TDF Community Blog

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks for companies or individuals to

design and implement Automated a11y based UI testing into the LibreOffice code base

to start work as soon as possible.

TDF looks into investing into a Python based, cross-platform LO testing framework which

• Allows concise UI tests to be written in a simple manner
• Provides coverage of as much LO UI functionality as possible, preventing regressions and supporting future refactoring work
• Can be targeted to a selection of historical LO versions in order to help track down existing bugs (preferably at least back to the 4.1-4.2 region)

TDF is looking for an individual or company to, as a turnkey project, design and implement the following:

• Upgrade PyUNO to make it easier to work with overall
  • e.g. https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/16272/ , https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/16780/ , commit 33776d143fabc1b6e91a6bad54899e9f33ca2320
• Implement a Python UI introspection library which mimics the Dogtail tree API but targets UNO directly
• Fill in gaps in the UNO accessibility API to allow testing
  • e.g. https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/16771/
• Implement a helper which (less efficiently) provides most of the upgraded PyUNO features when running against an older LO instance, to support using the framework to isolate regressions
• Implement a ‘git bisect’ test runner which automates running a given test against a bibisect repository
• For certain areas which can’t be covered by the cross-platform UNO accessibility API (e.g. native dialogs), provide a helper to simplify running tests using original Dogtail against LO on Linux
• Implement functional tests for UI functionality in all components
• Implement tests for a selection of open bugs
• Visibly document how to use the system, and encourage people to start committing ‘executable bug reports’ and other tests

Required Skills

C++ Programming language for the LibreOffice client part

Other Skills

English (Conversationally fluent in order to coordinate and plan with members of TDF)

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member, or never having contributed before, does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

The task offered is a project-based one-off, with no immediate plans to a mid- or long-term contractual relationship. It is offered on a freelance, project basis. Individuals and companies applying can be located anywhere in the world.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, your financial expectations (name the final price for the turnkey project), and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at floeff@documentfoundation.org no later than January 29, 2016. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

Applicants who have not received feedback by March 1, 2016 should consider that their application, after careful review, was not accepted.

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks for companies or individuals to

design and implement a crash reporter functionality in the LibreOffice desktop client application

to start work as soon as possible.

TDF wants to further improve the stability of its desktop office application, and get statistics and details on program crashes, based on the Socorro and Breakpad toolkit.

TDF is looking for an individual or company to, as a turnkey project, design and implement the following work packages

Work Package 1: Client

• implementation of the Breakpad (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Breakpad) framework/libraries into the LibreOffice client application
• integrating functionality to collect and sumbit crash reports from the client application
• provide an opt-in mechanism for end-users required to actively agree into data collection and submission

Work Package 2: Server

• initial setup and configuration of the Socorro (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Socorro) crash reporting service within TDF’s infrastructure, which is based on Debian 8 and SaltStack
• documentation of the installation
• training of our infra team to handle the ongoing maintenance
• optionally providing SaltStack recipes for automatic deployment
• ensure the setup works with the client implementation from work package 1

Required Skills

Programming Languages and Framework

• experience in programming with C++, the main programming language used for the LibreOffice desktop client application
• experience with implementing Socorro and Breakpad

Other Skills

• English (Conversationally fluent in order to coordinate and plan with members of TDF)
• experience with the LibreOffice code base highly welcome

We exclusively use free, libre and open source (FLOSS) software for development whereever possible and the resulting work must be licensed under MPLv2.

Applications from bidding groups are welcome, so are bids on individual work packages. Companies with certified LibreOffice developers are preferred over other applicants.

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member, or never having contributed before, does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

The task offered is a project-based one-off, with no immediate plans to a mid- or long-term contractual relationship. It is offered on a freelance, project basis. Individuals and companies applying can be located anywhere in the world.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, your financial expectations (name the final price for the turnkey project), and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at floeff@documentfoundation.org no later than January 29, 2016. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

Applicants who have not received feedback by March 1, 2016 should consider that their application, after careful review, was not accepted.

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks for companies or individuals to

develop and incorporate usability metrics collection for LibreOffice

to start work as soon as possible.

In order to improve the user interface, human interaction and usability of LibreOffice, The Document Foundation is looking for an individual or company to, as a turnkey project, implement a usability metrics collection feature to be incorporated into the Windows, Linux and Mac OS X versions of the free office suite. The project consists of:

1. planning and conception of features and clicks to track in close contact with our UX team, with preselection and prioritization of the features
2. installation and configuration of a server part within TDF’s infrastructure, which is based on Mozilla’s UITelemetry (see and http://bwinton.github.io/d3Experiments/contextmenu.html for further details) and defines the format for the client part
3. a client part, that not only counts how often features have been used, but also provides further metrics; some samples of items that need tracking are
   1. the location of the click action in the menu, as sometimes duplicates exist
   2. which context menu was used
   3. whether a certain feature was invoked by a single click, by click and hold, by a drop down click or by a multi click
   4. from which application clicking on the close document/window ‘X’ (.CloseDoc) and close application ‘X’ (.Quit) occurs
   5. whether the user used the enter key, mouse click or an accelerator to open a menu item
   6. how the app was opened (via command line, start menu, start center, or by opening a document)
   7. in which toolbar a button was clicked, as some buttons are in multiple toolbars, and users can add buttons to toolbars individually
   8. which slide transitions and object animations are used most in Impress
   9. the concrete action/command sequence: which action was used by the user, and which was the next action used after that (e.g. inserting an image and then adding a caption)
   10. which menu bar keystroke sequences are used (e.g. Alt+F + O)
   11. which icon theme, font list and theme name the user has active
       
       Work on the client part also involves storing collected metrics data locally in the user profile with transmission to the server part when connectivity is in place.
4. an opt-in mechanism for the client part, so users have to actively enable the feature before any data is collected and transferred

With this feature, TDF – amongst other improvements – aims to:

• improve the menus, toolbars and the sidebar
• show the most popular inserted special characters for use in a future drop down
• show the most popular bullet/numbering styles for use in a future drop down

Work is to be carried out in the source code of the current master branch of LibreOffice, as available in our git repository at http://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/libreoffice/core.git

Required Skills

Programming Languages

• C++ for the LibreOffice client part
• knowledge about Mozilla’s UITelemetry for the server part

Other Skills

• English (conversationally fluent in order to coordinate and plan with members of TDF)
• good connections to the LibreOffice UX team (see http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice-ux-advise) and the will to participate in regular UX team calls, to jointly work on the implementation of the features

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.

We exclusively use free, libre and open source (FLOSS) software for development whereever possible and the resulting work must be licensed under MPLv2.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member, or never having contributed before, does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

The task offered is a project-based one-off, with no immediate plans to a mid- or long-term contractual relationship. It is offered on a freelance, project basis. Companies and individuals applying can be located anywhere in the world.

Bids on individual work packages (#1-#4) are welcome.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, including your financial expectations (name the final price for the turnkey project), and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at floeff@documentfoundation.org no later than January 29, 2016. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

Applicants who have not received feedback by March 1, 2016 should consider that their application, after careful review, could not be considered.