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Released: Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15
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OpenOffice.org Conference (OOoCon 2008)

5th-7th November 2008
Beijing, China
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Abstracts of Conference Papers - Wednesday

What's New in OpenOffice.org 3.0?

Christian Jansen, Bettina Haberer (User Experience Engineer / Sun Microsystems, Inc.)

Abstract: From Mac OS X Support to tables in Impress. OpenOffice.org 3.0 offers a wide range of improvements. This demo will showcase the highlights of the new and improved features of OpenOffice.org 3.0.

Biography: Christian Jansen is an User Experience Engineer at Sun Microsystems. During the last 9 years, he played a major role in designing the user interfaces of OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Lightning and Web Based Applications. He holds a degree in Communication Design from the 'Hamburger Akademie für Kommunikationsdesign und Art Direction'. Bettina Haberer is a User Experience Engineer at Sun Microsystems since 6 years and works on the user interface of OpenOffice.org and StarOffice in several projects.

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The OOo Global Community

Zaheda Bhorat (OpenOffice.org Advocate / Marketing )

Abstract: A story of OpenOffice, past and present told in pictures and a short movie, with contributions from the community around the world.

Biography: Zaheda Bhorat has been an Open Source advocate since managing the OpenOffice.org project and community while working for Sun Microsystems Inc. She took the project from inception to a 1.0 release. With her experience of building communities of contributers, she created one of the first open source marketing projects with a global team of passionate volunteers to promote both open source and launch the office suite. She also managed the NetBeans Open Source community and the Sun marketing team responsible for NetBeans 3.6. Zaheda lead the development and growth of online communities, in Europe, at Apple Computer in the '90s with AppleLink and eWorld, evangelizing the shift to online publishing prior to her open source work. Zaheda has 15 years software industry experience and holds a BSc in Computer Science. Zaheda works for Google managing the Open Standards Office, now living in California.

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OpenOffice.org and the ODF ecosystem

Loeschky, Dieter (Senior Engineering Manager / project lead ODFToolkit project / Sun Microsystems / ODFToolkit project)

Abstract: The presentation will give an overview on the ODF 1.2 roadmap and it's implementation in OpenOffice.org 3.0. Another focus will be on the growing ODF ecosystem and how OpenOffice.org fits in. Additionally the talk will give an overview on integrations of OpenOffice.org with 3rd party applications which complement the ODF ecosystem.

Biography: Dieter is running the OpenOffice.org development teams at Sun Microsystems, Inc. He is project lead of the ODFToolkit project at OOo.

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Panel Discussion: ODF Interoperability Perspectives

Aslam Raffee (CIO / Department of Science and Technology, South Africa)

Abstract: Through a series of short presentations and a panel discussion, members of the OASIS ODF TC and OASIS ODF Adoption TC will host a discussion of ODF interoperability from several perspectives, including the view from a government deployment in Belgium (using OpenOffice.org and MS-Office with plugins), an introduction to the new ODF interoperability initiative in OASIS and reports on other interoperability initiatives from major vendors and service providers working with and committed to ODF. Aslam Rafee will moderate the session, with participation from the following experts: Robert Weir, Software Architect, IBM, Co-Chair of OASIS ODF TC; Bart Hanssens, Interoperability Expert, FEDICT (Belgian Fed.Gov.); Florian Reuter, Novell; Malte Timmermann or Dieter Loeschky, Sun; Jeremy Allison, Software Engineer, Google, Lead Developer, Samba;

Biography: Aslam Raffee is the CIO of the Department of Science and Technology, South Africa and Chairperson of the Open Source and Open Standards Workgroup of the Government IT Officers Council (GITOC). He is also a member of OASIS ODF Adoption TC.

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OpenOffice.org as the lynch-pin of the Malaysian Public Sector OSS Master Plan

Eric Yeoh (R&D Engineer / OSCC Mampu)

Abstract: Originated from cabinet decision of the Government of Malaysia, the Malaysian Public Sector OSS Master Plan was launched on 16 July 2004 to create and enhance value using OSS within the Public Sector ICT framework in providing efficient, secure and quality services. MAMPU was tasked to establish and operate the Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC), which is the single point of reference to guide, facilitate, coordinate and monitor implementation of OSS in the Public Sector. OpenOffice.org is a key component of the master Plan and we will share our methodology, lessons learnt in migrating, using, training and selling OpenOffice.org and OSS solutions to the Government of Malaysia.

