The Pathedral and the Kazoo (Entries tagged as LibreOffice)

RED! RED! It's all RED! And RED is POSITIVE!

nospam@example.com (erAck) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 19:02:06 +0100

It has been done.

There isn't much more to say about the long outstanding dmake removal from the LibreOffice build system than what Björn Michaelsen described in detail except one thing that sprang to my mind when seeing the final commit that removed 93554 lines: it's all red and it's so good.

Going to FOSDEM

nospam@example.com (erAck) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:42:26 +0100

As usual I'll attend this year's FOSDEM to spread and gather knowledge, meet people and have fun.

I'll definitely stick around the LibreOffice Devroom on Sunday if you want to meet me and I would be pleased if you come visit my talk Language Tags - or, what is BCP 47 and why would we want it that is scheduled to start at 14:20

See you at Bruxelles!

Editable Date Acceptance Patterns in LibreOffice

nospam@example.com (erAck) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 23:02:00 +0200

The introduction of more restrictive date acceptance patterns in LibreOffice 3.6 (see earlier blog entries here and here) generated quite some discussion whether the change was good or bad. The fact that not all locales had patterns for incomplete (only day and month) date input added to their data also added some angry voices.

Independent from that there was one thing overlooked: users want to be able to input dates using the numeric keypad and in locales with a '.' dot date separator that was not possible anymore because usually then there is no dot on the keypad due to the decimal separator being different. That certainly needed to be addressed.

There is no way to satisfy everyone with a default set of patterns, I therefore implemented a Date acceptance patterns edit field in the Tools→Options→LanguageSettings→Languages dialogue that follows the selected locale and enables users to add, edit and remove patterns.

Date acceptance patterns edit field.

The change is currently in master and pending review as a late feature for inclusion to the 3.6.2 release.

Example for the German de-DE locale:

default patterns: D.M.Y;D.M.
to enable additional input on numeric keypad: D.M.Y;D.M.;D-M-Y;D-M
- if 3-4 shall not result in a date, D-M- could be used instead of D-M
- note that to enter an ISO 8601 Y-M-D date with a D-M-Y pattern active one needs to enter a year >31 or with at least 3 digits, e.g. 011
instead of D-M-Y;D-M also D/M/Y;D/M could be used

Changes to the patterns become effective immediately after having confirmed and closed the dialog.

Hamburg hacker spaces

nospam@example.com (erAck) — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:37:23 +0200

This week Hamburg was blessed with exceptionally good weather, blue sky, sunny, 25 to 30 degrees Celsius, it would had been a shame to stay inside all days so I decided to at least partly work outside outdoor "open air" with a mobile internet connection and hack on LibreOffice. These were my hacker spaces on Thursday:

Hammock set up at Alsterwiesen.

Set up my hammock in the meadows of lake Alster, Alsterwiesen.

Sun is approaching, preparing to move.

The Sun is approaching the hammock and I'm preparing to move to a place where I can continue to be able to recognize what's displayed on the monitor.

Actually working with a notebook in a hammock is not ergonomic at all.. it was fun this time, but I wouldn't make it a habit, probably not even repeat. Hammocks are great to relax and read, but with a notebook either the arms aren't in the right angle or aren't free to move or the notebook hasn't the right angle or the neck gets stiff. Or all together.

On the roof of my home.

In the late afternoon there's a nice shady place on the roof of my home.

Life can be great :-)

*Office nostalgia

nospam@example.com (erAck) — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 11:13:35 +0200

Caolán dug out the StarOffice/OpenOffice.org team photos that were available as easter eggs until scraped out by the easter egg police in 2010. If you try hard you can spot me on one of them ;-)

Filho's Infographic of Debian with license exception does not allow use of TDF or LibreOffice

nospam@example.com (erAck) — Sun, 06 May 2012 22:27:00 +0200

First when I saw Claudio Filho's new Infographic of Debian Understanding Debian I thought "great work", but then I spotted the license section on the bottom left of the graphic that puts the work under CC BY-NC-SA, but with a restriction

with the exception clause (*): Is forbidden to use, to reference or to use of any material of TDF or LibreOffice in this material or derivatives.

Trying to parse that it seems he wants to say that TDF or LibreOffice or any of its materials may not be used or mentioned in derivatives of his work, i.e. the LibreOffice logo in the Sources section. I'd call that an unfree license. (Yes, the NC in CC is that anyway, but IMHO acceptable in art works).

However, knowing that Claudio Filho is an active supporter of Apache OpenOffice I wonder what good that restriction shall actually do. This is not lowering barriers between both projects. And it certainly is not the right way to promote the spirit of Free Software.

I'm embedding the graphic here, convinced that the entire article does not form a derivative work referencing LibreOffice and embedding would be forbidden.

