Category: Community
LibreItalia Conference in Empoli (December 10, 2022)
Members and supporters of LibreItalia, the not for profit association that promotes the use of open source software and open formats, met on Saturday, December 10, in Empoli (near Florence) to discuss the adoption of these solutions – which ensure the independence of companies and users from multinational technology corporations, and guarantee the freedom and privacy of content – in public administrations, in order to comply with the dictate of the Digital Administration Code, one of the most ignored Italian laws ever.
The use of software and document formats that are not controlled by a single company, and that are not driven by its business strategies, is a prerequisite in the direction of the independence of a country – starting with individual citizens and ending with institutions – that is the basis of the so-called “digital sovereignty,” that is, self-sufficiency with respect to digital technologies controlled by Big Tech.
The 9th LibreItalia Conference, the first without the restrictions due to the pandemic, opened with welcome speeches by President Enio Gemmo and Gruppo Operativo Linux Empoli (GOLEM), followed by those of Flavia Marzano: FOSS in Public Administration, Professor Andreas Formiconi of the University of Florence: Importance of FOSS for Education, and Italo Vignoli on the political role of Associazione LibreItalia.
After the break for lunch, there were two talks by Marco Marega on the activities of the localization group and one by Gabriele Ponzo on how to contribute to the LibreOffice project, followed by the presentation of the migration protocol to LibreOffice, and a discussion session, with questions and answers.
Community Member Monday: 锁琨珑 (Kevin Suo)
Today we’re talking to 锁琨珑 (Kevin Suo), who’s doing great work improving LibreOffice and fixing bugs…
Tell us a bit about yourself!
I’m 36 years old, and I was born in the Gansu Province of China. I live in Beijing and I’m working as an Of Counsel in a leading law firm in Beijing. Some people may think that I’m a lawyer. No, I am not a lawyer – I am a professional accountant. My team work as local counsel on behalf of clients defending on Antidumping and Countervailing Duty investigations initiated by authorities (e.g., the U.S. Department of Commerce, the European Union etc) against companies and industries in China, and accountants play an important role in this field.
Although I am very busy at work every day, I love the internet, computers and programming. I can program using Python+Pandas and SAS, and tools such as these have greatly helped me in my daily data analysis work. I’m also a Linuxer. Many years ago I used Ubuntu, Debian, Arch Linux, and even Gentoo, but now I stick to Fedora Workstation. Currently 99.9% of my daily work is done under Linux, including those mission-critical work we submitted to the U.S. DOC and EU authorities.
I also know some HTML, CSS and PHP, and I have a server running at home with a WordPress instance and a Nextcloud instance. The server also servers as a mirror of some of the Libreoffice bibisect repositories (it is very slow to download from the TDF server here in China, so I need to mirror them).
What are you working on in the LibreOffice project right now?
I started using LibreOffice many years ago, probably when I was in college (when it was the OpenOffice.org era). After that, I became a contributor to LibreOffice. I started with localisation and quality assurance (QA), reporting, testing and confirming bugs. Then I learned and started bibisecting. Soon, I started building LibreOffice by myself, and then I started to learn C++ and fix some easy bugs. I am even surprised by myself, that before contributing to LibreOffice I only learned very little of the C language (when I was in collage, as an “elective course”), and at that time I never thought I might learn and use C++.
Most of the commits I have made to LibreOffice were related to the pdfimport feature in the sdext module. I think I got involved in this module very randomly – I wanted to know more about the the LibreOffice code base, then I read the sdext pdfimport module by chance, and found that to understand the code I first need to read the PDF specifications!
Then I read the specifications, learned some C++ online, identified some bugs which have affected me on my daily work, and then found that I was able to fix them! Also, as I am trying to fix more bugs, I now find that I need to learn something about Unicode! That is a lot of fun. You learn, you contribute, and then you learn more!
Some of you may know that, recently, I fixed a bug related to right-to-left text mirroring in the Draw/Writer pdf import (i.e. tdf#104597) which has impacted many RTL (right-to-left text) users for a long time. That bug came to my view, since someone added me to CC due to several of my patches in the sdext pdfimport module. I got interested in that bug because, although I am a Chinese, I learned some Arabic characters and words in the mosque when I was young. Yes, I am a Chinese muslim!
