Laurent Godard

OOo Extensions Project Hot Topics

After the OOo 2.0.4 annoucement that provides new extensions improvement such as licencing and new extension .oxt, the extensions team is hard working setting up an ecosystem for developping extensions

The main points actually worked on are

Translation toolkit : A long discussion has occured focusing mainly on the backend storage format (xml xcu OOo file format, po files, java properties format). While this is important the main focus regarding Extensions usability is to give developpers a cool and simple API to use and translators of every skill level a versatile tool to provide and test translations
It seems something is beeing studied at Basic IDE level but this rather a new sun internal project and will be limited to dialogs translation on first release. This may be available in OOo 2.2+ and probably not downward compatible.
As a short term solution, our great Paolo proposed a solution based on pyUNO and xcu file. it is a cool way to go as it will allow extension developpers to have their work being used in OOo 2.x versions and this toolkit can even be enhanced to support other file format.
About deploying extensions, the actual command line based utility is rather secure but restrictive. It does not allow to use an existing library repository. The problem is that it sometimes behave too silently when de-activating some extensions. Some ideas (use of xlc files) and context restrictions are being discussed to see if something can be improved for user experience
A new tool demonstrated at OooCon is now available - This NetBeans plugin is really cool and i think that an Eclipse one will also be available :)
A small team is setup for the web site - A great Art design work is being started by Ben while Jean-Pierre setups a first prototype. This will be available really soon as an alpha proposal release when server will have required tools

if you wish to join the Extensions team, please do. Everybody is welcomed, just tell us, we will find something for you ;)

Speaking about extensions, one as to note the new Sun Java OOo Blogger. This reminds me Caolan's work from last year. The same goal, done and freely available in pyUNO. It is freely available as a study case and use. I bet originality will be for the next extension. But if you want to fund SUN for supporting OOo, it is a way ...

At OOo level, a new team is built for a Creative Commons licence inclusion in OOo documents. If you whish to help visit them on their dedicated mailing list

And for volunteers, I give here some rough ideas for extensions. But, everything else is possible :)

an impress autostart : OOo does not have a pps-like file format. The idea is to define a DocumentInfo.Info1 parameter, check it though a resident extension on impress file opening and auto start the presentation (level required : easy/medium)
on-the-fly translation : on the model of OOoWikipedia, retreive the translation of an hilighted word and display it in OOo (level required : easy)
S5 is a web based light format - create an assistant/filter allowing to export impress files to this format. mainly XSLT stuff but a wizard can also be setup (level required : skilled)
logo is a cool language for children to start with. OOoDraw API could be used to embedd such a tool. Note that an engine already exists in python, so using pyUNO could be a good idea

These tools creation and how they can be packaged as Extensions can be discussed on users@extensions.openoffice.org. The core part, the api use and help remains on dev@api.openoffce.org mailing list

I propose you to visit our enriched Wiki (some part are even being translated but any mediawiki tool pointer for multilingual support would be great) and join us on dev@extensions.openoffice.org to build the ecosystem, users@extensions.openoffice.org to start building extensions and #ooo-ext freenode IRC channel for a live chat

New spellcheckers available

The 0.2 version of Occitan (languedocian) has been uploaded. Thanks to Bruno Gallart

A new spellchecker is also available Marathi (India)
This indian language is spoken by around 90 millions of people Wikipedia says

it has been a quite challenging work as from a word list in an encoding i could not read on first load, i end up with 'not-so-bad' solution :)
Thanks to Hunspell, the default engine of OOo 2.0.3, using UTF-8 is possible so the Marathi language became beautifull to me (well, unfortunatelly only as a picture)
Using CTL linguistic options as well as a dedicated font (all is explained in the readme file of the spellchecker), one can see that the spellchecker is working even if there are some missing word.
The next step is creating the affix file and enrich the word list. Some solutions are on the road though ...

Thanks Priti D. Patil and janabhaaratii Project for giving this word list and releasing the spellchecker ressources under LGPL

This has been possible because Marathi (India) was a locale already defined at the OOo L10N project level and available in OOo. So also thanks to the L10N project
I really like when energies are merging and i find that someone prepared a work i need as a basis :)

Both spellcheckers are available within DicOOo.
They're actually propagating on mirror so be patient ...
Be sure to read README file for special needed configuration if you're not in India

Other lingucomponent stuff being finalized and will be announced soon, stay tunned ...

OOoWikipedia 2.0.3 is out

Thanks to Andras Timar from fsf.hu, OOoWikipedia handles now magyar language.

OOoWikipedia is an OpenOffice.org extension that allow you by highlighting any word in a text document to popup a browser that connects directly to Wikipedia ressource on it.

OOoCon time !!

OOoCon is approaching !! It will take place this year at Lyon (France) from the 11th to 13th of september

Some are already there as Lyon is a nice city place to visit (Pavel, Stefan, ...). I will personnaly come from Grenoble on sunday evening

A lot of interresting topics will be covered by the conferences on tuesday and wednesday, especialy regarding extensions and OOo scripting :) but also ODF topics as well as promising lingucomponent project spellchecker presentation

On monday many meetings are planned : QA, Extenstions, Marketing, ... a great time to discuss less formally

One more important point, our kiberpipa friends rock and kindelly accepted to reproduce their wonderfull effort from last year. We will have a professional-like media coverage that will cover (Note that all of this is done only with open sources tools):

live video streaming

archiving the video on the web
interviews
blog planet (send an email to ooocon@kiberpipa.org if you want your blog to be included)
photo gallery

Also thanks to local helpers such as Charlotte, C�dric (obviously ;) ) and Geoffroy (not so local but so efficient)

The media coverage address : http://ooocon.kiberpipa.org (guess what, probably still under construction ;) )

This OOoCon promises to be great event, really !!!

