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Weekly Links #6

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  • Group:OpenDocument/Reject – LibrePlanet

    “Can you please resend your attachment in OpenDocument format? I refuse to accept Microsoft Word documents or Microsoft Excel documents, because using proprietary formats is bad for freedom and bad for the web. Please visit http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/opendocument to get started with OpenDocument today”

    tags: ODF

  • And the Winners are… | The Nokia Guide

    “You guys are fantastic, thanks so much to everyone who commented! Your feedback is the most important piece for us when it comes to developing a feature set. Rest assured that many of the features you’ve mentioned (PDF, Google Docs integration, swirl zoom, localization, ODF support, etc) are being evaluated by our developers as we speak.”

    tags: ODF

  • ODF Fuzzer – Gitorious

    “ODF Fuzzer is a file format fuzzer developed to test star writer
    of Open Office.org. This will attempt to find security vulnerabilities,
    bugs and code flaw errors of the star writer. It uses byte mutation
    and insertion methods to create fuzzed files. ODF Fuzzer have a simple
    built in module to execute the star writer with the fuzzed files
    and monitor it’s behaviour.”

    tags: ODF

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

ODF Performance Tip #1: Don’t re-compress images

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ODFDOM is an open source (Apache 2.0) Java library for reading, writing and modifying ODF documents.  It runs standalone, not requiring OpenOffice.org or any other editor to be installed.  It operates directly on the ODF document itself.

One of the things we’re focusing on in the next release of (the 0.9 release) is optimizing the performance, getting ODFDOM to read and write ODF documents as fast as possible, and with as low a memory footprint as possible.  The aim is to make it optimal for concurrent use, say in a Java servlet.

Some of the the things we’re finding as we profile ODFDOM are worth sharing, since they are not specific to this library.  They are tips and techniques that are applicable more broadly, potentially to all applications that work with ODF documents.  I’ll do a series of posts on these ideas.  Hopefully you will find them useful and maybe even can share your tricks as well.

The first thing I’ll point out concerns documents with many image resources, such as large presentation files with a lot of graphics.  We found that writing these documents was rather slow.  The problem was in how the images were stored in the ZIP archive.  As you may know, ZIP allows a file to be compressed (most commonly using the DEFLATE algorithm).  Most ZIP libraries will, by default, compress every file you add to the archive.  However, for many common media types, like PNG and JPG images, the data has already been compressed, at the level of the image encoding.  So if you have your ZIP library try to compress the images a second time, you will typically waste time with very little incremental savings in storage.

Most ZIP libraries have an alternative way to store files in their original, uncompressed form, a method called STORE.  What we found in ODFDOM was that if we store images rather than compress them, the time needed to save our large presentation was reduced by 20%, while the size of the archive increased only 3%.  So this was a good trade-off.

I think this technique would be applicable to other libraries and editors.

Weekly Links #5

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  • Making the Grade With the Open Document Format

    “HOSEF conducts a monthly ‘Open Source Pizza’ so that people can learn more about what is happening with Free and Open Source Software. Thіѕ presentation is about the adoption of the Open Document Format by the University of Hawaii’s College of Education.”

    tags: ODF

  • ODFDOM for Java: Simplifying programmatic control of documents and their data, Part 2

    “ODFDOM for Java provides a lightweight Java API for developers who want to create, access, and save ODF documents without having to gain detailed knowledge of the full ODF standard specification.”

    tags: ODF

  • Home Page | Association of Greek Users and Friends of FS / OSS

    “Today, on the occasion of the international Document Freedom Day, the Association of Greek Users and Friends of Free Software / Open Source Software and Free Software Foundation Europe take the occasion to request from the Greek Government the immediate, comprehensive and mandatory adoption of the OpenDocument
    Format (ODF) and other Open Standards for the Greek public sector.”

    tags: ODF

  • ODF: Setting the standard for office documents in the public sector | opensource.com

    “With Document Freedom Day 2010 approaching, this is a good opportunity to consider the reasons why the public sector has increasingly opted for ODF, the document freedom that it enables, and why ODF is an essential feature of any “open” eGovernment strategy.”

    tags: ODF

  • Doug Mahugh : SC34 Meetings, Stockholm

    “WG6’s work was mostly focused on the errata for ODF 1.0 and the creation of an amendment to ISO/IEC 26300 in response to OASIS’s submission of ODF 1.1 to JTC1. There was a full room for the meeting, with over 30 attendees including several participating by telephone.”

    tags: ODF

  • Why I support Document Freedom Day « Off the Wall

    “Today is Document Freedom Day, a promotion of non-proprietary standards like Open Document Format. Around the world, small groups of free and open source software (FOSS)users are holding events to educate others about the importance of this issue, and The Free Software Foundation has launched a campaign to encourage supporters to politely refuse attachments sent in proprietary formats like Microsoft Office’s. And, inevitably some people are saying these efforts are useless – and proving that they miss the point.”

    tags: ODF

  • Red Hat News | Celebrate Document Freedom Day!

