September 2006

Nothing is certain but death and …

September 29, 2006

October is almost here. The last quarter. This is the time of year I start thinking of next April 15th and what I can do this year to reduce my taxes via by recognizing some capital losses, making charitable contributions, etc. It also makes me think about taxes in general and how much the tax [...]

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ODF: Twenty Patterns of Use

September 28, 2006

I recently gave a presentation where, in passing, I enumerated a variety of usage patterns for ODF, demonstrating that it had wide applicability beyond the traditional heavy-weight office-like editors. This diversion in the presentation was well-received then, so I offer you a fuller version of these points in blog form. Twenty things you can do [...]

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Proposal for an Open Document Developers Kit (ODDK)

September 21, 2006

As mentioned in a previous post, OASIS and the ODF Adoption TC have set up a web site at http://opendocument.xml.org to act as central resource and repository for ODF information, as well as to be a focal point for the ODF Community to discuss items of importance. I’ve just contributed my first item there, an [...]

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Fruits of the Season: Notes on my Berry Patch

September 20, 2006

It was a good year for my berries. I have a 400 square-foot “berry patch”, half of it for the Fragaria genus (Strawberries, Alpine Strawberries, Musk Strawberries) and half for the Rubus genus (Raspberries, Blackberries, Thimbleberries and the various crosses such as the Tayberry and Loganberry). The strawberry harvest in June went well in spite [...]

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Lyon Summary

September 18, 2006

I’m back from the OpenOffice.org conference in Lyon. Unfortunately, I was able to catch only the last 1.5 days of the conference, but from what I saw the sessions were informative, the hallway conversations illuminating, and the hospitality superb. I participated in a roundtable panel on “OpenDocument, Open Revolution” and gave a presentation later that [...]

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The OOXML Compatibility Pack

September 6, 2006

Just saw something worth noting. I was on a machine running Office XP and tried to open an Office Open XML (OOXML) formatted document. I don’t know why I tried that, but I did. Word was smart enough to put up the following dialog: Now, that is something I hadn’t seen before. I think we [...]

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A quick look at the 0.2 ODF Add-in for Word

September 4, 2006

An updated version of the Microsoft-sponsered ODF Add-in for Word has been posted. A few weeks ago I had tried out the earlier 0.1 version with results you can read here and here. The Add-in’s Highlights page for the 0.2 version says that “This release is comprehensive with respect to Text, Formatting, Paragraphs, Images, Styles [...]

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Happy Labor Day

September 3, 2006

Here you have Scott #1082, with a first day issue of exactly 50 years ago, September 3rd, 1956. The design is by Victor S. McCloskey, Jr. of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing based on a a small portion of a much larger mosaic, “Labor is Life” (also shown below) by the American artist Lumen [...]

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