Pavel's diary

For the coming year, I have several wishes in my OpenOffice.org life (the order is random ;-):

• OpenOffice.org 2.0 completely translated into Czech (including helpcontent)
• at least 20 new translations being worked on in time of 2.0 release
• the release of 2.0 in the first half of the year
• I'd like to cut down the list of MyIssues down under 40 in time of 2.0 release (the current status is 80)
• beta quality port of AMD64 in time of 2.0 release

What do you want to achieve in the year 2005? -----

I have uploaded new POT files updated to the latest milestone SRC680_m68. You can find them at ftp.linux.cz and also at ooomisc.services.openoffice.org. -----

Milestone SRC680_m68 is ready. The following child workspaces were integrated: bm3, calc26, dr30, icontool05, kso12, mhu05, mmeeks02, mmeeks03, mozdotnet2003, scriptingf9 and swqbugfixes10.

I'll update my local build tree to this child workspace, but I do not plan to upload it because I'm still away from home/fast IP connectivity. -----

Version 1.1.4 of OpenOffice.org is now released in both English and also in Czech. I personally hope this is the next-to-last version from 1.1.x branch. Why not last? We expect 1.1.5 to be released with support for new OpenDocument file format of the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0.

And even maybe with new NSIS-based installer for Windows. But I'm sceptic about that. People only tend to whine about it few days before release and no activity from them in the right time... -----

I've got a cold so I'm working from home. So everything is very slow. Mirka is preparing everything for our trap to parents (Brno). Michal is trying to sit ;-) He is trying to sit just before my keyboard and likes to watch me typing.

Christmas makes everything slower, I have received my first Christmas present this week. Now I'm finally able to ssh directly from my phone which means that I'm not concentrated well on my work. When I bought my first mobile phone 9 years ago, I never thought that it can be so complex toy.

Everything changes. This will be my first Christmas with my son Michal. -----

SRC680_m67 is ready for use. Integrated child workspaces: helpaux, hrogtkremove, impress24, mmeeks01, nativefixer2, nsplugin4 and pbbeta03. -----

As a public secret, it is well known that Itanium is dead because of AMD64 architecture's better design and compatibility. But now, it is also public.

I expect Intel itself will not say so publicly this year, but I expect them to say so next year (which, BTW, starts in 22 days ;-). They will probably support it for the next ~3 years or they (maybe this could be cheaper for them) will offer to exchange Itaniums for their EMT64 processors 1:1 or similar ratio. -----

SRC680_m66 has been announced with the following child workspaces integrated: ant02, ause012, ause014, aw022, eforms3, hr10, ineturl1, pj13, pj14, qadev20, sch05, tbe14, vclbetabugs01 and vq07. -----

The latest developments of l10n for 2.0 are in the child workspace babelfish. This cws fixes many small problems encountered during our work on supporting localized versions. Unfortunately, not many localization teams started their work on 2.0 yet, so we will find other issues in the future. I have started to work on helpcontent and its status for localized builds so this will bring new issues (unbelievable amount of work went to helpcontent localization process, thanks goes to Frank and other members of his team).

My list of issues connected with l10n or translations right now contains (updated to SRC680_m65):

• #i38714# - DicOOo, FontOOo: not translatable using localize
• #i35263# - simplify readlicense_oo/prj/d.lst (in progress)
• #i36315# - gsicheck errors on all GSI files generated from SRC680_m59 (probably solved in gh??)
• #i37122# - invalid UTF characters in basic/source/app/basic.src (trivial)
• #i37105# - Generate scp2/inc/macros.inc during the build (almost solved)
• #i37520# - Missing English translations for FT_NAME_RUSS and FT_STREET_
• #i38279# - Update README for OpenOffice.org Beta
• #i38840# - Start wizards in the language of GUI
• #i38909# - basic/source/app/svtmsg.src: wrong translation
• #i39027# - helpers/update_tree.pl: do not work on *source* tree but in ... (new)
• #i39062# - Run update_tree.pl for all languages in the build (new)
• #i32386# - Autocorrect files and ISO codes?
• #i38426# - & instead of & in the Contents
• #i38421# - General Glossary: sorting naively?
• #i39068# - Control.ulf: possible typo
• #i22548# - fulltext search in help and letters with diacritical marks doesn't not work

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Czech Ministry of Informatics created big faux pas this week.

They prepared text-books for "National program for computer literacy" in the close cooperation with the biggest computer publisher in our country. Three books are titled First time with computer, Word and Internet. They even presented these text-books for public review.

So what is a faux pas here? E.g. the title of the second text-book is unacceptable. The complete program for computer literacy is funded from public money and the title suggests to use one particular product of one particular company (and incidentally the company that is now in legal battle with EU). This is simple unacceptable. The text-book about the Internet contains advertisements-like screenshots of one of the biggest Czech web portal (without mentioning others) and what is the most interesting one, there is also a photo of one politician (our current prime minister, who is called Big Brother here).

The most interesting is that the public review software they use on their pages had to be extended to be able to handle the amount of opinions from people who read these books. There are 86 opinions right now and I can't find positive opinion there ;-)

I posted three opinions there - one about commercial software from one supplier, second about unacceptable political background of one text-book and the third about the copyright of all documents (no right to distribute while the program is about distributing and extending computer literacy etc.).

To sum up using the computer terminology: MI: EAGAIN.

So, back to the real work ;-) -----

Elizabeth Matthis posted a small note for translators about new document formats and their proposed translations. Here are important excerpts:

The default file format for OpenOffice.org 2.0 will be called "Open Document Format for Office Applications" (see meeting minutes of The OASIS Open Office XML Format TC). The short-name form is OpenDocument. This short-name is used very often in the OpenOffice.org and is not to be translated!

Elizabeth suggests the document type itself to be localized (e.g. "OpenDocument spreadsheet" = "OpenDocument Tabellendokument" in German). All names of document format types are listed in the specification.

Please follow this suggestion while translating to your language. -----

Long awaited milestone SRC680_m65 is ready. Integrated child workspaces are: sysintbeta1, fmebeta01, dba21, dbabeta1, gtkmenucrash, pbbeta02, sb27, odbeta01, hbbeta01, pbbeta01, tl06, oasisbeta1, miscbeta2, tl05, fwkbeta01, impress21beta, vq06.

As you can see from names of child workspaces integrated, we are heading to 2.0 Beta. Please test this milestone very carefully.

I have also uploaded new POT files for translators. My builds are still running, but I'll upload them soon. -----

This diary entry summarizes several common practices that I'm trying to follow. Do you have more? Please tell me so I can extend this and help others.

Mail is the primary communication medium of the project. Several mail outages in the past have shown us that e-mail (along with IRC) is crucial for our project. If you have a problem with OpenOffice.org (compilation failure, user problem, ...) try to search mail archives first. It is very common to find a solution just after you sent your e-mail. While using mail, please follow Netiquette and also the Mailing list guidelines of our project. It is still very common to reply with full quotation of the previous mail etc.

IssueZilla is THE bugtracking system we use. If you found an issue in OOo, please file it in IZ if you can't find it there. You'll help others who will have the same problem in the future. They can find it. You can help yourself because you'll be notified via mail about the solution and its status. -----

Yes, I have a good feeling about l10n in 2.0. Almost all pieces that are to be solved for 2.0 are solved.

Ause helped me a lot with my Perl ignorance and thus we sketched a solution for #i37105#, another piece that had to be changed for new language.

Currently, we are almost close to "./configure --with-lang=xy should be enough to get Openoffice.org with GUI in your language" ;-)

I'd like to see more translation teams starting work on 2.0. Right now, we are very close to beta. If we are able to provide Beta in more languages, more people will be able to test 2.0. My build system is building for Czech, Estonian and Finnish regularly. Esp. Czech team (sure, this is my team) and Ain from Estonian team are very helpful for testing 2.0 with non-English environment. I hope that South-African team will join us soon with their languages ;-)

What problems other teams face? Can I help you to get up to speed again? Do not hesitate to ask! -----

I have just opened child workspace macosx01 for MacOS X fixes to help MacOS X porters (... and also subscribers of dev@porting ;-) -----

I changed my build system to produces builds with integrated KDE and GTK plugins.

Integrating GTK plugin was pretty simple, but KDE plugin in SRC680_m64 needs some work (see #i38446# and other issues).

In the following table, you can compare the visual appearance of generic, GTK and KDE plugins. Click on the image to see fullscreen image.

generic	GTK	KDE

I'll start clean build of SRC680_m64 with my patches and latest translations in a few moments (it will be build-2 of SRC680_m64). -----

SRC680_m64 is released, but several keys do not work in localized version (see #i38386#). So I decided to test how Help system works with partially Czech localized contents and I also tested installation Wizard.

As a result, I reported following issues:

• #i38421# - General Glossary: sorting naively?
• #i38423# - Long helpcontent pages contain "paper space" (duplicate of #i38289#)
• #i38424# - helpcontent and err.html
• #i38426# - & instead of & in the Contents
• #i38427# - license and line wrapping in the Wizard
• #i38425# - Can't click on "I want to register now" (duplicate of #i36967#)

-----

I have just uploaded POT files updated to the latest milestone SRC680_m64. You can find them at ftp.linux.cz and also at ooomisc.services.openoffice.org.

If you want to start translating OpenOffice.org to your language, just read this short introduction. -----

Hamburg RE announced SRC680_m64 which integrates child workspaces xmlsec06, so8betal10n, swqcore01, os42, helpcontentbeta, recovery04, calcp2fix, oasisrng01, jl14, os43, vcl31, impress16, sj12, lotus123import01, toolbars3, sb26, vcl29, textalign, nsplugin3, gt08hangulhanja, dbabetap2, usp4all, readme680beta, presentationengine01, dbwizard2, sysint1, solsfix, oasisbf2, impress19, impress10, nojava2 and cd03.

My personal feeling from running it on GNU/Linux is: wow, we seems to be really close to beta! Though there still are issues that makes the effect of this milestone significantly BAD (like #i38386#). -----