Portuguese Thesaurus available in OpenOffice.org 2

Using OpenThesaurus by Daniel Naber, thesaurus for portuguese is now available in OpenOffice.org 2.0 though DicOOo (File > Wizards > Install new dictionaries)

Thanks to Paulo Trezentos and Rui Fernandez from Caixa Magica

Article Contest - June winner

The official monthly announcement for the article contest is out

The june winner of the OOo Article Contest is Kohei Yoshida for its
" Hacking Calc - The first steps"

Other articles are pending and will be re-evaluated in the next sessions. They're still in competition, so many chance to win :)

The July session ends at the end of the month, so feel free to submit any article on whatever aspect of OOo development you want to cover. Remember, this contest is sponsored ...

The past articles can be red on the OOo Wiki

DicOOo 1.6 is out

The dictionaries installer DicOOo has been released under version 1.6

Dictionaries are now automatically activated at installation time and will be available for use just after restarting OOo. There is no more need to deal with Tools > Options > Linguistic settings ...

The update will be prompted on the next use of your DicOOo which is still available in File > Wizards > Install new dictionnaries

Package for OOo Security Bulletin 2006-06-29

OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 has been announced as out !
(french version is expected in the coming hours)

This announcement provides a security bulletin dealing with 3 potential vulnerabilities detected by internal security audits.

if you can not install this new 2.0.3 version for whatever reason, the issue dealing with java applet can be countered as mentionned on the Java Applets, CVE-2006-2199 dedicated page
(be carefull that other issues remain !!)

The solution proposed works great by deactivating java applets but is not so easy to deploy at large scale or for regular users. So i used the OOo Tools for what they are made for : The UNO Package concept that allow to create great extensions but also deploy configuration settings

So this addon reproduces what is proposed on the CVE page. It works for OOo 2.x as well as OOo 1.x

To deploy under OOo 2.x

Tools > Package Manager > add and select the zip file
or

launch <OOoInstall>/program/unopkg <ZipFilePath>

To deploy under OOo 1.x

launch <OOoInstall>/program/pkgchk <ZipFilePath>

Note that running these command lines with the -s switch (for share) let you deploy the addon for all your users

For testing that the patch has been applied correctly, you can insert an applet (eg. the JavaClock.class can be used for testing purpose) and see if it does not run.

You insert a java Applet though

Insert > Object > Applet

Once the patch applied, only a drawing with the name of the applet should be displayed and the applet should not run anymore

This check also apply to already created document containing applets

Lettre ouverte au sujet d'OpenDocument

L'appel � commentaire du R�ferentiel G�n�ral d'Interrop�rabilit� de la DGME touche � sa fin.
Un volet important concerne le format de fichier bureautique et des r�gles concernant OpenDocument sont propos�es et discut�es.

L'Alliance OpenDocument, dont Nuxeo est membre, publie une lettre ouverte � destination du Directeur de l'Agence de Modernisation de L'Etat afin de souligner les b�n�fices et opportunit�s du format OpenDocument (ODF) pour l’Administration Fran�aise en mettant en avant les gains en terme d'ind�pendance, d'interop�rabilit�, d'innovation et pr�servation de l’h�ritage culturel entre autres.

OpenDocument est le format de fichier de r�f�rence d'OpenOffice.org (et d'autres suites bureautiques) et d�sormais reconnu par la plateforme CPS

DicOOo : new and updated dictionaries available

Past days, i've uploaded some new dictionaries on the lingucomponent master server. DicOOo will now propose the following (once fully propagated):

Occitan (languedoc) spellchecking (new) referenced as oc_FR
Croatian spellchecking (update) and hyphenator (new) referenced as hr_HR and hyph_hr_HR
Hebrew spellchecker (update) referenced as he_IL

Special mention to Bruno Gallart for its work on Occitan spellchecker !

OOoDust : my own "proof of nothing"

Stardust "proof of concept" virus has been announced by an anti-virus editor.
At first, let state one thing : "Macros and extensions, like any program, are active Things and then can hurt"
Once this said, we can not call all macros viruses !
A virus needs to replicate, propagate, most often silently ...

The stardust "thing", does nothing of this. By default OOo asks for every run of a macro and any administrator or user can even disable this feature or restrict macros to some trusted sources directories. The user has to explicitly accept running a program. So nothing to notice there

Among Pavel's announcements with its as usual accurate wordings : only waste of time
Some relay of other anti-virus editors are even more ridiculous as stardust is identified as XML virus under the name XML_DUSTAR: hey, a new beast is born

All of this is restricted to StarOffice, so let me introduce my own OOoDust as a first state of reflexion in building the new malware engines of coming years

sub OOoDust()

  print "You're infected"

end sub

to activate it is rather simple

open a new document
open the macro editor (tools > macros > ....)
create a new module
copy the virus in this module
save your document
restart OOo (or send your file to a target)
open your document
agree on activating macro after reading the message
go to macro editor (tools > macro ..)
launch the evil macro OOoDust

It is obvious that OOo and StarOffice will be hurt soon by some malware attacks, but, guys, this not for this time. The dust of this advertisement smoke of anti-virus editors is easily dissipating while examinating the process ...

