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New Czech translation of Getting Started Guide 6.4

Zdenek Crhonek from the Czech LibreOffice community writes:

The Czech translation of the LibreOffice 6.4 Getting Started guide is now available! The history behind this book is quite long: first, another team translated the version 4.2 guide in 2014, but they never fully finished it (didn’t do corrections, publishing etc.) Then they started to update for version 5.1, but never finished the translation. I was not part of the team in these days, so this is what I’ve found out from the mailing lists. Thanks to the CAT (computer-assisted translation) tool OmegaT, we could used their old translations and build upon it. In 2020 we started translation again with version 6.0, but we quickly jumped to version 6.4 and followed the documentation team’s updates.

The translation was a team effort – a big thanks to:

  • Anna Benc
  • Eliška Rolfová
  • Lucie Studená
  • Marcela Tomešová
  • Miloš Šrámek
  • Petr Kuběj
  • Petr Valach
  • Roman Toman
  • Vendula Crhonková
  • Zdeněk Crhonek
  • Zuzana Kašparová
  • Zuzana Pitříková

Great work! Everyone is welcome to join our documentation community. It’s a great way to build up skills for a potential future career in technical writing…

Community Member Monday: Khairul Aizat Kamarudzzaman

Today we’re talking to Khairul Aizat Kamarudzzaman from our Malaysian community. He’s a long-time fan of free and open source software, and is helping with LibreOffice advocacy and marketing…

To start off, tell us a bit about yourself!

I’m from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I started exploring and using FOSS way back in 2004 (Debian, Red Hat, the BSD family and sticking with Ubuntu till today) when I was studying at the university. From there I started exploring and contributing to Ubuntu, which you can find here, and I was accepted to be an Ubuntu Member, Kubuntu Membes (merits as Ubuntu contributor). Finally I was appointed to be part of the Asia Oceania Membership Board.

A a FOSS community member, I work in a few IT companies in Malaysia and was one of the engineers working at Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC) under Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU). Now I own my own IT company, namely Informology Sdn Bhd. Not stopping there, I continue actively being a FOSS enthusiast in Malaysia. When the cloud computing era came, I was involved by leading Malaysia OpenStack User Group, and I’ve recently been exploring and leading the Endless OS user group for Malaysia.

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

I started the LibreOffice Malaysia Group on Facebook, and I’m planning with the group to finish the LibreOffice Malay translation as soon as possible, with guidance from the Indonesian LibreOffice translation team – so that we can have Malay language support in LibreOffice and Collabora Office.

Why did you decide to become a member of The Document Foundation?

It’s in line with what I’ve done since I started using FOSS: open source advocacy targeted at students, teachers, government staff and the open Source community members in Malaysia. I especially focused on Linux, and office automation like LibreOffice and Collabora Office as an alternative to Microsoft Office. Then, last year in 2019, I managed to participate in the Gnome Asia Summit 2019 in Surabaya, Indonesia where I met a lot of FOSS enthusiasts who are advocating and spreading open source in Indonesia, along with a few awesome TDF members (Ahmad Haris), TDF Board member (Franklin Weng) and GNOME Foundation Staff.

So I asked myself… since I already pitching the Open Document Format (ODF) since I was in OSCC, why not start contributing more to LibreOffice by doing translations? So I challenged myself by applying to become a TDF member, with advice from Ahmad Haris and Franklin Weng.

Anything else you plan to do in the future?

Keep spreading and marketing LibreOffice in Malaysia – especially in the government and educational sectors. Give these sectors LibreOffice as an alternative, by not using piracy and a cracked version of Microsoft Office.

Maybe the LibreOffice Malaysia group can suggest to TDF to host the LibreOffice Conference in Malaysia one day in the future!

Thanks Khairul! And indeed to everyone in the Malaysian LibreOffice community. Your work is essential to help spread awareness of LibreOffice across the globe.

Join the LibreOffice community today! Have fun and build up your skillset…

LibreOffice 7.0 RC1 Bug Hunting Session

LibreOffice 7.0 is being developed by our worldwide community, and is due to be released in early August 2020 – see the release notes describing the new features here.

In order to find, report and triage bugs, the LibreOffice QA team is organizing the second Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 7.0 on Monday July 6, 2020. Tests will be performed on the first Release Candidate version, which will be available on the pre-releases server the day of the event. Builds will be available for Linux (DEB and RPM), macOS and Windows.

Mentors will be available from 07:00 UTC to 19:00 UTC for questions or help in the IRC channel #libreoffice-qa and the Telegram QA Channel. Of course, hunting bugs will be possible also on other days, as the builds of this particular Release Candidate (LibreOffice 7.0.0 RC1) will be available until mid July. Check the Release Plan.

During the day there will be a dedicated session to test the new SKIA Graphics Engine integration from 14:00 and 16:00 UTC.

All details of the first bug hunting session are available on the wiki. LibreOffice is a volunteer-driven community project, so please help us to test – we appreciate it!

Calc Guide 6.4 is Released! – Download Now!

The LibreOffice Documentation Team announces the release of the LibreOffice Calc Guide 6.4, the complete handbook for the spreadsheet tool of LibreOffice. The guide was updated from the existing release 6.2 and include all the improvements developed since then.