Biography: I am a R&D Engineer with OSCC MAMPU, a government agency tasked to implement the Malaysian Public Sector OSS Master Plan. My areas of research include but not restricted to end-user computing, Windows/Linux interoperability via Samba/OpenLDAP, host/network security and messaging.

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The full adoption of OOo in the Cambodian education System

KHENG Piseth, KHOEM Sokhem ( / KhmerOS)

Abstract: The Cambodian Ministry of Education mandated, in january 2008, that all public educational institutions must use - for teaching the use of computers - OpenOffice in Khmer language. The announcement was done together with the presentation of the new official ICT textbook of the Ministry, which mainly teaches OpenOffice (together with other FOSS programs). The 350-page full-color textbook has been one of the key factors that have led to adoption of OpenOffice. It has been the last of a number of actions that have led to the end. As the Ministry of Education is concerned, OpenOffice started to exist in 2004, when it included the use of FOSS as part of its "ICT for Education" policy, as an effect of lobbying from the KhmerOS project, which was at that time translating OpenOffice to Khmer. For two years, OpenOffice started being used non-officially in many of the schools. As it was the only software in Khmer language, it was easy for the teachers to teach it. The KhmerOS project provided tranining materials (slides), but lack of LCD projectors forced teachers to use their own methodology. In 2007 the Ministry and the Open Institute (NGO that houses the KhmerOS project) signed an agreement to work together to develop ICT in Education and to write together a 5-year Master Plan for the implementation of ICT in Education. The Master Plan is still in the process of being written, but the close cooperation, together with the ICT Textbook (developed and distributed free of charge to all schools by the Open Institute), together with a campaign to train all the ICT teachers in all upper secondary schools created sufficient trust in the Ministry to mandate the change to OpenOffice. The keys to this sucess have been: close cooperation with the Ministry, working on policy from the beginning, development the training materials, doing teacher training, and integration of this work with the needs of the Ministry and the country. Another key factor has been having donor countries (Spain and Germany) that have funded salaries and book printing.

Biography: KHENG Piseth, FOSS Application Training Coordinator at KhmerOS KHOEM Sokhem, Open Source Engineer- Coordinator of the Localization team at KhmerOS

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OpenOffice.org in Spain

Corrius, Llavina (Catalan Native Language Project Leader / Catalan Native Language Project)

Abstract: The Spanish Government and also several regional governments in Spain use and support OpenOffice.org in the Public Administration. That creates a very interesting ecosystem of companies and volunteers that are working together to create several different versions of OOo to suit the needs of each Spanish community. Among them, the Catalan Translation team, leaded by Jesús Corrius, has distributed more than 2 million copies of OpenOffice.org during the last 8 years. In the session, I'll give an update of the status of the OpenOffice.org Community in Spain and also try to explain the success of the Catalan Translation team.

Biography: Born near Barcelona in 1979, Jesús Corrius i Llavina holds a degree in Computer Science and another in Audiovisual Communication. He's a professional C++, Python software developer currently working for Fluendo. He's a member of Softcatalà and the Catalan Native Lang Project Leader.

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BrOffice.org in the Brazilian public administration

Ferreira Filho, Claudio (President / Lead NLP pt-BR / BrOffice.org / OpenOffice.org NLP pt-BR)

Abstract: The initiative to adopt BrOffice.org in Brazil began in 2004, when the Free Software adoption effort started inside the Brazilian Federal Government. The goal was to migrate all types of software, both desktops and servers. Beyond that initiative, other approaches began, like standardizing of documents' formats, but the process revealed itself as extremely slow and with collateral results: the low level of satisfaction after migrations and for various factors the inability to fulfil the basic requirements. This year, the Brazilian Federal Government organized the Free Software Implantation Committee, which is responsible for the definition of the strategies to effective migrate. The main initiative detected by this committee to consolidate de process is the adoption of BrOffice.org. This work presents the migration success cases of different federal departments with their interactions with the community and the building of a market inside Brazil, the strategies adopted by those departments and their concerns regarding the sustainability of Br/OpenOffice.org project. Besides that, it also tries to present the Committee actions, its planning and strategies, side by side with the BrOffice.org and ODF Alliance community activities inside Brazil to create an ideal environment for that migration, such as, amongst other, standardization of ODF at ABNT (Brazilian Organization of Standards), work of the BrOffice.org user groups in the various states to encourage the creation of laws supporting ODF, not only in the states but also for the whole country.