Btw, OpenOffice.org project has a structure for reporting any suspicious behaviour, so feel free to contact us
As stated in the official OOo first reaction
"the consistent message from security experts [is] that users should never accept files from unknown sources".

CPS supports OpenDocument

The futur version of CPS will support OpenDocument thanks to the new PortalTransorm transformation. The uploaded files are recognized and preview is available. Text search also works.

This support opens your ECM to the new ISO 26300 document format standard as OpenDocument has recently been announced. Using this format for your documents ensures you to keep control on them without any restriction regarding licencing or time.

More and more office suites supports OpenDocument. My favourite remains OpenOffice.org, the leading free office suite that uses OpenDocument as default file format.

Introduction on testing pyUNO programs with doctests

OpenOffice.org is great, Python is great. Guess what ? PyUNO is great

Scripting OpenOffice.org with Python is an efficient way to produce high quality additional functionalities to your favourite office suite.

But programs has to be tested to ensure reliability and so Python addons and pyUNO scripts.
Python comes with various test tools and one of them is doctest.

Here is an example that illustrate a doctest use on a pyUNO script. We have 3 main steps

start OpenOffice.org in listen mode
write the doctest
run the doctest

Starting OpenOffice.org in listen mode

As we plan to use pyUNO for external scripting, we have to start OOo in listen mode as explained in the Developer's guide

/opt/openoffice.org2.0/program/soffice -accept="socket,host=localhost,port=11111;urp;StarOffice.ServiceManager"

Write the doctest

A doctest is a plain text file mixing comments and Python code from the interpreter. The idea is to write a story, describing what happens while testing. Then we end with both a documentation and a testing program. The idea is to mimic what happens in the Python editor as if we typed directly the command. The expression is evaluated and compared to the given value

>>>a+1
2

If the answer is not 2 while performing the test, it will fail and the error will be reported with the expected value against the current value

Here is a rather long (but not complex) example illustrating some basic OpenOffice.org Python scripting command. A more complete test (dealing also with calc and file export) is provided at the end. These basic commands can be usefull to start dealing with the OpenOffice.org API through pyUNO

We are going to test some basics aspect of Openoffice.org
OOo can be scripted using Python though pyUNO bridge

First, we need to import some classical python modules:

>>> import sys, os, tempfile, time

Then, the pyUNO modules that are delivered within OOo:

>>> import uno, unohelper

We will also need some specific services and nammed constants 
from OpenOffice.org API. They can be imported as any regular python module:

>>> from com.sun.star.connection import NoConnectException
>>> from com.sun.star.beans import PropertyValue
>>> from com.sun.star.text.ControlCharacter import PARAGRAPH_BREAK

This last value is a named constant we will need when dealing with Writer.
Let's verify its value:

>>> PARAGRAPH_BREAK
0

Now, we load an helper module that provides some usefull shortcuts when
dealing with pyUNO Bridge:

>>> from oootools import OOoTools

We now are ready to start our tests.
The first action to do is to connect to a listening OOo instance we
launched.

Let's define the listening host we have to reach and the port ...

>>> HOST = 'localhost'
>>> PORT = 11111

We now call out helper connecting class:

>>> ooo = OOoTools(HOST, PORT)
>>> ctx = ooo.ctx
>>> desktop = ooo.desktop

So, we are now connected to the listen OpenOffice.org instance

We open a new blank writer document:

>>> doc = desktop.loadComponentFromURL("private:factory/swriter",'_blank',0,())
>>> doc.Text.String
u''

To populate the document, a cursor is needed:

>>> cursor = doc.Text.createTextCursor()
>>> cursor.ParaStyleName
u'Standard'

The default paragraph style is 'Standard', but we plan to write our outline.
So we change the ParaStyleName under the cursor:

>>> cursor.ParaStyleName = "Heading 1"
>>> cursor.ParaStyleName
u'Heading 1'

It is now time to insert a first text:

>>> doc.Text.insertString(cursor, "Title Level 1", False)
>>> doc.Text.String
u'Title Level 1'
    
We insert a paragraph break and some other sentences with various styles:
    
>>> doc.Text.insertControlCharacter(cursor, PARAGRAPH_BREAK, False)
>>> cursor.ParaStyleName = "Heading 2"
>>> doc.Text.insertString(cursor, "Title Level 2", False)
>>> doc.Text.insertControlCharacter(cursor, PARAGRAPH_BREAK, False)
>>> doc.Text.insertString(cursor, "A normal sentence !!!", False)
>>> doc.Text.String
u'Title Level 1\nTitle Level 2\nA normal sentence !!!'

