Email mike.saunders@documentfoundation.org with:

  • your name (or username) from the wiki page
  • along with your postal address

and we’ll send you a bunch of stickers for your PC, laptop and other kit. (Note: your address will only be used to post the stickers, and will be deleted immediately afterwards.) If you contributed to the project in November but you’re not on the wiki page, please let us know what you did, so that we can add you!

There is one more thing…

And we have an extra bonus: nine contributors have also been selected at random to get an extra piece of merchandise – a LibreOffice hoodie, T-shirt, rucksack or snazzy glass mug. Here are the winners (names or usernames) – we’ll get in touch personally with the details:

  • Kira Tubo
  • Steph1
  • @makerblock@mastodon.social
  • Joanmarie Diggs
  • PaulL1
  • Bernd Wechner
  • @hack_the_planet@fosstodon.org
  • Xandru Martino Ruz
  • Sahil Gautam
  • TXDon

Congratulations to all the winners, and a big thanks once again to everyone who took part – your contributions keep the LibreOffice project strong. We plan to have another Month of LibreOffice in 2024, but everyone is welcome to see what they can do for LibreOffice at any time!

LibreOffice in Sri Lanka

ICTer International Conference is the successor to the seminal International Information Technology Conference (IITC) held in Sri Lanka since 1998. We have been invited by the conference organizers, thanks to the connection established by Daniska Navin, a long time project member, to attend the 2023 event on November 8 and November 9, to present LibreOffice during a keynote speech, and to manage a two day workshop about LibreOffice and the Migration Protocol, on November 7 and November 10.

I attended the conference and provided the keynote speech about LibreOffice Technology, and together with Lothar Becker – Certification Co-Chair – managed the two day workshop. The conference was a huge success, as we met many interested people, including some students who asked to organize a similar workshop in 2024 at their universities in other cities of Sri Lanka. We will definitely be back next year to attend ICTer 2024, and to visit the other universities for a workshop.

During the workshop we covered many topics:

  1. Workshop Day 1: LibreOffice project’s history, the technical evolution of the development platform, LibreOffice’s six modules, with an introduction to main features, an introduction to open source software and open standards (for software and for documents), and free open-source licenses and business models.
  2. Workshop Day 2: LibreOffice Migration Protocol, fixing bugs and regressions, interoperability with proprietary document formats, conversion of document templates and macros, compatibility of VBA macros, and integration with third-party applications.

At the end of the workshop, we handed the basic LibreOffice Certified recognition to the following people (in alphabetical order by first name): BWRU Siriwardhana, CS Jayakody, DN Gunawardana, Dilani Sagarika, DMDC Kumari, Gayani Sadagiri, HK Jayarathna, HP Henegama, JKDI Thilakarathne, JRM Muthumalki, KDPM Kannangara, Malsha Katugampala, Mrs LC Karunasagara, Ms AS Gunathilake, Nisantha Ranathunga, NS Gajasinghe, R Prasanna, Rajika Dilrukshi, Renuka Matiwalakumbura, RMJM Rathnayake, Ruwan Jayalath, Sachini de Silva, Selani Ekenayake, Vimukthika Sewwuandi and WMNK Weerasooriya.

A big thank to all our hosts at the School of Computing of the University of Colombo: the Director Dr DAS Atukorale and the Deputy Director Prof Kasun de Zoysa, and all the other academic and administrative staff members who have welcomed us and made the conference memorable. A special thanks to Sanduni Thrimavithana, who made our stay as memorable as the conference. And a final thanks to all the other people we have met during the four days. See you all in 2024.

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