When did you get involved in LibreOffice, and what was it like?
I don’t remember when I get involved, but my first commit to the core repository was in year 2014. Many people have helped me, e.g. Eike Rathke, Noel Grandin, Caolán McNamara, Mike Kaganski etc. At the beginning I thought everything is difficult, but now I feel comfortable.
What advice would you give for others who want to help out with the code?
I would like to say that, to contribute to LibreOffice, you do not need to be a programmer. An accountant can also contribute, given that you are desired to learn!
LibreOffice project and community recap: November 2022
Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…
- November was a Month of LibreOffice! This is something we do every six months, to say our thanks to everyone who contributes to the project – and encourage others to join in. 307 people won sticker packs – and a few others got some special bonus LibreOffice merchandise 😉
- Throughout the month, we edited and uploaded videos from our recent LibreOffice Conference 2022. All videos should be on this playlist now, apart from a couple which had problems with the sound:
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- Speaking of the conference, attendee (and long-time LibreOffice contributor) Regina Henschel told us her experiences of the event. We’re glad she enjoyed it!
- Early in November, we announced LibreOffice 7.3.7, which is planned as the last release in the 7.3 branch. Users still using this version should start looking at the LibreOffice 7.4 family, now at 7.4.2, which has been extensively tested by millions of users worldwide. And later in the month, we released LibreOffice 7.4.3.
- FOSDEM, the biggest European free software event, is coming up – and the first in-person meeting since 2022. Of course, LibreOffice and The Document Foundation will be there, and we put out a Call for Papers for the LibreOffice Technology devroom. See you there!
- In other event news, the Indonesian LibreOffice community reported back from the Indonesian Linux Conference 2022, where they gave talks. A big thanks to everyone who attended!
- Later in the month, we chatted with Muthuramalingam Krishnan from the Tamil LibreOffice project. If you can speak Tamil, you can give him a hand to grow the community 👍
- Did you know? You can dock colour palettes in many places in LibreOffice Draw. Harald Berger, from the German LibreOffice community, made a video demonstrating this:
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- We have a new team member at The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice! (That means we’re now 13 people.) Stéphane Guillou joins us as a Quality Assurance Analyst – so we caught up with him, to find out what he’ll be doing.
- Earlier in 2022, together with more than 100 European organisations and companies, The Document Foundation signed the Open Letter about the universal right to install any software on any device. Join us and sign the letter today.
- And last but not least: the LibreOffice Documentation Team announced the immediate availability of the Impress Guide 7.4 and Getting Started Guide 7.4. The Impress Guide 7.4 was coordinated by Peter Schofield and revised by Kees Kriek. The guide is available in PDF as well as in ODF formats – and an online version is available in the bookshelf website.
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!
Winners in the Month of LibreOffice, November 2022!
At the start 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…
Awesome 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 these stickers and more:
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 so that we can check, 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:
- Aleksandar Popovic
- vibrationoflife
- Benyamin Limanto
- Jürgen Kirsten
- Tarcísio Ladeia de Oliveira
- Omkar Acharekar
- Jaroslav Kratochvil
- Ettore Atalan
- William Friedman
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 next year, but everyone is welcome to see what they can do for LibreOffice at any time!
Getting Started Guide 7.4 and Impress Guide 7.4 Available for Download
The LibreOffice Documentation Team announces the immediate availability of the Impress Guide 7.4 and Getting Started Guide 7.4
The Impress Guide 7.4 was coordinated by Peter Schofield and revised by Kees Kriek. The guide is available in PDF as well as in ODF formats. An online version is available in the bookshelf website.
The Getting Started Guide 7.4 update was coordinated by Skip Masonsmith also with the revision of Kees Kriek and Jean Weber.
The LibreOffice Community thanks Peter, Skip, Kees and Jean for their immense contribution to our documentation assets and knowledge.
The Guides can be downloaded or purchased in printed version from the Documentation website as well as the bookshelf project.