Does your LibreOffice locale need a date acceptance pattern for incomplete date input?

nospam@example.com (erAck) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:09:00 +0200

Update 2012-08-31T23:08+0200 : Editable Date Acceptance Patterns in LibreOffice

As explained in an earlier article a new feature will be available with LibreOffice 3.6 that limits date recognition of input to predefined locale dependent patterns to prevent erroneous detection of dates. To be able to input incomplete dates a locale needs date acceptance patterns defined in its locale data, quite a lot submissions of such patterns have already been included, but many locales do not have any pattern assigned yet. For these locales date input will only be possible as a complete date, no incomplete dates will be accepted. Maybe your locale should be enabled for incomplete date input but isn't yet? Then please submit the pattern(s), either as a comment to this blog post, or on the LibreOffice l10n mailing list if you are involved with LibO localization anyway, or simply mail me.

Locales without explicit DateAcceptancePattern elements:
(one implicit full date pattern is always generated)

ak_GH ar_DZ ar_EG ar_OM ast_ES az_AZ bn_IN bs_BA cv_RU da_DK de_AT de_CH de_LI de_LU dsb_DE dz_BT ee_GH el_GR en_AU en_CA en_GB en_GH en_JM en_NA en_ZA eo es_AR es_BO es_CL es_CO es_CR es_DO es_EC es_GT es_PE eu fa_IR fo_FO fr_CA fur_IT fy_NL gl_ES gsc_FR gug_PY ha_GH haw_US he_IL hi_IN hil_PH hr_HR hsb_DE ht_HT hu_HU hy_AM ia id_ID it_CH jbo ka_GE kk_KZ kl_GL km_KH ko_KR ku_TR ky_KG la_VA lb_LU lg_UG lif_NP ln_CD lo_LA ltg_LV lv_LV mai_IN mk_MK ml_IN mn_MN mt_MT my_MM myv_RU ne_NP no_NO oc_FR om_ET or_IN pjt_AU pl_PL plt_MG ro_RO rue_SK rw_RW sc_IT sg_CF shs_CA so_SO sr_RS sv_FI sv_SE sw_TZ tg_TJ th_TH ti_ER tk_TM tpi_PG ug_CN uk_UA ur_PK uz_UZ vi_VN wa_BE zh_HK zh_MO zh_SG

Locales with explicit DateAcceptancePattern elements:

an_ES:
- D/M
be_BY:
- D/M/
- D.M.
bg_BG:
- D.M.Y г.
- D.M.Y г.
- D.M.Y Г.
- D.M.Y Г.
br_FR:
- D/M
ca_ES:
- D/M
cs_CZ:
- D.M.
- D. M.
- D. M. Y
- D. M.
- D. M. Y
de_DE:
- D.M.
en_US:
- M/D
es_ES:
- D/M
et_EE:
- D.M
- D. M
- D.M.
- D. M.
fi_FI:
- D.M.
fr_BE:
- D/M
fr_CH:
- D/M
- D.M.
fr_FR:
- D/M
fr_LU:
- D/M
gd_GB:
- D/M
- D-M
is_IS:
- D/M/
- D.M.
it_IT:
- D/M
ja_JP:
- M-D
- M/D
- M／D
- Y.M.D
- Y／M／D
- Y年M月D日
- M月D日
kab_DZ:
- D/M
lt_LT:
- M-D
nl_BE:
- D/M
nl_NL:
- D-M
pt_AO:
- D-M
pt_BR:
- D/M
pt_PT:
- D-M
ru_RU:
- D.M.
- D/M/
sk_SK:
- D.M.
- D. M.
- D. M. Y
- D. M.
- D. M. Y
sl_SI:
- D. M. Y
- D.M.
- D. M.
tr_TR:
- D.M
- D/M
- D-M
zh_CN:
- M-D
- M/D
- M／D
- Y.M.D
- Y/M/D
- Y年M月D日
- M月D日
zh_TW:
- Y.M.D
- M-D
- M/D
- Y年M月D日
- M月D日

If some of the entries seem to be duplicates within a locale and include spaces, that's because they are defined both with normal space and with breaking space to accommodate both input variants.

LibreOffice Hamburg Hackfest 2012

nospam@example.com (erAck) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:19:33 +0200

Thorsten already summarized it very well and even Björn survived it, the LibreOffice Hamburg Hackfest 2012 was a great success, 25-30 participants hacking, building, exchanging ideas, having fun, too little sleep and Italo's pasta.

So let me just add that with the help of moggi I learned how to add a new file type's (here CSV) filter test to Calc's unit tests in order to prevent regressions in the CSV import filter that I lately changed to some extent and finished polishing at the Hackfest.

Many thanks to co-organizers Thorsten and Björn and of course all who joined and participated and made the Hackfest such a great event. We'll definitely have to do this again.