Interviewing Hypra’s Jean-Philippe Mengual about software accessibility

Accessibility is a key factor for the inclusiveness of digital transformation, but only a few people are really competent in the topic. To learn more about accessibility, we interviewed Hypra’s co-founder, Jean-Philippe Mengual. Q1. Jean-Philippe, can you tell us about the birth of Hypra? A1. In 2008 I met Corentin at the Sciences Po higher-learning school in Aix-en-Provence. Through our friendship and the time we spent together studying, he realized how much IT can bring to visually impaired people, but also realized the current limitations. Together, we understood the revolution it represents: digital technology may erase some inequalities, when one knows how to use it of course. We studied how digital technology can bring equality between visually impaired and sighted people, and then we realized that other people may also benefit from this phenomenon. We were looking for a solution to this challenge, and we decided to create a computer that was accessible to all, easy to use, adaptable and accompanied by an empowering training. That is how Hypra was born. Q2. How challenging is it to work full-time to improve accessibility, and to help seniors and people with disabilities to leverage the opportunities offered by IT? A2. It is

LibreOffice 7.2 Community is strong on interoperability

Over 60% of code commits for the brand new version of the best free and open source office suite are focused on interoperability with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats Berlin, August 19, 2021 – LibreOffice 7.2 Community, the new major release of the volunteer-supported free office suite for desktop productivity, is available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download. Based on the LibreOffice Technology platform for personal productivity on desktop, mobile and cloud, it provides a large number of interoperability improvements with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats. In addition, LibreOffice 7.2 Community offers numerous performance improvements in handling large files, opening certain DOCX and XLSX files, managing font caching, and opening presentations and drawings that contain large images. There are also drawing speed improvements when using the Skia back-end that was introduced with LibreOffice 7.1. LibreOffice 7.2 is now available natively for Apple Silicon, a series of processors designed by Apple and based on the ARM architecture. Because of the early phase of development on this specific platform, binaries are provided but should not be used for any critical purpose at this stage. Software will be available from the following page: https://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/7.2.0/mac/aarch64/. LibreOffice and Interoperability LibreOffice 7.2 Community adds a significant number of improvements to interoperability with

ODF 1.3 is an OASIS Standard

The Document Foundation is pleased to announce that LibreOffice’s native document format – the OpenDocument Format for Office Applications (ODF) 1.3 – has been approved as OASIS Standard with 14 affirmative consents and no objections. ODF is a free, open XML-based document file format for office applications, to be used for documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts and graphical elements. ODF 1.3 is an update to the international standard Version 1.2, which was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO/IEC 26300 (2015). The OpenDocument Format specifies the characteristics of an open XML-based application-independent and platform-independent digital document file format, as well as the characteristics of software applications which read, write and process such documents. It is applicable to document authoring, editing, viewing, exchange and archiving, including text documents, spreadsheets, presentation graphics, drawings, charts and similar documents commonly used by personal productivity software applications. The most important new features of ODF 1.3 are digital signatures for documents and OpenPGP-based encryption of XML documents, with improvements in areas such as change tracking and document security, additional details in the description of elements in first pages, text, numbers and charts, and other timely improvements. The development of ODF 1.3 features has

Tender to implement Curl based HTTP/WebDAV UCP (#202104-01)

Note: for questions asked about this tender and their respective answers, please see the bottom of this page We are extending the application deadline. The deadline for questions stays as in the original tender: June 15, 2021 The deadline for applications has been extended to: June 24, 2021 The Document Foundation (TDF) is the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free/libre/open source (FLOSS) office suite LibreOffice. We are looking for an individual or company to implement Curl based HTTP/WebDAV UCP. The work has to be developed on LibreOffice master, so that it will be released in the next major version. The task consists of addressing two problems. All of the mentioned features and requirements are a mandatory part of this tender and therefore have to be part of the bid. This tender does not contain any optional items. Problem description #1 – Currently we need to bundle crypto libraries TDF releases of LibreOffice bundle both OpenSSL and NSS, but both libraries have a high number of security issues. On macOS and Windows, neither OpenSSL nor NSS integrate with the crytographic APIs supplied by the operating system, so they will use a bundled hard-coded set of trusted certificate authorities (CAs), that

[White Paper] LibreOffice Technology, the only software platform for personal productivity on the desktop, mobile and cloud

The most mature and capable code-base, outside of Microsoft, to interoperate with Microsoft’s proprietary document formats LibreOffice Technology is the result of ten years of intensive activity on the software’s open source code, coordinated by the Engineering Steering Committee and carried out by developers, software engineers, security experts, and interface and user experience specialists of many affiliations. The goal of this evolutionary process was to create a single software platform for individual productivity on desktop, mobile and the cloud: the only approach able to offer users the interoperability features that enable transparent sharing of all content, and independence from single commercial vendors and vendor lock-in strategies. This is the opposite approach to all other proprietary and open core office suites, which have developed different versions for each platform trying to replicate the functionality, but only succeeding in part, so that – for example – the internal structure of documents (which is not visible to users) is different for each application. The evolutionary process from product to platform The source code inherited from OpenOffice – with a heritage stretching back decades – was too complex for the average developer and had a build environment that was difficult to create and manage.

LibreOffice 7.1 Community released by The Document Foundation

A brand new version of the best free open source office suite, based on the LibreOffice Technology platform for desktop, mobile and cloud productivity Berlin, February 3, 2021 – LibreOffice 7.1 Community, the volunteer-supported version of the best open source office suite for desktop productivity, is available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download. The Community label underlines the fact that the software is not targeted at enterprises, and not optimized for their support needs. For enterprise-class deployments, TDF has strongly recommended the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with long-term support options, professional assistance, custom features and other benefits, including SLA (Service Level Agreements): https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/. Despite this recommendation, an increasing number of enterprises have chosen the version supported by volunteers over the version optimized for their needs. This has had a twofold negative consequence for the project: a poor use of volunteers’ time, as they have to spend their time to solve problems for business that provide nothing in return to the community, and a net loss for ecosystem companies. This has been a problem for the sustainability of the LibreOffice project, because it has slowed down the evolution of the software. In fact, every