Today (10-13-2009)

(10-13-2000)
StarOffice Code Released in Largest Open Source Project

Phipps has his own thoughts on the future of OpenOffice.org. He sees this project as a way to leverage the open source model onto the desktop for not just Linux, but other platforms as well, including Windows and PDAs. The latter may not be so far-fetched, as the first topic of discussion on the OpenOffice.org Whiteboard is "Personal Digital Assistants and OpenOffice."

(Brian Proffitt)

'So they say it's your Birthday...life is a gas...'

Nine Years and a few days ago...

The Story of the GNOME project

The GNOME Foundation

.....
..... After the foundation was announced, a number of initiatives from the founding members was announced:

• Sun Microsystems adopts GNOME technologies for their user environment in the Solaris OS.
• Hewlett-Packard adopts GNOME for their user environment in the HP-UX operating system.
• Sun will port their recently OpenSourced StarOffice suite to the Gtk+ toolkit and will integrate with the GNOME Bonobo component architecture.
• IBM contributed the SashXB rapid development environment to GNOME.
• GNOME would adopt and integrate Mozilla as part of its desktop strategy.
• The GNOME project would adopt OpenOffice technologies.

.....
.....

Next...( ? )

Android and ODF ( Take Two )....not so bleak

Well this is going to make you laugh - did me anyway.

The other day I did a search for "Android ODF" using Google(tm)

Being a normal person I only did a quick scan and found a review / links to packages supporting the reading or reading/writing of MSO formatted files, but not ODF.

Now today I did something similar....but before I say what..

Android and Google have a close relationship... :>/
Google has a document package...duh!
It saves in ODF format....

Alright, so today I did that same search using bing ... Laughing Here ...and I stumble upon:
AndroOffice. How to get a copy... guess one's gotta ask. Of course one might want to actually own a phone first... more laughing.

Dj

Android and ODF

The other day, on the OpenOffice.org blog planet I read Eric Bachard's post regarding a port of the office suite to the Android platform.

The first thought that came to my mind was, cws_odficons.

Ahhh - why that you might ask..read on.

Today did a google for 'Android ODF'...looks bleak.

Which led me to think about the need to expand the ODF ecosystem, which is actually, IMO, what cws_odficons is really all about, and on the need to expand ODF usage I could not agree more. Which in turn brings me back to ...looks bleak.... and that brings me all the way back to Android.

In the update to Eric's post he mentions that one can't really port all of OO.o because of it's C++ nature - ok, so that gets me thinking about this recent blog, Create an OpenOffice.org Java client in a few seconds.

All of which has me thinking - ok, so leave OO.o on the server/ I mean desktop..silly me/ and just think about what a viewer would look like on Android. Later a trimmed down version of an editor.

The education project at OO.o is certainly on this track with OOo4Kids, so Android is perhaps just another step in feature pruning. I say pruning 'cause if, and assuming, I understand this correctly Android will run only a pure java application, no libraries created in C++ at all?

Now there must be some pure Java implementation that can display an ODF file - surely there is - isn't that what the odf toolkit is all about? So there might be a great student sized project here - porting the odf toolkit viewer to Android, making it assesible from the Android emial reader for attached ODF files.

It is not insignifigant, I believe, that in the above paragraph the word OpenOffice.org is not present. That fact is what makes my, sometimes quirky, mind associate blogs about cws_odficons and Android.

A project within the education project such as this would benefit OO.o for sure and would be benefited by association with the OO.o developers, it also benefits users of any ODF compliant application, that includes users of MSO and we need that because in the end real competition in the desktop office suite market will not happen until the percentage of ODF formatted files being created approaches parity.

Well, enough for now...hmm, something new to add to the mix JopenDocument.

Till next time,

Dj

Changing perspectives

A rising tide lifts all boats. 

 

Rob Weir - From ODF pre-1.2 to ODF 1.2 from Newwws on Vimeo.

ODF Document Icons - as proposed to OpenOffice.org ESC March 2009

ODF Document Icons - proposed to OASIS - used by OO.o and Staroffice.

The full blog entry - GullFOSS Unified odf icons

At least that is what I take away as the abbreviated version of the argument.

Seems I’ve read the term ’times are changing’’ or something similar while reading the email traffic about this icon issue and branding..yes they are.

Looking at the first screen in the follwoing Impress file one would think, OH Yeah change those Icons – it means quite a bit.

Do we really care that much about icons?

Then again if you looked at the other screens – the MS Windows 7 file manager has indeed changed things. Kind of hard to miss the file types – no matter what the icon, when there is an icon displayed anyways.

One pass please

Requirements come in all forms and styles - a typical style for a business report is for the consumer of the report to give you a mock up of the report. (usually created with their word processor)

A requirement passed to me in the form of a Writer file of course:


**********************************************************************************

History of Services Summary

as of 10/05/2007 (date the report was created)

Name: Registry:

Therapist:

Date of services:

Date: Status: Value:

08/12/2007 No Show $35

08/19/2007 Patient Canceled $0.0

08/26/2007 Performed $35

09/03/2007 Performed $35

09/10/2007 Performed $35

09/17/2007 Therapist Canceled $0.0

09/24/2007 Performed $35

09/30/2007 Performed $35

______

Total: $210

______________________________________________________________________________

Payment History

Name: Registry:

as of 10/05/2007

Payments Received on: Amount:

08/26/2007-13:30:22 $35

09/03/2007-13:34:53 $35

09/07/2007-11:12:33 $35

09/10/2007-13:32:41 $35

09/24/2007-13:37:12 $10

09/30/2007-13:29:34 $55

_____

Total Payments: $205

______________________________________________________________________________

Balance Summary

total services amount: $210 - total payments: $205 = -$5

______________________________________________________________________________

End of History of Services Summary

This report is built using the patient ID and all sessions scheduled, in the top half, and all payments made, in the bottom, and up to a specified date (highlighted) usually the date the query is run. The amounts are added. Then a balance is calculated. Patient and date information are repeated to simplify lecture (maybe this gets to be along list).

**********************************************************************************


Now that is a mock up if ever you've seen one.

First thing that pops into one's head upon looking at this with regards to using the Sun Report Builder extension for OpenOffice.org is that there are two separate detail sections in that single report mockup.


Can we do that?

Base form wizard colors - Why?

Now how come; the control background and form background color choices, available in the New Form Wizard, do not match any colors available with the default installation?

Chandler does mail? Well, DUH!

OK - I have Thunderbird and Gmail...so that works with Chandler, right?