LibreOffice Calc is the spreadsheet module of LibreOffice, capable of creating and edit complex spreadsheets, from simple calculations to ‘What if…’ manner by changing some of the data and observing the results without having to retype the entire spreadsheet or sheet. Other features provided by Calc include

  • Functions, which can be used to create formulas to perform complex calculations on data.
  • Database functions to arrange, store, and filter data.
  • Dynamic charts, including a wide range of 2D and 3D charts.
  • Macros for recording and executing repetitive tasks; scripting languages supported include LibreOffice Basic, Python, BeanShell, and JavaScript.
  • Ability to open, edit, and save Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
  • Import and export of spreadsheets in multiple formats, including HTML, CSV, PDF, and PostScript.

The release of the Guide is an effort of the documentation team of the LibreOffice Community, a group of skilled individuals that contributes to create the best reference guides for all LibreOffice modules, including word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, database and math equations.

“This guide achieves a very important milestone for the whole LibreOffice community since Calc documentation is the most demanded by the end user. I’m sure this great work will be very much appreciated.” said Daniel Rodriguez, Member of The Document Foundation Board of Directors.

“Building on the great work that went on during 2019 to complete the major update necessary to align the Calc Guide with LibreOffice 6.2, the update to 6.4 was a more modest task. However, I am delighted that the Team has completed this task because it gives an excellent platform for the subsequent update to 7.0 . From a personal perspective it was an enjoyable challenge and I was delighted to have a chance to make a useful contribution during our period of lockdown in the UK. Many thanks to all those who contributed to this update, especially Leo Moons, Kees Kriek, Gordon Bates, Drew Jensen and Randolph Gamo” said Steve Fanning, Calc Guide Coordinator.

Steve Fanning picture
Steve Fanning
Randolph Gamo picture
Randolph Gamo

The Calc Guide 6.4 is available in PDF for download from the new Extension website, at the following address: https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/876.

The source files in Open Document Format (ODT)can be downloaded from this address: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications#LibreOffice_Calc_Guide .

And indeed, the documentation community appreciates help in all languages – plus, contributing is a good way to build up skills for a possible career in technical writing. See here to get started!

Online events in the LibreOffice Hispanic community

Everyone loves to meet in person, share ideas, work on the software and have a good time. Of course, “real life” meetings have been difficult in the last few months, so many communities in the LibreOffice project have chosen to go online. Daniel A. Rodriguez gives us an update:

Yesterday, the Hispanic community of LibreOffice celebrated the second of a series of online events that was broadcast live on YouTube. The activity started at 17:00 UTC and lasted about 3 and a half hours. The virtual assistants benefited from the presence of several members recognized for their participation and collaboration in the project:

  • Xiomara Céspedes, from Costa Rica, provided an overview of the use of styles.

This was, of course, an open event – free of charge and aimed at anyone interested in the FOSS office suite par excellence. Also, we thank our friend Servio from the Latin Community of Free Technologies, who managed the live transmission through YouTube.

Community Member Monday: Jwtiyar Ali

Today we’re talking to Jwtiyar Ali, who is helping to localise LibreOffice into Kurdish…

To start with, tell us a bit about yourself!

Hey! I live in the Kurdistan region, in the north of Iraq – the city of Sulaymaniyah. I have an MSc in Physics, but I love computer science too. Currently I am working in the Cement Quality Control Department at a cement factory, as a physicist.

I do translations for many open source projects such as Ubuntu, Gimp, Firefox etc., leading these translation projects. My hobbies are following new open source projects and seeing how they can be more competitive. I also like football, walking, and reading Python programming courses in my free time.

What are the opportunities and challenges for promoting/using free software and LibreOffice in your region?

In my country, promoting open source apps and systems is a very big challenge because most people – maybe 90% – use proprietary apps, because they don’t hear about or know about open source alternatives.

So we in the team at www.chawg.org decided to make a website to introduce many open source projects. We created a wiki platform and a forum for that reason – and now we have Facebook groups and pages.

In my opinion, an opportunity is to provide users with more guides, and make a comparison between LibreOffice with other apps. Show users what LibreOffice can do that others apps can’t. Also, show people that LibreOffice can do the same things – or even more – with their daily work, and send them articles to educate them about the software.

What are you doing in the LibreOffice project right now?

I am translating LibreOffice. I hope to see LibreOffice in my language – that would be perfect. Also, it would help users to interact with LibreOffice more often than before.

How did you get involved in LibreOffice, and what was the experience like?

My love for open source projects made me engage with LibreOffice and the big community behind it. Being in the community made me feel that I wasn’t working in a specific part of the world – but people around the world can benefit from what I do.

The experience was amazing, because I didn’t know beforehand that we have a great app like LibreOffice.

Anything else you want to add?

I want to thank everyone who helped me to join this great community. My passion for LibreOffice has no borders, and I hope to see other open source projects grow faster than ever. The best part of the community is that we all trust in open source and teamwork.

Thesedays, I am promoting LibreOffice to my colleagues and friends. Also, I help them to fix any problems that they may face it during installing or when using the suite.

Thanks to Jwtiyar for all his contributions! Our native language communities are always open for more help – so if you want LibreOffice and its website localised in your language, give us a hand!

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