Andrew Pitonyak has been the great master of StarBasic since forever. I still remember copies of his book being distributed at the 2nd OpenOffice Conference in Berlin, in September 2004, the very first time I was exposed to the global OOo community (and I decided to embark on the journey that has led to the birth of LibreOffice and The Document Foundation).…
19 Dec 2016
Advent Resource #19: LibreOffice Macros
19 Dec 2016
Advent Resource #18: Croscore Fonts
A frequently overlooked point of lock-in with Microsoft Office is its default use of proprietary fonts. Contrary to the popular view, fonts are often not freely distributable, and may in fact be covered by restrictive license terms similar to proprietary software. Microsoft Office by default uses two such fonts: Calibri and Cambria. These fonts are only available in Microsoft Office, and are not freely available for download or use otherwise.…
17 Dec 2016
Advent Resource #17: Renewed QA Wiki Page
Quality Assurance wiki page has been reorganized and updated, and provides a number of resources for people willing to commit their time improving the quality of LibreOffice.
As explained on the Get Involved in QA wiki page: “QA is short for Quality Assurance. QA identifies problems in our software, confirms problems reported by users, and validates proposed fixes and enhancements so each new version of LibreOffice is more reliable and robust and provides our users with a satisfying tool”.…
16 Dec 2016
Advent Resource #16: Two Academic Research about LibreOffice
Jonas Gamalielsson and Björn Lundell, of the University of Skövde in Sweden, have extensively studied the LibreOffice project. They have published two different papers in 2012 and 2014, which represent a very interesting reading.
Gamalielsson J. – Lundell B., Long-Term Sustainability of Open Source Software Communities beyond a Fork: A Case Study of LibreOffice, in: Hammouda I.…
15 Dec 2016
Advent Resource #15: Open Document Format website
The Open Document Format website is managed by the OpenDoc Society. It is another useful resource for ODF advocates and especially for developers, as it offers an overview of dozens of libraries that make it easy to access content stored in Open Document Format.
The OpenDoc Society is also the organization behind ODF Plugfests, an ongoing series of vendor-neutral events, bringing together implementers and stakeholders of the standard.…
14 Dec 2016
Advent Resource #14: OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC
The website of the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF) for Office Applications Technical Committee is a fundamental resource for all people advocating the standard or deploying it within organizations of any size.
The home page provides the following contents: Announcements from the ODF TC, Overview of the standard document format, ODF TC subcommittees,
TC Liaisons, TC Tools and Approved Publications, Technical Work Produced by the Committee, External Resources, and Mailing Lists and Comments.…