We did not affect any paragraph style for the last sentence, relying on the 
'following style' property of the "Heading 2" style.
So the paragraph style of this new paragraph should be different:

>>> cursor.ParaStyleName == "Heading 2"
False
>>> cursor.ParaStyleName
u'Text body'

To verify our outline, we generate a content index at the start of the
document:

>>> cursor = doc.Text.createTextCursorByRange(doc.Text.Start)
>>> anIndex =doc.createInstance("com.sun.star.text.ContentIndex")
>>> anIndex.supportsService("com.sun.star.text.ContentIndex")
True

Setup some properties:
    
>>> anIndex.CreateFromOutline = True
>>> anIndex.CreateFromLevelParagraphStyles = True
>>> anIndex.CreateFromChapter = False
>>> anIndex.IsProtected=False

and insert this first index at the cursor:
    
>>> doc.DocumentIndexes.Count
0
>>> doc.Text.insertTextContent(cursor, anIndex, False)
>>> anIndex.update()
>>> doc.DocumentIndexes.Count
1
    
We change the title of this index:
    
>>> anIndex.HeaderSection.Anchor.String = "The testing index"
>>> anIndex.HeaderSection.Anchor.String
u'The testing index'

and verfiy its content:

>>> anIndex.Anchor.String
u'The testing index\nTitle Level 1\t1\nTitle Level 2\t1'
>>> doc.Text.String
u'The testing index\nTitle Level 1\t1\nTitle Level 2\t1\nTitle Level 1\nTitle Level 2\nA normal sentence !!!'

So we have an outline with its index. Lets save this to PDF.

We first define the export filter property:

>>> args = (ooo.makePropertyValue('FilterName','writer_pdf_Export'),)
>>> args
((com.sun.star.beans.PropertyValue){ Name = (string)"FilterName", Handle = (long)0x0, Value = (any){ (string)"writer_pdf_Export" }, State = (com.sun.star.beans.PropertyState)DIRECT_VALUE },)

We define a temp file and verify it is not already in use:

>>> pdf_filename = os.path.join(tempfile.gettempdir() ,str(time.time()) + 'testooo-writer.pdf' )

>>> if os.path.isfile(pdf_filename):
...     os.remove(pdf_filename)
...

But OOo only deals with URL notations. We use the helper function
and the store the file to this URL:

>>> url = unohelper.systemPathToFileUrl(pdf_filename )
>>> doc.storeToURL(url,args)

We check briefly the file has been created and that it is not empty:

>>> os.path.isfile(pdf_filename)
True
>>> os.path.getsize(pdf_filename) != 0
True

and finally delete the PDF file:
        
>>> if os.path.isfile(pdf_filename):
...     os.remove(pdf_filename)
...

Close our Writer file and all remaining documents:

>>> doc.close(False)
>>> ooo.closeAll()

That's the end of our test !!!!!

This code is written in a my_test.txt file. There is to be noticed that taking all the line starting with >>> leads to a workable code.

Run the doctest

OpenOffice.org is shipped with Python 2.3.4. Doctest is available on this version but lacks the testfile method only available in python 2.4. There are some workaround like

replacing python with a newer (be carefull, this will not work if you use OpenOffice.org builds from the project with debian - need to rebuild python due to UCS options - Using debian OpenOffice.org build works, of course)
quick and dirty : copy a doctest.py file from your python 2.4 to /opt/openoffice.org2.0/program/python-core-2.3.4/lib

Once doctest available, you can launch OpenOffice.org Python and test your file

$ /opt/openoffice.org2.0/program/python
Python 2.3.4 (#1, Feb  1 2006, 21:07:49)
[GCC 3.4.1] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import doctest
>>> doctest.testfile('my_test.txt')
(0, 156)
>>>

The doctest returns a couple of values : the first is the number of failed tests (0 here), the second the total number of tests (156 here)
More details is given on errors. Options can be added to the doctest.testfile() method.

To conclude

Python is an efficient language that can be used for OpenOffice.org.
pyUNO programmers can use doctest to evaluate their programs and perform regression tests. This will lead to high quality and robust Openoffice.org Extensions

Slides S�minaire Aristote : OpenDocument et p�rennit�

L'association Aristote, par l'interm�diaire de son groupe de travail PIN (p�rennisation des informations num�riques) a organis� le 16 mars 2006 � l'�cole Polytechnique le s�minaire ayant pout th�me

"P�rennit� de l'information : relire nos documents informatiques bureautiques ou personnels dans trente ans?"

Les slides de ma pr�sentation concernant OpenOffice.org, OpenDocument et la d�marche de normalisation OASIS ainsi que ses suites sont disponibles sur le site d'inDesko.

First OOo article contest winner !

The voting process of the OpenOffice.org Developpers Article Constest happened these past days

And the winner is ... C�dric Bosdonnat for

"UNO Java component creation explained
How to create a Java component with Eclipse"

This 13 pages article can be found here and will probably be advertised and uploaded in good place in the OpenOffice.org UNO documentation

Congratulations C�dric !!

And now, who will be the next ? the deadline is end of the month ...

Enhancing OOo Calc CSV files recognition

CSV files are widely used for data import/export with spreadsheets

Openoffice.org Calc can obviously handle them but restrict the handling of CSV-like files to only some extenstions (csv, txt, tab). The default behaviour is to open unknown files in Writer as plain text ones.

Some months ago i gave the method for handling .dat files by default in OOo 1.1.x as CSV file [fr], so that they open directly in Calc.

