OfficeBuzz

When I'm sitting in the train, or even better, on a sunny terrace, I see many heads bound, The thumbs and fingers move swiftly over de screens of the newest gadgets, that are used nowadays to share our information. Little tweed, Apps, site here and there... Who talks about sustainability of digital documents in this world? Still there is the DocumentFreedomDay . For years already. And I was invited there to present LibreOffice. It makes fun and is challenging in a time, as is sketched with the first sentences, to be invited to explain why it is important that we, I, you, our society in twenty, sixty, three hundred years still can have access to the information that we currently consider important enough to spend our precious time on. And that you will be able to use these documents, also now, without being forced to spend money to do so. To me, that always is the linking step to the need of a powerful office-application that works with free, open document standards. So that people ...

Free software exists thanks to the involvement of users. For that reason we have regular meetings in our Dutch language community. Working on the items that you like. Or that you consider important. And this is an open, relaxing atmosphere. So, on March 31 there will already be our sixth 'hackers-event'. But since there is a equal amount of people with interest for documentation, I just call it 'hacking and writing'. Well, thinking of the effort that a writer spends on a good text, how strong he must hack in possible features, examples, explanations... One could call that a sort of hacking, isn't it? Don't let the real hackers, the ones that dive diep in all the code, dependencies and more, read this ;-) Ah yes, more information (in Dutch) via this link !

If you would like to read the Dutch version of the announcement and see the translated text on the great graphics by Italo Vignoli ... it is here on my Dutch language blog!

LibreOffice 3.5 will beat Excel in speed on certain tasks. The upcoming first beta of the free office suite will perform better than Excel as the result of community work, thus showing the real advantage of open source software. At December 28 and 29 there will be a big international bug-hunting session with the beta release of 3.5.0. LibreOffice 3.5.0 beta1 will be on the servers in the next days. Where previously Calc, the spreadsheet component of LibreOffice, was not rewarded for high performance, the new version will bring some good news. This has been made possible by the true open source character of the project, where various developers, volunteers and full time, cooperated to improve the speed when opening documents with a large amount of named ranges, sheets and formulas. This can be read from a blog from Kohei Yoshida , one of Calcs leading developers and a major LibreOffice contributor right from the beginning of the project. Various speed tests were posted there, and one s...

Last Saturday we had already our 4th LibreOffice hackEvent in Netherland/Flanders. Again we were able to do a nice variety of work: documentation, build environments, study functions in code, translation work .. Honestly, often not that complicated at all. Nevertheless, the term 'hacking' might sound scaring for the average reader, though many and real easy hacks can be found at LibreOffice. In any case, while talking, we decided that the next event will be dedicated to the testing of the new LibreOffice 3.5.0, that will be released in February. So the next time no hacking and just normal testing. Well, 'normal'... to do some good testing you really have to be awake! So also because of the nice coffee ;-) thanks to the people that were so kind to invite us to their place for this event, MadLab at Eindhoven.

Looking forward to the next week with great pleasure :-) First - apart from regular work - further furnishing the new Nou&Off office . Then I look forward to the 4th Dutch LibreOffice Hackers event, of which the preparations of course already have started. Don't miss this opportunity to work and exchange with other hackers Before that, an event of at least the same importance wild be held: the ODF-plugfest, Gouda, November 17 and 18. I'm asked to represent TDF and LibreOffice with both info on technical issues and the general progress of the project. Will be a great pleasure to join there! Just as a good final action for the past week, I just posted the presentation on easy hacking LibreOffice that I gave at T-Dose, the Saturday before.

The LibreOffice project will be well presented at T-Dose : Technical Dutch Open Source Event, Eindhoven, this weekend. There will be four members that make a contribution as speaker on various subjects, and a simple booth with stickers and people to meet. Since it's mostly Dutch, read my Dutch blog for more ;-)