Danish newsletter out now

The monthly overview in Danish are out now: http://doc.oooforum.dk/Nyhed/2008Oktober.pdf.

Congratulation Charles-H (and OpenOffice.org)

Charles-H Schulz writes on his private blog:

Yesterday I was honored to receive the “Lutèce d’Or” trophy on behalf of the OpenOffice.org Project from the hands of Mr Besson, Minister of the Prospective and Digital Technologies of the French Republic. There was a standing ovation, but this one was not so much dedicated to my humble person than it was to the OpenOffice.org project and its members.

Congratulations to Charles-H and OpenOffice.org.

Danish readers: Join group on Facebook

Join the group Jeg bruger også OpenOffice.org on Facebook and let us count how many users we actually are

http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=40447480420

Everyday should be freedom day

Yesterday I spoke at the Software Freedom Day at Copenhagen Business School. I spoke about my view of the expression Software Freedom. I also gave a brief demonstration of the new features in OpenOffice.org 3.0. The concentration was about the ability to open pdf files for editing in Draw and to save (or export) pdf files as hybrid.

But also the new commenting feature (create a note) found some intereset among people. I explainen that comments could be shared with friends and kollegeas that are using MS Office too. A guy from the audience asked me if the function that registers changes in OpenOffice.org was compatibel with the simular function in MS Office. I had to admit that I couldn't answer that question at the scene.

When I got home from the arrangement I tried to create a document in OpenOffice.org and register som changes. The I saved the document as .doc. I opened the document with MS Office 2003 and I could clearly see and work with the changes. I made some further changes in MS Office 2003 and saved the document again. I then openned the document in OpenOffice.org again and the changes made with MS Office 2003 was tracked as changes and I could approve or dismess the changes as they where made with OpenOffice.org.

Conclusion
The funcion Track changes in OpenOffice.org is fully competibal with Micrsoft Office 2003. Because OpenOffice.org does not write MS Office 2007 format, the track-trace function is obviously not compatible with that format. But I would expect OpenOffice.org 3.0 to show track-trace information when reading files in .docx format but this is not something I have been testing.

Busy upcomming weeks ...

This weekend I'l be speaking at Software Freedom Day in Copenhagen. It takes place on Saturday at Copenhagen Business School. I think I'll talk about my own pesonal view of the expression Software Freedom first.

I'm sure I'll be able to find a few minutes talking about OpenOffice.org 3.0 from a users point of view.

If you have the time and if you live in Copenhagen or sourounding areas, I'll recommend this event.

http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams/europe/denmark/copenhagen

Then of cause we are waiting for OpenOffice.org 3.0 to be released. I hope that September 30th. 2008 is the final release date.

October 3th. and 4th. the annual conference OpenSource Days will take place at IT-University in Copenhagen. Friday I'll be there representing the company and on Saturday I'll be there on behalf of the OpenOffice.org Community. Well that was the plan from the beginning. ...But I have promissed the conference to work as Chairman for one of the tracks. I hope to find some time to talk with people between the tracks

I made a small update to my first (and so far only) openoffice.org Extension Lorem Ipsum Generator extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/Lorem_ipsum_generator.

This small nifty extension shows as an extra icon in Writer. With a click, you can fetch a piece of true Lorem Ipsum text from www.lipsum.com.

This time I added some error handling to prevent the macro to stop (and show the Basic IDE) if the user don't have access to the internet or if he website www.lipsum.com is down.

Who are 'they' ?

I recently found a discussion on our Danish forum (http://www.oooforum.dk) about language tools. One of the participants wrote:

It will be nice when they get automatic grammar checking implemented in OpenOffice.org.

Yeah that's right. But who are 'they' ? Do we expect the OpenOffice.org development team to create a Danish language tool ? I hope not. Danish language tools must be developed by Danes.

Get up on the horse and participate. We have space for many more !

Advise: before you switch to Linux

I'm pretty sure that I will stick with Linux from now on. I have had some problems on the way, but now I feel quite comfortable with my 'new' computer.

I'll give you a few advises before you decide to switch:
Find out witch programs you actually use on your computer. Do it very accurate, for example by making notes about it every day for about two weeks. Then, put priority on the applications. How often you use the programs and how important they are for you.

Also have in mind that some services on the Internet like homebanking and online shopping might be a problem. Not all banks and webshops actually accepts any other browser than Internet Explorer. Sad, but true.

Now find out if your most important applications exists for Linux. Many free software are actually available on many platforms. The applications that doesn't work on Linux must be replaced by alternatives. Do some research on the Internet about alternatives. If you for instance use MSN you can easily transfer your account to another application called Pidgin. It's just a question of finding the alternatives.

If you need help to find the best alternatives, don't mind asking questions. There are many people willing to help you. Search the internet and ask questions on forums and in communities.

A good database with 'alternative' applications:
http://www.osalt.com/

Another article about switching to Linux:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/switching-windows-linux-3-easy-steps

Good luck.

Lotus Notes integration

I've been working with system integration with Lotus Notes and Office for several years now and I have been looking forward to see how IBM Lotus would take advantage of Lotus Symphony and Lotus Notes. Both applications are build on the same Eclipse platform and I have talked to lots of customers about how IBM could take advantage of this.

Here it is. And I hope that this is only the beginning.

Bob Balfe writes on his blog how Lotus Symphony can be 'composite' in the future: http://blog.balfes.net/index.php?entry=entry080910-110959

Watch the demo video here: http://blog.balfes.net/files/ntosin6/Notes2SymphonyIn6Minutes.html and see how selecting documents in a view can update a spreadsheet chart. Woow.

Networking sucks

Can anyone explain this to me ?
Every time I start using the internet from my Ubuntu Linux thing, my wife starts making funny noises.

It's true. I checked the manual (spoke to my father-in-law !) She's alright.

The Wireless network gets totally overloaded when I start my browser.

Half the time my netcard is Idle, but the router is still working so hard that it makes my wife say §@$¤£~!

When I decided to install Linux I knew I would face some serious trouble. You know, all the things they are writing articles about on the internet. But I seriously never expected to hear funny noises from mrs. caused by this.

It's a Jensen of Scandinavia Air Ling WBR 6954 with firmware v1.4.3.C

Episode 5: Finally success

Finally I got the developer version of openOffice.org 3.0 installed. I used

dpkg -i -–force-overwrite [path to install packages]/openoffice.org*.deb

The desktop integration thing doesn't work (multiple errors) so I'll just add the applications to the menu manually.

Thanks to all.