Here is the update for OOo 2.x : the sipirit remains the same, the details slightly changed

Making the changes persistent

The filters definition in OOo 2.x are stored in /opt/openoffice.org2.0/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types
An xcu file is an xml file used by OOo for its configuration

In this directory, you'll find a lot of file dealing with OOo filters definition
The one concerned bu our CSV defibnition is fcfg_calc_types.xcu

Searching for csv string inside it, we will find this structure

    <node oor:name="calc_Text_txt_csv_StarCalc" oor:op="replace" >

        <prop oor:name="DetectService"><value>com.sun.star.comp.calc.FormatDetector</value></prop>

        <prop oor:name="URLPattern"/>

        <prop oor:name="Extensions"><value>csv txt tab</value></prop>

        <prop oor:name="MediaType"><value>text/plain</value></prop>

        <prop oor:name="Preferred"><value>false</value></prop>

        <prop oor:name="PreferredFilter"><value>Text - txt - csv (StarCalc)</value></prop>

        <prop oor:name="UIName">

            <value>Text - txt - csv (StarOffice Calc)</value>

        </prop>

        <prop oor:name="ClipboardFormat"/>

    </node>

One can the notice that inside this calc_Text_txt_csv_StarCalc node, we find an Extensions property listing all the extension actually handled for csv files

So, the solution is only to append dat or zzz to this property

        <prop oor:name="Extensions"><value>csv txt tab dat zzz</value></prop>

Be carefull that this file is in the main OOo directory, not the user one, so you may need some writing rights on this file

Deploying the solution

Thanks to OOo configuration model and great package manager, one can deploy this configuration easilly
Seeing OOo Configuration as layers (share > User > Packages), we can then define a package taht the user will add using its Tools > Package manager
The modified configuration will me merged to the Configuration XML tree provided the adminsitrator has not finalized the node

This package is straightforward to create :

Create a myConf.xcu file taking the heading of fcfg_calc_types.xcu and reproducing the calc_Text_txt_csv_StarCalc node with the desired modification.

zip the file

you're ready

Here is the example that configures calc to open .dat aand .zzz file sby default once the pacakge installed

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE oor:component-data SYSTEM "../../../../component-update.dtd">

<oor:component-data xmlns:oor="http://openoffice.org/2001/registry" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" oor:package="org.openoffice.TypeDetection" oor:name="Types">

    <node oor:name="Types">

    <node oor:name="calc_Text_txt_csv_StarCalc" oor:op="replace" >

        <prop oor:name="DetectService"><value>com.sun.star.comp.calc.FormatDetector</value></prop>

        <prop oor:name="URLPattern"/>

        <prop oor:name="Extensions"><value>csv txt tab dat zzz</value></prop>

        <prop oor:name="MediaType"><value>text/plain</value></prop>

        <prop oor:name="Preferred"><value>false</value></prop>

        <prop oor:name="PreferredFilter"><value>Text - txt - csv (StarCalc)</value></prop>

        <prop oor:name="UIName">

            <value>Text - txt - csv (StarOffice Calc)</value>

        </prop>

        <prop oor:name="ClipboardFormat"/>

    </node>

    </node>

</oor:component-data>

Reminder : OOo Developpers Article Contest

The first session of the Developpers Article Contest is running and will end at the end of the month.

As announced, this contest is to generate new documentation to developpers and everybody can participate. Developpers and technical writers are welcomed to propose articles. The subject has to cover a technical aspect of OOo such as building, patching, addon, extensions or OOo scripting aso.

Submissions have to be sent as attachments in the OASIS OpenDocument file format to the mailing list contest@development.openoffice.org

The contest rules can be found on the OOoWiki. Each month, an article will be elected and the winner author will earn 750 euros. He will also be member of the comitee for three months if he wants The remaining articles will stay in the contest for the next month so you have many chances to win :-)

So, write your articles and submit them. We are all waiting reading them ...

OOoCon2006 : Results ... After Koper, let's go to ...

Lyon has been choosen by votes

The official annoucement by Jacqueline, marketing lead
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=272

After the good work of C�dric at INSA, lets help him now organizing this event.
All the energies are welcomed to make this event as successfull as the previous years

You"ll surely be called for help - Stay tuned !!

OOoCon2006 : Votes are opened

The OOoCon is our high level meeting and we as a community have the chance to decide each year where it will be located !!

The previous locations have been Hamburg (DE), Berlin (DE), Koper (SL)
This year the choice is between Vienna (Austria) and Lyon (France)

This has been announced by Jacqueline, marketing lead, this morning via emails on various lists

As the CCR i can only tell people : go and vote !!!
CAUTION : The deadline is the 19th of february - Hurry up

For participating, it is rather simple, even if in english (what I also regret) - You've to be registered to OOo website before

Go to http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2006/proposal.html

Give your choice (see below for help)

Validate your choice

You'll receive an email ( subject : [OpenOffice.org] Please confirm your vote) asking for confirmation with a link inside you must visit to finalize your vote. Something like

http://survey.services.openoffice.org/ooocon/confirm.php?action=bf386d2ea1b206b1dc16bd98

Your vote is taken into account :)

That's all
Advertize around you to make the choice for the meeting place. (Everywhere it will take place, it will be a wonderfull event)

As member of the french community, i suggest you to vote for Lyon. Really, it's a cool place and C�dric did a great job negociating the hosting place.

