OpenOffice.org Newsletter - Volume 05 - Issue 13 - 07/2008

[Kay Koll]

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                           OPENOFFICE.ORG NEWSLETTER

                      Volume 05  -  Issue 13  -  07/2008

                      Please send news clippings to:
                      dev@...

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Contents
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1. Announcements
================
* Registration opens for the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference
* New OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta available for testing
* What's new in OO.o Beta 2 ?
* OO.o won the Sourceforge 'best project' awards in 3 categories

2. Success Stories
==================
* NATO supports ODF open document format

3. Featured News
================
* Accessibility support on Mac OS X
* What's Holding OpenOffice.org Back?
* WollMux available in extension repository

4. Tips & Tricks
================
* Blog about OpenOffice.org / ODF Support in SAP Software
* ODF@WWW - Going forward ...
* Applying XSLT stylesheets to ODF documents with Ant

5. ODF News
===========
* Microsoft - Users made us more open
* Is Microsoft's Office Open XML a functional standard...
* UOF Vies to Be a Third Contender in ODF–OOXML Battle
* FAQ: Office 14 and Microsoft's support for ODF

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Want to help OpenOffice.org?  Find out hot to contribute or see our
To Do List!!

http://contributing.openoffice.org/index.html
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/To-Dos/index.html
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Announcements
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Registration opens for the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference
===========================================================
Please note we have now opened registration for our annual international
conference OOoCon 2008, to be held in Beijing, China between  5th.-7th.
November. This OOoCon is a double first - it's the first OOoCon to be held
outside Europe, and it will also see the biggest concentration of
OpenOffice.org developers ever assembled in one location on the planet.

Links:
Conference website: http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008
Programme: http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/programme.html

Registration:
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/travel.html#registration
Press Release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/OOoCon/2008/prweb1177594.htm


New OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta available for testing
=================================================

The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce that a new public beta
release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now available. This second beta release
has been produced in response to feedback to the first beta, released in
May. It is made available to allow as many users as possible to test and
evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended
for production use at this stage.

http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=367


What's new in OO.o Beta 2 ?
===========================
"The release candidate for OOo 3.0 Beta 2 is available on OOo. Between the
first Beta the teams worked very hard to fix issues, finalize translation
and bring in some wanted 'last minute' features. In sum nearly 150 CWS were
integrated with more than 650 issues."

http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/what_s_new_in_beta



OpenOffice.org won the Sourceforge 'best project' awards in 3 categories
========================================================================
OpenOffice.org won in following three categories :
Best Project
Best Project for the Enterprise
Best Project for Educators

http://sourceforge.net/community/cca08/


Success Stories
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NATO supports ODF open document format
======================================
NATO has included the International Standardization Organization's (ISO)
certified
  Open Document Format (ODF) in its list of mandatory standards to promote
interoperability. NATO's standards list includes Rich Text Format (RTF),
extensible markup language (XML) and Office XP formats as requirements
for the
sharing of data.

http://www.heise-online.co.uk/open/NATO-supports-ODF-open-document-format--/news/111127


Featured News
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Accessibility support on Mac OS X
=================================
The last months I was busy implementing accessibility support for the
upcoming
Mac version of OpenOffice.org 3.0 aka StarOffice 9.
Mac OS X comes with a standardized accessibility API (NSAccessibility
protocol)
that makes it easy for application and accessibility tool developers to
interoperate. But since we do not use standard Cocoa controls we had to
implement Objective-C wrapper objects around our C++ controls to feed the
accessibility tools on the Mac.

http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/accessibility_support_on_mac_os


What's Holding OpenOffice.org Back?
===============================
"Why don't more people use OpenOffice, the free and open source alternative
to Microsoft Office? Microsoft has spent years and dollars engineering
creative
ways to keep people using its costly software and preventing them from
switching
to OpenOffice -- that's one explanation, writes Lou Dolinar."

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/enterprise/63684.html


WollMux available in extension repository
=========================================
WollMux is an OpenOffice.org plugin. It features letterhead generation,
advanced form functionality such as plausibility checks and computed data,
special printing functions that deal with requirements of a public
administration,
  and much more. The WollMux is an OpenOffice.org plugin developed by the
Municipality of the City of Munich, Bavaria. It is now available from the
OpenOffice.org Extension Repository at

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/wollmux


Tips & Tricks
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Blog about OpenOffice.org / ODF Support in SAP Software
=======================================================
"...Due to my past involvement in OpenOffice.org and ODF, I was curious to
find out if and where the SAP products already support the ISO standard
OpenDocument Format. I was happily surprised when I found out that ODF is
already supported by the SAP List Viewer component (also known as the ABAP
List Viewer or ALV), which is used many many times in all kinds of areas
for
displaying tabular data in a grid. The SAP List Viewer component allows
exporting
  to ODF spreadsheet files in addition to Microsoft Excel files. This
feature is
available on systems with release numbers 6.40 and higher and works for all
  3 members of the SAP GUI family including the SAP GUI for Java.
For more details about the feature please take a look at the SAP Note
876916!
For example, this SAP Note lists details about supported releases and
required support packages."

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/10337


ODF@WWW - Going forward ...
========================
You may have been stumbled over ODF@WWW and its first incarnation, the
ODF Wiki.
  I am actually very happy about the broad feedback I got by now and
would like
to continue this pet project.
Charles H. Schulz was so kind to organize an IRC meeting for last Monday
(yesterday :-) about OOo online features in general and ODF@WWW in more
detail.
Please find the log file here.

http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/odf_www_going_forward


Applying XSLT stylesheets to ODF documents with Ant
===================================================
"A couple of weeks ago I have announced a Java tool called “odfxsltrunner“
that makes it easier to apply XSLT stylesheets to ODF documents. I'm using
this tool frequently within NetBeans projects, where it makes my Ant
buildfiles
more readable. And where it saved me some time, because I don't have to
write
multiple <target> definitions for a single application of an XSLT
stylesheet
to an ODF document."

http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/applying_xslt_stylesheets_to_odf



ODF News
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Microsoft - Users made us more open
===================================

"Linux and open source received an honourable mention during yesterday’s
opening keynote address at TechEd South Africa 2008. It was a brief mention
at the tail end of an hour and a half-long opening session, but it was
there.

Opening speaker, Barry Briggs, Microsoft IT’s chief IT architect and CTO,
even went so far as to acknowledge that Microsoft had been “pushed” to
accept
the growing influence of open source software on the market and Microsoft.

Briggs talked about Microsoft’s well publicised announcements around
interoperability and its recent support for the Apache Foundation."

http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2733


Is Microsoft's Office Open XML a functional standard, and if not, ...
....why is it being rushed through the process?
=============================================================================================================
"Microsoft's problems with OOXML just won't go away. MS-OOXML was
supposed to
supplant the Open Document Format (ODF), but is becoming an embarrassment.
As a format it betrays its hurried origins, and is over-complex.
At best, it has technical problems. At worst, it is barely fit for purpose."

http://www.itpro.co.uk/605142/ms-ooxml-a-format-without-a-future


UOF Vies to Be a Third Contender in ODF–OOXML Battle
====================================================
Andy Updegrove writes:
"Long-time followers of the ODF-OOXML story will recall that there is a
third editable, XML-based document format in the race to create the
documentary
record of history. That contender is called UOF, for Uniform Office
Format, and
it has been under development in China since 2002. Last summer, UOF was
adopted
as a Chinese National Standard, and on Friday the first complete office
suite
based upon UOF was released."

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/07/22/2232236.shtml
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/28/china-mandates-ufo-document


FAQ: Office 14 and Microsoft's support for ODF
==============================================
"... Why did Microsoft belatedly support ODF and PDF? Not to woo
consumers, for
whom ODF and PDF support are nice-to-have but not essential features,
but to
ensure that Microsoft Office remains acceptable to governments, which
exercise
their power as huge buyers of technology as well as policymakers.
For instance, Belgium, the Netherlands and South Africa have all said
they favor
using ODF today, especially because Microsoft Office doesn't yet support
the
ISO-approved version of OOXML. ..."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=protocols_and_standards&articleId=9089258&taxonomyId=141&intsrc=kc_feat


Newsletter Archive
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Past issues of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter can be found in the archive
of the announce mailing list:

http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=announce



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