Biography: Gratuate in Information System, work with IT since 1988, and with Linux since 1994. In opensource world, initiated in 2001 with localization of OpenOffice.org for brazilian portuguese, and created the brazilian communities of Mozilla and PostgreSQL. Today, living in Galicia - Spain, working in Tegnix ITC, a specialized company in free software migration projects and still participates in the brazilian and galician open-source projects and initiative

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Community Development; Marketing; Fund Raising: 3 Pillars of the future of OOo

Mamun, Mohammad Anwarul (Head of IT / Dhaka Broadband Network Ltd.)

Abstract: Though there are considerably a large community exist on OpenOffice.org, Marketing the community and product itself need to be more versatile for the greater adoption of OpenOffice.org worldwide specially for the developing countries where OpenOffice.org adds more extra values than the developed countries. Fund rising is another imperative aspect for keeping this project self sustainable. This paper will concentrate on these issues along with some thoughts to solve these concerns that may help to increase the market penetration rate of OpenOffice.org faster.

Biography: I am working at Dhaka Broadband Network Ltd. as Head of IT. Besides this, bearing the responsibility of The OSS Movement (an organization to foster the Free Open Source Software movement in Bangladesh) as president. Also, engaged with OpenDoc Society, Bangladesh chapter as chairman.

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OpenOffice.org Participation - Past and Next Steps

Hollmichel, Martin (Release Manager of OpenOffice.org, Lead of the OpenOffice.org porting, tools and external project, member of the Community Council and the Engineering / Sun Microsystems)

Abstract: The presentation will give an outlook what is planned for the next releases of OpenOffice.org and explains on how to contribute to the roadmap. What is the release status meeting, the quarterly reviews of the projects.

Biography: joined StarOffice group in 1994 as Release Engineer, now Program Manager for OpenOffice.org working for Sun Microsystems

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Porting OpenOffice: Now on Aqua

Herbert Duerr ( / )

Abstract: OpenOffice.org's Aqua port will be officially released with OpenOffice.org 3.0. The presentation gives an overview about what has been achieved. How it was achieved is a story that might be especially interesting for developers: The code refactoring needed for this complex base layer is noteworthy. Especially the constraints of not breaking existing ports, not breaking applications and not breaking even ancient use cases, while refactoring to allow using the new platforms modern capabilities and at the same time regularly releasing high quality multi-platform milestones were very challenging. The presentation provides an insight into the lessons learned in this effort.

Biography: With a background in electronics engineering Herbert spent most of his career in software devolopment and systems integration. He graduated from the University of Karlsruhe, worked at the FhG, then IBM and now at SUN on topics from system storage, micro mechanics, optical systems, image processing, performance analysis, typography, i18n and graphics.

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New features in Calc 3.0

Nebel, Niklas (Spreadsheet Project Lead / Sun Microsystems)

Abstract: I will show the new features in Calc 3.0, and talk about the ideas behind these features, how we implemented them and what obstacles we came across. Highlights are: * Collaboration through shared files * Implementation of the OpenDocument Formula specification * Import of Excel 2007 files * Optimization Solver * Usability improvements

Biography: Niklas Nebel has been involved in the development of StarOffice Calc since 1994 and has been project lead of the spreadsheet project since the start of OpenOffice.org.

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The Presenter Console

Fischer, Andre (Software Engineer / Sun Microsystems)

Abstract: The talk about the Presenter Console, one of the major new features of Impress, has three parts: What: An overview of the features of the Presenter Console: Live preview, notes, slide overview. Why: Explain some of the decisions that lead to the extension in its current form: Non-standard UI vs. native platform look; C++ vs. Java; Extension vs. integration into the existing Impress code. How: Details about the implementation. Lessons learned during the course of implementing my first major extension. Using the canvas for every graphical output even for painting UI controls like scroll bars and buttons. Support for theming.