    “Today marks the annual observance of Document Freedom Day (DFD), a global day for document liberation. Red Hat is proud to support this grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of Open Document Formats and Open Standards. Fostering open standards and encouraging innovation support Red Hat’s core values. “

    tags: ODF

  • OpenOffice.org celebrates Document Freedom Day [LWN.net]

    “March 31st is Document Freedom Day (DFD), a day for document liberation marked around the world. It will be a day for us all to educate our friends and neighbours of the importance of open document formats. OpenOffice.org uses the OpenDocument Format (ODF), and that means at least one hundred million people around the world use it at home, at work, at school: everywhere. “

    tags: ODF

  • ODF Plugfest – Granada 2010

    “La histórica capital andaluza ha sido elegida para celebrar la tercera edición del congreso mundial ODF Plugfest, que tendrá lugar del 15 al 17 de abril en la Universidad de Granada organizado por NOiV del Gobierno de Holanda, Fedict del Gobierno de Bélgica, CENATIC (Centro Nacional de Referencia de Aplicación de las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación basadas en Fuentes Abiertas), la empresa especializada en interoperabilidad OPENTIA, y la Universidad de Granada, bajo el amparo del comité de estandarización ODF de OASIS. “

    tags: ODF

  • Why I’m rejecting your email attachment — Free Software Foundation

    “The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today launched a campaign calling on all computer users to start politely rejecting email attachments sent in secret and proprietary formats: for freedom and the good of the web!”

    tags: ODF

  • Document FreeDom Day « Going GNU

    “All the IT world is revolving around the Documents. Documents are the carriers of the Information. And when those Documents are in the proprietary format like DOC,XLS,PPT, DocX, XLSX, PPTX, we are bounded to a specific software to open those files – MS Office. “

    tags: ODF

  • Document Freedom Day Interview with Chris Moore, CIO, City of Edmonton

    “Several municipal governments in Canada have recently made great strides towards embracing open standards, and open document formats. In honor of Document Freedom Day (DFD) 2010, the ODF Alliance interviewed Chris Moore, CIO of the City of Edmonton, and one of the leading-edge CIOs in the region.”

    tags: ODF

  • ODF Video Tutorial (12 minutes, Flash)

    “Learn more about file format standards, what ODF is, advantages for using ODF, and more! “

    tags: ODF

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Fifth Anniversary of ODF is May 1st

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We’ll be hitting a significant date next month.  It was on May 1st, 2005 that Open Document Format (ODF) 1.0 was approved by OASIS.

I hope we can all take time to reflect on far we’ve gone, with the specification itself,  with the quality and diversity of implementations and with world-wide adoption.

As we read that the other “standard”, after only 2 years,  appear to be circling the drain, I hope we take a few moments on May 1st to ask ourselves why ODF did not suffer a similar fate.  What worked well with ODF?  And what can we teach the world about open standards?

Of course, not everything in ODF is perfect, but to be still so relevant after 5 years is an accomplishment worth bragging about.  Not every standard makes it this far.  We should celebrate.

Filed Under: ODF

Introducing ISO ODF 1.1

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Stockholm Gamla Stan

It was cold and dreary in Stockholm for last week’s meeting of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34.  There is nothing surprising or particularly interesting to report.  That is a sign of a successful meeting.  No drama.  These face-to-face meetings tend to be formulaic rituals.  The real work is done in WG teleconferences and email discussions that occur in advance of the face-to-face meetings.  If the WGs have done their work well, the physical meetings are boring.  In Stockholm we were not disappointed.

However, I would like to report on the advancement of an ODF initiative that we’ve been working on in the OASIS ODF TC and in SC34/WG6 for a couple months now.  The idea is to “upgrade” the ISO version of  ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) so it aligns with OASIS ODF 1.1, rather than its current alignment with ODF 1.0.  ODF 1.1 was standardized by OASIS back in 2007 and is widely implemented, including support in OpenOffice, Microsoft Office, Symphony, KOffice and so on.

Formally this alignment to ODF 1.1 would be done via an amendment to ISO/IEC 26300:2006, to add the enhancements from OASIS ODF 1.1 — primarily accessibility improvements.  The process will look something like this:

  1. OASIS submits the full text of ODF 1.1 to JTC1 (done)
  2. The ODF Project Editor will work with SC34/WG6 to prepare the text of an amendment to ISO/IEC 26300.  Think of it as a diff between ODF 1.0 and ODF 1.1 (in progress)
  3. A ballot of  SC4 NBs in what is called an FPDAM (Final Preliminary Draft Amendment)
  4. A ballot of JTC1 NBs in what is called an FDAM (you guessed it — a Final Draft Amendment)

The full process will take 9-12 months, so we can expect the amendment to be published sometime in 2011.

So you may be thinking, what does this mean for ODF 1.2? The answer is: nothing. I was not willing to support this amendment unless it could be done in a way that would not divert the ODF TC from its current work completing ODF 1.2.  After quite a bit of discussion in OASIS and with WG6 we found a way to process the amendment that did not effect the ODF 1.2 schedule.  However, the result is that it is likely that OASIS ODF 1.2 will be approved before the ODF 1.1 amendment is approved in JTC1.  This may look silly, but it is not a serious problem.  The important thing to remember is that the latest and greatest ODF work will be found at OASIS, and that this work will slowly but steadily progress through JTC1, and will eventually be published with an ISO/IEC coversheet,  12-16 months later.  The ISO version of ODF 1.1 should not matter to implementors, since most are already supporting ODF 1.1 and now moving on to ODF 1.2, but it may be of interest to some adopters.

Filed Under: ODF