The spreadsheet next generation

As office suites evolve, more and more functionalities are proposed to end-users. Regarding spreadsheets, the next Excel generation will propose around 16 billions of cells in one sheet !!
This is done through a 1 000 000 rows versus 16 000 columns sheet

Damned, who needs so many numbers on one sheet ???

Anyway, if it is not enough, for you, powerfull end-users, OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet can propose a little bit more with a matrix of 2 000 000 rows versus 32 000 columns
The last cell coordinates of this 64 billions set is AUHT2000000
Formulas even work !

Nota : this is obviously a joke as some minor polish remains to be done on this quick hack (Thanks to Niklas Nebel for its pointers)
We are also waiting for the Office 12 file format to test the export functionality and are actually thinking to a 1 000 000 000 rows version

ActiveCell : ViewData string meaning

In my previous blog concerning ActiveCell, i proposed a hack to retreive the current column and row, based on some magic string found in CurrentController.ViewData

We all agree that the best will be to extend the existing API. Waiting for it, here is the explanation.
Please note that in most cases, the currentSelection object should be sufficient.

This string is built in <OOoSources>/sc/source/ui/view/viewdata.cxx ScViewData::WriteUserData (thanks to noelp for pointing it). I analyzed it to see what information were stored there

so here is the magic,

but, first, as promised on the dev@api list, i put this statement
"this hack is based on an internal representation of the information not guaranted to be kept over versions"

On a new Calc file

print ThisComponent.CurrentController.ViewData

100/60/1;0;tw:270;17/34/0/0/0/0/2/0/0/0/0;;

here is the meaning identified for each portion

100/60/1;0

zoom ratio (%) in normal view

zoom ratio (%) in page break view
current view mode (0|1 = normal|page break)
Active sheet index (0 based)

tw:270

tw : Nammed constant TAG_TABBARWIDTH

270 : Width of the zone diplaying the sheets tabs (unit : pixels ?)

17/34/0/0/0/0/2/0/0/0/0 - For each calc sheet, semi-colon separated.

active col (0 based)

active row (0 based)

split/freeze vertical (0|1|2) - 1 = split ; 2 = freeze

split/freeze horizontal (0|1|2) - 1 = split ; 2 = freeze

vertical position = in cell if fixed, in screen unit if frozen

horizontal position = in cell if fixed, in screen unit if frozen

active zone in the splitted|frozen sheet (0..3 from let to right, top to bottom)

X1 = 0 (always ?) - the col of the upper left cell of zone 0 (upper left)

X2 the col of the upper left cell of zone 3 (bottom right)

Y1 = 0 (always ?) - the row of the upper left cell of zone 0 (upper left)

Y2 the row of the upper left cell of zone 3 (bottom right)

                            X2 and Y2 can also be seen as lengths in cell number.
The information are available only if the sheet has been activated/view at least once since the file creation. In our cases, the default calc document is created with three sheets but only the first (default) has been accessed

These informations can also be found in the settings.xml file inside the calc file

      <config:config-item-map-entry config:name="Feuille1">
       <config:config-item config:name="CursorPositionX" config:type="int">2</config:config-item>
       <config:config-item config:name="CursorPositionY" config:type="int">14</config:config-item>
       <config:config-item config:name="HorizontalSplitMode" config:type="short">0</config:config-item>
       <config:config-item config:name="VerticalSplitMode" config:type="short">0</config:config-item>
       <config:config-item config:name="HorizontalSplitPosition" config:type="int">0</config:config-item>
       <config:config-item config:name="VerticalSplitPosition" config:type="int">0</config:config-item>
       <config:config-item config:name="ActiveSplitRange" config:type="short">2</config:config-item>
       <config:config-item config:name="PositionLeft" config:type="int">0</config:config-item>
       <config:config-item config:name="PositionRight" config:type="int">0</config:config-item>
       <config:config-item config:name="PositionTop" config:type="int">0</config:config-item>
       <config:config-item config:name="PositionBottom" config:type="int">0</config:config-item>
      </config:config-item-map-entry>

ActiveCell : the missing api

Calc API provides usefull methods to retreive current informations such as ActiveSheet or CurrentSelection.

If these api covers a lot of cases, some are not handled. Even inside a range selection, there is an active cell, usually the last selected one, depending on the way the range as been selected (from upper-left to bottom-right, bottom-left to upper-right, ...). Unfortunatelly, the CurrentSelection is only able to catch the range itself. The same problem occurs on multiple selections

This ActiveCell concept is missing and may disturb new commers from other office suite scripting like VBA.

Nevertheless, the OOo API allows to retreive this information. We can define a function that returns the cell (in OOoBasic but will work in other OOo supported languages via UNO such as Python or Java).

function ActiveCell()

 'retreives viewData

  ViewData = ThisComponent.CurrentController.ViewData

 'many sub-separators, unify - The content remains mysterious

    ViewData = join(split(ViewData,";"),"/")

    ViewData = join(split(ViewData,":"),"/")

    ViewData = join(split(ViewData,"+"),"/") 'handles IV65535 !

