Gwenell Doc: A Small and Fast ODF Text Editor

May 26, 2011

  Today I look at Gwennel Doc, an ODF-based text editor for Microsoft Windows.  In interesting attribute of Gwennel is its small size and fast speed.  It can load and display the 792 page ODF 1.2, Part 1 specification in around 2 seconds, using an executable that is around 1/4 the size of that document.  [...]

9 comments Read the full article →

PJ, Goodbye and Good Luck

May 10, 2011

There was a time when daggers were drawn on Linux and its demise was plotted in dark detail.  At that hour stepped out a shieldmaiden with a blog, and that blog was Groklaw.   Eight years later, we hear the news that Groklaw will cease new postings after May 16th.  My sadness in hearing this news [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About ODF 1.2

May 5, 2011

Some little known facts, all of them true, but only some of them amusing, and even then only just so, about ODF 1.2, recently approved as a Committee Specification by the OASIS ODF TC: In producing OASIS ODF 1.2, we had 184 Technical Committee meetings, not including the numerous subcommittee meetings. During the development of [...]

6 comments Read the full article →

Twitter Powers of Ten

March 25, 2011

Time-Based Profiling Before any of this will make sense, I ask you to imagine doing a survey of your local shopping mall or other busy commercial shopping district.  You want to know where people congregate, where they spend most of their time.  Is it in a particular shop, in the food court, or in some [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

OASIS ODF 1.2 Committee Specification Approved

March 25, 2011

A few quick ODF updates.  We have a number of projects moving forward at multiple levels. First, just last week the OASIS ODF TC approved the ODF 1.2 Committee Specification.  This is the highest level of approval we can give to the specification in the technical committee. As some of you probably know, most standards [...]

3 comments Read the full article →

Best Practices for Authoring Interoperable ODF Documents

March 10, 2011

In the OASIS ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC we have recently started work on a new document, a “Committee Note” which will be called, “Best Practices for Authoring Interoperable ODF Documents”. I will be the editor for this document. If you are not yet familiar with a “Committee Note”, it is a new category of [...]

1 comment Read the full article →

The BSA’s New Candlemakers

March 3, 2011

The Business Software Alliance  (BSA) is at it again.   They are claiming that new UK Cabinet Office policy in favor of open standards — the kind of standards that the web is built on and which has created billions in new economy jobs –  is actually a bad thing, since it would (according to the [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

Photographing Waterfalls: 1000-fold Exposure Range

February 27, 2011

When photographing a waterfall (or other forms of moving, turbulent water), the choice of shutter speed determines whether you get a stop-action view of every droplet in motion, or whether you get a smooth,  time-averaged view of the currents.  What is the best shutter speed to use with waterfalls?   I had the opportunity last year [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

Jeopardy x 10

February 16, 2011

I’ve been reading a lot of interesting discussions about the amazing Jeopardy match between human champions and IBM’s Watson computer.  Although I’m in no way involved in this project, it is very exciting to watch this event unfold.  Some of the discussions I’ve read concern the impact of reaction time, who can get to the [...]

1 comment Read the full article →

The Versions of ODF

February 10, 2011

It has been a few months now since the OASIS ODF TC has done substantive technical work on ODF 1.2.  We had a 60-day public review last summer, a 15-day public review last December and we will start another (hopefully final) 15-day public review starting this week.   Every time we make a change to the [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →