The Pathedral and the Kazoo

... consider relocating to Iceland -- at least in Twitter world.

Twitter's new country based censorship feature takes your profile's country setting into account, so if you receive Tweet withheld or @Username withheld in place of the affected tweet or account, you might want to change that setting to something more liberal. I think Iceland is a quite good bet..

I ain't a twit tweeting on twitter, I make my dents on identi.ca instead.

I've seen many (ab)uses of spreadsheets during my years as an OOo/LibO Calc developer, but this Spreadsheet as Music Tracker-Sequencer is the most hackish one.

You might also be interested in the How-To video.

[via Bjoern's My productivity suite sounds better than yours ...]

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

Abstract: Calc's (and in Writer table) cell input now needs to match locale dependent date acceptance patterns before it is recognized as a valid date.

Previously the number formatter's input scanner was very lax in what it accepted as a "valid" date. All combinations of 2-3 numbers separated by '.' '/' '-' or the locale's date separator even with blanks in between that somehow could be interpreted as a date was accepted as such, which was especially confusing with incomplete dates containing only 2 numbers that in many cases were meant as textual input instead. For example

• In en-US locale, M/D is a valid date input to be interpreted as day of month of current year. However, M/D/ and M.D. were accepted as well.
• In de-DE locale, D.M. is a valid date input to be interpreted as day of month of current year. However, D.M and D/M and D/M/ were accepted as well.

In case of an input like 1.2 in a de-DE locale or others using '.' separator, meant as some sort of textual numbering, this was extremely annoying, it was interpreted as 1st of February of current year and the user had to prepend a single quote / apostrophe to suppress date recognition. Similar for 1.2.3 in locales that do not use the '.' date separator.

Now, during build time for each locale one full date acceptance pattern is generated from the existing locale data's number format FormatElement with formatindex="21" that is also used to edit dates, taking the DMY order and the defined DateSeparator. For example, in the en-US locale this generates M/D/Y from the MM/DD/YYYY FormatCode, and in the de-DE locale D.M.Y from the DD.MM.YYYY code. For this to work correctly the separator used in the FormatCode must match the DateSeparator element defined in Separators. As for all rules there's one exception though ;) if the format code uses a different separator and that is one of the known '-' '.' '/' separators, a second pattern is generated using the format's separator. This as a generalized case for locales that for example may use an ISO 8601 edit format, as hu-HU does, regardless what the date separator is defined to.

Additionally to the date acceptance pattern every locale of course still accepts input in an ISO 8601 Y-M-D pattern, and since LibreOffice 3.5 that also leads to the YYYY-MM-DD format being applied.

Localizers, HEADS UP please

If in your locale incomplete dates should be accepted or additional patterns that vary from the generated full date pattern are needed, those are to be defined in the locale data LC_FORMAT element for which a new DateAcceptancePattern element exists, of which zero or more can occur before the FormatElement elements. Currently only the following patterns are defined as they are the only ones I knew were plausible:

• bg-BG, a trailing breaking or non-breaking space followed by lower case or upper case Cyrillic letter GHE and a dot, as defined in the edit format
  • D.M.Y г.
  • D.M.Y г.
  • D.M.Y Г.
  • D.M.Y Г.
• de-DE, incomplete date
  • D.M.
• en-US, incomplete date
  • M/D
• sl-SI, date separator dot plus space
  • D. M. Y

For example see i18npool/source/localedata/data/en_US.xml

Happy date accepting :-)

Update: an updated list of locales and patterns is available in a newer blog post.

As can be seen at the top of my blog the description reads

Eike Rathke blogging about LibreOffice and the world (what a claim)

Trying to claim my blog at Technorati I entered the same as description there. After the automatic verification of the token code I had to place in an entry also fed to RSS they made me wait a few more days. Now in their great wisdom the robots pretending to be humans told me in the Claim Status that

The supplied description is inadequate, or does not seem to match the content of the site. Please update your claim with an appropriate description below and choose the "Update Description" button.

Ok you imbeciles, get lost. I can do without.

Belarus 317-3 -- a law that will change life of Belarusian people. It will be forbidden to use ISPs and sites not registered in Belarus for email, banking, commerce, business, shopping, whatever, you name it. Only on sites and servers in Belarus. Only on machines and by means registered with the government. Only with data retention for one year even in private house holds. Only through filters to be setup by ISPs. With filter criteria defined by the government. Total control.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120103/07193917260/no-belarus-is-not-cut-off-internet-new-restrictions-are-still-pretty-bad.shtml
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Weissrussland-reglementiert-Internetnutzung-1403099.html

Update: The cbronline article is very inaccurate in that it talks about accessing foreign sites would be illegal, which is not the case. Doing business on and by means through foreign sites will be illegal.

Nicht nur dass Der Wulff einen Facebook-Nutzer wegen MajestätsbeleidigungVerunglimpfung des Bundespräsidenten angezeigt [1] hat (obwohl wenn dann war das Verunglimpfung seiner Frau, ist das Amt des Bundespraesis sippenbehaftet?), nein er rief auch noch den grossen Kai von der Bild an um auf Unterlassung eines wg. Geld geplanten Artikels zu dringen.

Er klagte, dass ein „Bild“-Journalist seit Monaten eine „unglaubliche“ Geschichte plane, die am nächsten Tag veröffentlicht werden solle. Wulff kündigte für diesen Fall den „endgültigen Bruch“ mit dem „Springer“-Verlag an. Der Präsident bat um eine Unterredung, in der man über alles sprechen könne. Er sprach aber auch vom „Kriegführen“. Für ihn und seine Frau sei der „Rubikon“ überschritten.

Soso, ein endgueltiger Bruch, war ja wohl eine harte Verbindung. Und Krieg fuehren, tja, Schluss mit kuschelig, ist schon bloed so ein Bundespraesi-Amt, nichts fuer Weicheier wenn man sich einmal dumm angestellt hat und dann auch noch darauf beharrt.

Aaaaberrr.. der Rubikon ueberschritten? Ist das nicht zuviel Ehre fuer Diekmann mit Gaius Iulius Caesar verglichen zu werden? Oder hat Wulff einfach etwas verwechselt und dachte der grosse Kaiser waere angegriffen worden und nicht Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus? Wie auch immer, am Ende unterlag nicht der, der den Rubikon ueberschritten hatte..

Tschuess Wulff, das wars dann. Mal sehen wer als naechste(r) auf den Bundespraesidentenschleudersitz gehoben wird. Vielleicht ja zur Abwechslung mal jemand der/die sogar eine ganze regulaere Amtszeit durchsteht..

[kurz vor Save: auch bei Welt am Sonntag hat der Vieltelefonierer mal angerufen um zu intervenieren]

[Update: passend dazu und etwas detailiierter maha's Rubikon]

Today is Sweetmorn, the 1st day of Chaos in the YOLD 3178.