An Antic Disposition

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Archives for July 2009

ODFDOM 0.7 Released

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I’m pleased to report that the 0.7 release of the ODF Toolkit Union’s ODFDOM library has just been released. This is an open source (Apache 2.0 license) Java toolkit for programmatically reading, writing and manipulating ODF documents. The code is 100% Java and does not require that you have OpenOffice or any other ODF editor installed. It operates directly on the document itself.

You can download the JAR and JavaDoc from the distribution here. You will want to go through J. David Eisenberg’s tutorials on ODFDOM as well.

If you sign up for a Toolkit Union account, you’ll be able to participate in the user’s mailing list (users@odfdom.odftoolkit.org) where we welcome your ideas, bug reports and patches. Or better yet, move over to the dev list (where the real fun is) and contribute actively!

The ODF Toolkit also has an active “Conformance Tools” project, including the ODF Validator, and our most-recent project, AODL, which is a .NET/C# module.

At the Toolkit Union we’re able to host more such ODF-related toolkit projects, in other programming languages. I don’t see any good reason to have two Java API’s for ODF, but I’d love to see broader coverage, especially in some of the more-widely used scripting languages like Python or Perl. I have even seen some interest in a PHP/ODF module. I think there is some advantage to getting a “critical mass” of programmers interested in working with ODF together in one place to bounce ideas off of each other. So if you are interested in joining this effort, sign up at the Toolkit Union’s web site, or send me a note if you want to talk first.

[22 July 2009 — more on ODFDOM 0.7 in this post by project lead Svante Schubert]

Filed Under: ODF

July 20, 1969

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Paul Calle (1928-) drew science fiction illustrations, including for now-legendary magazines like Galaxy Science Fiction and Amazing Stories. Then a funny thing happened. The science fiction became real. Sputnik launched in October, 1957. NASA was created in 1958. Glenn orbited the earth in 1962. The space race was on.

In the Fall of 1962 NASA chief James Webb created the NASA Art Program. Under the direction of James D. Dean, artists were invited to Cape Canaveral, to observe and interact with the astronauts and staff and to document history in the making.

The invitation letter stated:

When a major launch takes place, more than two hundred cameras record every split second of the activity. Every nut, bolt and miniaturized electronic device is photographed from every angle…but as Daumier pointed out a century ago, “The camera sees everything but understands nothing.” It is the emotional impact, interpretation and hidden significance of the events that lie within the artist’s vision.

Paul Calle was one of the artists engaged, during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. Calle’s illustration of the Apollo 11 moon landing is one of the iconic images of landing, as reproduced in the 1969 air mail stamp, Scott # C76, in 6-color Giori process:

We’ll be remembering a lot tomorrow — the astronauts, the engineers, the journalists — that all contributed to what was a defining moment of the modern era. Let’s also remember the artists and the part they played.

(And why don’t we have any good moon landing songs from the time?)