 'split the string

    ViewData = split(ViewData,"/")

 'retreives active positions

    activeCol = ViewData(6)

    activeRow = ViewData(7)

 'get the activeCell

    activeSheet = thisComponent.CurrentController.ActiveSheet

    ActiveCell = activeSheet.getCellByPosition(activeCol,activeRow)

End function

This is very tricky as the CurrentController.ViewData is poorly documented. The returned string is something like "100/60/0;0;tw:270;5/23/0/0/0/0/2/0/0/0/0;;". What does it means ?
The only way seems to look into sources as the IDL reference does not give informations
Once the information clarified, this will go to the code snippets repository.

The best would be to enrich the API with some CurrentController.ActiveCell though ...

Programmation OpenOffice.org - 2�me �dition

Le nouvel opus est disponible depuis quelques jours sur le site de l'�diteur. Des pr�cisions, de nouveaux morceaux de l'API d�cortiqu�s, il apporte son lot de nouveaut�s et prends en compte les sp�cificit�s de la version d'OpenOffice.org 2.

Inconv�nient de taille, le pav� s'est encore allourdi ! D'apr�s l'editeur, on a d�pass� les 1,5 kg.
Musclage de neurone en perspective ...

J'esp�re que les lecteurs prendront autant de plaisir � utiliser le livre que Bernard et moi avons pris � l'�crire !

DicOOo & FontOOo

DicOOo 1.5.5 and FontOOo 1.4.7 are out

New translations
- Lithuanian
- Latvian
- Bulgarian
- Hebrew

and some german, dutch, swedish wordings

Thanks to all who provided these translations and tested the final releases
Especially Dotan Mazor, Hristo Hristov, Modestas Rimkus and Janis

These two new versions will be available after propagation on mirrors

OOoCon2005 - Slides

OOoCon at Koper was great
Nice meeting, professional level media coverage (with free tools)
Interressant discussions around Addons and Scripting. This subject was deeply covered by numerous presentations ( Paolo Montavani, Ian Laurenson, Mathias Bauer ...).
We see OOo2 is coming : it's scripting capabilities will boost OOo development

Following my presentation, it is now time to work :)

The slides have been transmitted to the organization team and will be soon available at http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2005/
The video is also available, showing interressant questions and start of discussions

I posted a first mail trying to start the discussion
You can join the dev@scripting.openoffice.org mailing list that will host us before the creation of the new incubator project
Kazunari Hirano, our great japanese blogger already relayed this announcement to the japanese community

As requested, i post my slides here ...

And now, lets go building the next OOo development booster

Le scripting d'OOo s'�tend

Apr�s avoir annonc� son passage � OpenOffice.org en d�but d'ann�e, la Gendarmerie Fran�aise s'investit dans le scripting.

Ce sont pr�s de 1000 livres qui vont �tre command�s afin de permettre aux gendarmes d'exploiter encore plus la puissance d'OpenOffice.org au travers de son API.

Gageons que cel� d�bouchera vers des contributions au projet OpenOffice.org en terme d'addons ...

OOoCon2005 - Koper Day 1

OpenOffice.org conference takes place this year at Koper in Slovenia (Near Trieste - Italy)

Sessions will focus on different main directions:
- development (red)
- eductional (green)
- community (orange)
- general (blue)

Today, a lot of interresting topics wil be covered and i plan attend mainly to the developpers ones
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2005/schedule/thursday.html

I haven't tested it, but you can see the live stream :)
http://ooocon-arnes.kiberpipa.org/
OOoCon as if you where there

Moreover, it is the time and place to meet people and finalize the scripting project. A lot of ideas are exchanged and i'm confident we will end with an efficient process to drive addons production from developpers to end-users.
This is a strong way to create a dynamic community proposing OpenOffice.org enhacement without diving into th core sources that don't attract newcomers.
Btw, if you're a core developper, you're welcome !! we need you
http://development.openoffice.org/todo.html
The list is not exhaustive. Just join and ask

Koper today : Raining

OOo2 standalone from rpm files

After the command line for debian archive set, here is the one for rpm to have a standalone runable OOo 2.0 version "out of the box", running with other already existing OOo2 versions

for aFile in *.rpm;do rpm2cpio $aFile|cpio -ivdum ;done

This will create a directory (/opt) in the current directory containing the runable version
Remember to handle userEnv correctly to avoid installation mixing

OOo2 multiple installation

This time, i wanted to have multiple OOo binaries of the same version to conduct some tests. By default, this is not possible as the packaging system uninstalls all 1.9.x version before installing the new one.

I am building my own OOo (a rather long process i hope to speed up soon) under debian generating .deb installation files.

Here is then the simple command line i used to unpack all the .deb files. The result is an OOo that can be used out of the box, without any install and that run with other 1.9.x versions (see my blog on -env:UserInstallation to be complete and avoid user directory troubles)

for aFile in *.deb;do dpkg --extract $aFile ./targetDir;done

OOo2 installation and multiple instances

OOo2 slightly changed its installation layout. Here are some notes i took while trying to launch multiple instance of the same installation, under the same user but using different settings.
These tests have been, conducted under OOo1.9.122 but will remain the same in the future (or at least a near future). I'll only speak here about OOo official releases. I let you search for your distro-specific-install ;)

Installing OOo2.0

By design, OpenOffice.org 2.0 is now installed in admin mode as root. The usual directory under Linux is /opt/openoffice.org1.9.122. Note that this directory contains a program and share sub-directories.