Biography: Born 1969 in Cologne, Germany, I studied computer science in Bonn and obtained a Ph.D. with a thesis on automatic building recognition from aerial images. Since Nov. 2000 I am employed by Sun Microsystems where I work on the Impress UI.

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Visualize Writer Document Structure for Productive Development

Jian Hong,Cheng (STAFF SOFTWARE ENGINEER/Technical Leader / IBM)

Abstract: This presentation introduces a tool that can be used to picture the node types and structure,frame types and structure, portion types, and other data relations information in an OpenOffice writer document. Because of plentiful data types and complicated relations in a writer document,developers are easily plunged into disordered situations when tracing them and their relations. Under certain scenarios,when operating these complex contents,the nodes structure or frame structure or data relations may be damaged unexpectedly,which lead to serious problems. And generally,these problems are difficult to solve. For example,when opening a given special document,and doing the addition/deletion operations for the text of "End of Footnote" and "Start of next page",Writer will meet serious problem. The reason is that the sample file has an abnormal setting about footnote height. The height of footnote is set to be a pretty tiny value: ?0.2? inch which may not be high enough to contain a single normal text string. This setting makes a huge barrier when formatting the document content, and also,this document is displayed in a very strange way. For example,each footnote can not be displayed in its own page, but in the following page. In this case,if the text input into the text field of "End of Footnote" or "Start of next page" is too long and can not be displayed totally in a single page, it has to be spanned to cross pages when formatting. Actually,the process will not affect the document nodes structure. During said formatting process,all footnotes will be reorganized within multi-frames. In order to deal with the multi-lines of the footnote, a method named SwFlowFrm::PasteTree(...) will be executed to connect all text strings inside a single footnote. Please refer to the code segment. ... else { if ( 0 == (pStart->pPrev = pParent->Lower()) ) pParent->pLower = pStart; else pParent->Lower()->pNext = pStart; } ... Said code will move a sub tree whose root is ?pStart? into the node ?pParent? as a child. If the "pParent" does not have any child,the "pStart" will be the only child of it. And if the "pParent" has already a child, the "pStart" will be the sibling child. But if the "pParent" has more than one child nodes,the former child node and its sibling nodes will lost their relationships to the whole tree. Thus,any modification of the tree will not affect the former child node and its sibling nodes any more. In this case, the content of the ?pParent? will be moved backward again and then, the "pParent" will be destructed later. Because the relationship of said nodes are lost, there will be no any operation happening on those said nodes. So the upper node pointer of such nodes is still pointing to the memory where the ?pParent? has been in. A dangling pointer appears. Serious problem will happen at any time. When facing such serious problems appeared during document formatting,developers have to make the data structure and relations clear first,and then plunge into code ocean to trace the complex formatting process step by step,that's a real big headache and will take too much time. And now,with the help of this tool,developers can easily make the data structure and relations clear and catch the destroyed data and certain structure difference changed within certain process,especially such as formatting process,undo/redo process and so on. Thus,developers are able to find out the root cause quickly and work out solution in time. This tool makes Writer developers more productive. Simultaneously,the development of the tool and real example details will also be introduced in this presentation.

Biography: 1.Three years of IBM Lotus Symphony Presentations Development,Technical Leader 2.Two years of IBM Lotus Symphony Documents Development,Technical Leader 3.Years of OpenOffice Study

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The state of the OOo SCM migration project

Rechtien, Jens-Heiner (Release Engineer / Sun Microsystems)

Abstract: OpenOffice.org is looking for some time now for a new SCM (Source configuration management) tool to replace CVS. Due to the rapid changes in the SCM tooling landscape over the last years there is no obvious best replacement for CVS; at least four SCM tools (Bazaar, Git, Mercurial and Subversion) emerged as serious candidates for hosting the OOo source code repository. The OOo engineering steering committee decided to migrate to Subversion first but to re-evaluate the three DSCM systems within a year to account for new developments. This presentation will discuss the current state of the SCM migration project.

Biography:

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Building Windows OOo on Linux: Madness, or The Way?

Holesovsky, Jan (Developer / Novell, Inc.)

Abstract: Producing Windows OOo builds is very painful - not everyone has that operating system, setting up the build environment for OOo is non-trivial, and the build takes too long. On the other hand, the Windows builds are essential, far too many users demand them, and also they are necessary for the QA purposes. This session will discuss the possibilities to cross-compile the OOo on Linux using the free (as in free beer) Microsoft compiler in Wine, and also other ways to speed up the Windows build.

Biography: Jan is with OpenOffice.org since 2003, employed by SUSE/Novell. Previously he graduated from the Charles University, and worked as a YaST2 developer during the studies. His first experience with developing office software was back in 1998-9 when he programmed the drawing part of KTTV, a Linux word processor and a vector drawing program for lecture notes. In OOo, he focuses on KDE integration, x86-64 porting, build/SCM related problems, etc.

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VBA Interoperatbility roundup

Noel Power (Project Lead VBA interoperability / Novell)

Abstract: I'd like to present a summary of the project, o where we are o how it works o what's currently supported o new features we currently are working o some demos

Biography: Noel Power: Working as part of Novell's Openoffice developement team. Responsible for improving VBA interoperability by enabling Excel macros to run natively within Openoffice

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Due to Popular Demand - SVG Import!

Strba, Fridrich and Behrens, Thorsten ( / )

Abstract: With superb ODF support, there are other open standards that suffered from some neglect in stock OOo - Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is one of them. With a vast collection of vector clipart now available in this format, this was a serious gap. The authors will showcase what the import can (and cannot) do, and entertain the interested audience with a brief history of SVG importers for OOo. Following that, the technical challenges are presented, that were encountered when mapping SVG to ODF, accompanied by a walk-through of the filter component.

Biography: Fridrich Strba is a Christian male, married to the most beautiful woman in the known universe and has two wonderful children. Having obtained Master's degrees in Computer Science and also in International Relations, he is a Software Engineer at Novell, Inc. working on OpenOffice.org. In the evenings, he becomes TrainedMonkey and randomly types on the keyboard. The result of this evening activity is a highly optimized code that you can find inter alia inside libwpd, libwpg and libwps. Thorsten Behrens is a self-confessed hacker, and prouds himself of approximately the same set of formal achievements as Fridrich. He wants to take the opportunity and mention that he's now also happily working for Novell!

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Handling insanity a sane way: Robust binary documents parser, strategies & tools

Strba, Fridrich (Software Engineer / TrainedMonkey / Novell, Inc. / OpenOffice.org Project)

Abstract: Office suites have to deal with a fair amount of binary data from untrusted sources. This kind of data and the code to parse it might be a source of security issues. This session would like to give the example of libwpd. How we managed -- after several security advisory -- to develop a strategy to code and test a robust parser that handles in a sane way even the most insane input data. This session will give an overview of our regression-testing framework as well as of tools that we use to try to tear the parser down.

Biography: A Christian male, developing for different FOSS products. Working on OOo since before the 2.0 release, first as benevolent contributor, then as a Software Engineer at Novell.

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Interoperability --- expectations, promises, problems and solutions.

Florian Reuter ( / )

Abstract: In this workshop we will present the lessons learned about expectations, promises, problems and solutions with respect to interoperability. We will discuss the status quo of interoperability --- including demos of current filters --- as well as show stoppers for interoperability by example. Additionally we will provide ideas for solutions and we are open for any kind of user feedback. We consider the workshop to be successful if the attendees feel that we understand their interoperability problems and also we where able to communicate how we want to address them.

Biography: Florian Reuter --- Novell Inc.

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Python Extension Development

Darabos, Daniel (Lead developer / MultiRacio Ltd.)

Abstract: After developing extensions in Python for one year we would like to share our accumulated experience with other developers in the form of an open-source toolkit and this workshop. If you have a neat idea for an extension, there is a good chance that it will be shaping up nicely by the end of the workshop!

Biography: As lead developer at MultiRacio Ltd. since 2001 I have been extending OpenOffice.org in various ways. I'm also a Python enthusiast and 27.

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OpenOffice as a report engine

Luis Filipe Ferreira Fernandes Domingues (CTO at Seara.com / )

Abstract: Combining OpenOffice and other OpenSource solutions, like Smarty, an excellent template engine, we can easily develop a template engine for our applications. Full PHP source code will be provided, as well as demonstration of an invoicing system, built in PHP that uses OpenOffice+Smarty as a template engine.

Biography: CTO at Seara.com Webdeveloper

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