Once the core program installed, a user (name it Gooffy) can now launch
    /opt/openoffice.org1.9.122/program/soffice
The first time, he will be driven throughout a wizard for its personnal information collecting. All the datas will be stored in its home directory, under an hidden directory
    /home/Gooffy/.openoffice.org2
Note that this directory contains user subdirectory and no program nor share ones

Concerning the settings priority, the structure is the same as OOo1.1.x
    - share level : where all common parameters are set. Dictionnaries, Fonts, OOo registry settings can be store in this directory structure. They will be accessible to all users using this OOo installation. They are located in /opt/OpenOffice.org1.9.122/share and can then only modified by authorized users (root usually)
    - user level : unless settings are blocked at share lever using the finalize attribute in the xml node, the settings located in user registry sub-directory override the default ones of the share level. In this directory can also be stored user-specific dictionaries or fonts

For windows users, obviously the path are different but replace /opt by "Program Files" and .openoffice.org2 by "Documents and settings\Gooffy\Application Data\openoffice.org2 " and you should not be too far. The spirit remains the same

And that's all. Gooffy user has only the use of one set of OOo.
Moreover, normal packaging of OOo2 do not allow to install an other version (no problem with 1.1.x branch though). It is possible though using some self-made packaging from its own build

Multiple Instances

If you try to launch more than one time the /opt/openoffice.org1.9.122/program/soffice program, you always will end with only one instance (with a multiple document view) of OpenOffice.org based on the user installation settings /home/Gooffy/.openoffice.org2.

How does OOo know he has to use /home/Gooffy/.openoffice.org2 ?

When launching, OOo looks at /opt/openoffice.org1.9.122/program/bootstraprc file
Doing the same, we see a line like
    UserInstallation=$SYSUSERCONFIG/.openoffice.org2
So, changing this will allow to change the default behaviour
    UserInstallation=$SYSUSERCONFIG/.GooffyOOoSettings2.0

If you now launch OOo2, a new directory will be created and the user will again be driven through the first launching wizard.

$SYSUSERCONFIG is used by OOo to resolve the user home directory /home/Gooffy

Note that if you want to use fully qualified path, thy need to be noted as an URI
    UserInstallation=file:///home/Gooffy/.GooffyOOoSettings2.0

Be carefull that this setting will be used by all OOo users. So, if an other user launches OOo, he will use these settings but will probably run into access rights problems ...

While we managed to redirect user specific datas to an other directory, ending with 2 different directories for one user, we are only able to use one as the parameter UserInstallation remains global to the OOo installation.

Nevertheless, an undocumented command line argument, comming from udk bootstraping features, will allow us to create and use a specific UserInstallation parameter, overriding the bootstrprc one

Now, the user can launch 2 command lines
    /opt/openoffice.org1.9.122/program/soffice -env:UserInstallation=\$SYSUSERCONFIG/.GooffyOOo1
    /opt/openoffice.org1.9.122/program/soffice -env:UserInstallation=file://home/Gooffy/.GooffyOOo2

Note that the $ sign has to be escaped and remember that UserInstallation parameter is an URI (this point is now adressed by a RFE)

Two different instances of OOo2 will be launched, with two startup wizards, leading to 2 independant user settings (eg. one instance in french, the other in english)

So using the -env:UserInstallation command line argument lets us define multiple OOo2 configurations and allow to launch more than one OOo instance using the same installation under the same user account.

[OOo]Contributing is not only coding ...

Well, in fact, coding is the most important to me :)

But, today DicOOo is now translated into norvegian, with its 2 sublanguages no and nn. FontOOo is on the rails and will be released soon ... Thanks to the norvegian team, 24 hours after exchanging the first mails, the job is done ...

OOo is a multiplateform program, but the most important to me, OOo is a multilingual and multicultural project. That's why native-lang teams are so important. They are dynamic ...

So yes, coding is important but OOo Addon Coders, prepare your programs to be easily translated. They will then be useful to a majority of users ...

This point will be addressed by the scripting project ... A usefull addon means, yes, a good program, but also good testing, translating, support ...

More than Addons, OOo also share these needs ... so many ways to contribute

[OOo] A new CCR elected :)

Last week was the time for the election of the new CCR (Community Contributor Representative) of the OpenOffice.org project. The results are now known and I'm very honored being chosen among great names of the community to be the representative of all OOo contributor.
Here is the official announcement

So thanks to all who voted (not only for me) showing that involvement is growing inside OOo project. I'm really proud to be this voice for the coming 6 months.

Now, it's time to work and prepare great things to attract more and more contributors.
Yes, core developpers are needed but one other way is to attract all the scripters we can !
OOo 2.0 will bring a lot of possibilities (with Basic,java, javascript but also Python internal scripting) and it is now time to build and animate a strong Scripting project. The first proposals i'll made will be based on my IRC conf in April. Once some tools built and a real team involved, we will be able to explore other possibilities such as models, galleries ... on-line installation.

This is only a part of the job. I'm totally open to all questions/suggestion i can relay to the community council i'm now a part of.

Stay tuned and come to help, you're welcomed ...