Re: [tdf-discuss] LibO document format: strict ODF or extended ODF?

[Thorsten Behrens]

Gianluca Turconi wrote:
> IMO, it isn't only a question about "better defaults", but a real
> turning point for LibO.
> 
> I'll try to clarify my point of view.
> 
> Let's say that by the time ODF 1.2 will be out, every feature
> currently supported from LibO will be in ODF specification too. That
> would be simply great.
> 
> Then, what?
> 
> Will LibO 4.0/5.0 stay at ODF 1.2 until ODF 2.0 (or whatever
> version) will be officially approved, becoming so the "Lingua
> Franca" in exchanging documents for people and organizations or will
> LibO try to implement more features that *may* be included in ODF
> 2.0, becoming so a technical cutting edge application?
> 
> They are two completely different visions of the project, I think.
> 
Hi Gianluca, all,

soo - as a matter of fact, both LibO and OOo 3.3 will occasionally
write out files that'll only comply to the "extended" ODF 1.2
conformance class.

There are two major reasons for that:

a) ODF evolves somewhat slowly (when 1.2 gets out, 1.1 will be
   almost 4 years old) - you cannot stop shipping features for 4
   years
b) OASIS, for very good practical reasons, only wants to standardize
   what has been successfully implemented (by at least three
   independent products, even) - so out of necessity, you'll need
   implementations of not-yet-standardized features, to actually
   make those standardizable via OASIS.

So I guess moving on & extending ODF is a feature, not a bug - of
course, for those who need it, you want a "strict mode" (which we
have).

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

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Re: [tdf-discuss] UI proposal

[jonathon]

On 10/30/2010 08:55 PM, Robert

> Well, I guess I have now run afoul of the asked for a feature that was 
> already there thing. 

The central issue here is that the obvious documentation doesn't cover
all of the nooks and crannies.

>  we probably should have a copy of a users manual that is part of the 
> download package and something very obvious just after install that leads 
> users to it.

+1

It won't be read, but it is an excellent starting point.


jonathon
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Re: [tdf-discuss] Copyright Assignments & the Document Foundation

[BRM]

- Original Message 

> From: Charles Marcus 
> On 2010-10-31 6:56 PM, Andrea Pescetti wrote:
> > Now, without copyright  assignment/agreement (granted by the LibreOffice
> > developers to the  Document Foundation), the Document Foundation will be
> > in the awkward  situation I described: it manages a product (LibreOffice)
> > but cannot  represent the LibreOffice developers since it doesn't own the
> >  code.
> Why can't TDF just add a simple, one-liner to its license stating  that
> any contributions automatically grant a co-copyright to TDF? Of  course,
> this would have to be made crystal clear to any contributors prior  to
> accepting their code, but I don't see why a specific signed  document
> would be necessary - I don't have to sign anything for an EULA to  be
> binding.

While IANAL, to my understanding at least the US requires explicit 
documentation 
of copyright assignment.
So a license stating such would not work.

So in order to be able to use it in all situation you have to play to the least 
common denominator legally - thus explicit copyright assignment.

Again, IANAL consult legal counsel accordingly for something authoritative.

Ben


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Re: [tdf-discuss] Copyright Assignments & the Document Foundation

[Charles Marcus]

On 2010-10-31 6:56 PM, Andrea Pescetti wrote:
> Now, without copyright assignment/agreement (granted by the LibreOffice
> developers to the Document Foundation), the Document Foundation will be
> in the awkward situation I described: it manages a product (LibreOffice)
> but cannot represent the LibreOffice developers since it doesn't own the
> code.

Why can't TDF just add a simple, one-liner to its license stating that
any contributions automatically grant a co-copyright to TDF? Of course,
this would have to be made crystal clear to any contributors prior to
accepting their code, but I don't see why a specific signed document
would be necessary - I don't have to sign anything for an EULA to be
binding.

-- 

Best regards,

Charles

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Re: [tdf-discuss] UI proposal

[Johannes Bausch]

> But Page Setup is partly outside Styles and should work like other styles.
+1, that's what I'm suggesting. Styles like "materials" in a 3d
application, for everything.

> I see a difference between both. For example, one might want to apply the
> character style "Accented text" on the character style "Hypertext link" (to
> get the hyperlink in italics) on the character style "SansSerif" (to use the
> font Helvetica)... all that in a paragraph styled "Bibliography" which would
> have Times as its default font.
So you're suggesting a kind of "environment trigger"? Then every
object should have a paragraph as parent and every style class (Font,
Structuring, Text Effects) a separate parent. Maybe that's not even
bad. I don't get your first sentence part, though (sorry).

> One suggestion might be to keep all characteristics such as "paragraph
> level" "numbering type" and "numbering level" as available options for
> styles, yet not define default styles (or most default styles anyway). It
> would be similar to the approach used by InDesign, a commercial desktop
> publishing software (its approach to styles has other flaws, but that's
> another subject). So, for instance, one could define a style called
> "TheTitleNumber6" (or whatever name suits one's fancy), with hierarchical
> level 6, a given font and paragraph spacing. For the sake of simplicity,
> there could be 5 or 6 basic styles such as Body Text, Headings 1 to 4
> defined as default, or they might even simply be defined in the "default
> document" and therefore entirely customizable. In my case, I would keep all
> heading levels, but only one style for numbering and one for bullets (after
> all, there are levels within it).
You're only suggesting less default styles, are you? I would suggest
having these in two templates, one with many default styles and
another one which is "minimal" to some extend. You can then very
quickly save your own "stylesheet" template (as I suggested).

> ANOTHER SUGGESTION
>
> Would it help the use of styles if the base style information were to be
> present in the Character, Paragraph and numbering dialogue boxes ? For
> example, when I select "Format –> Paragraph", I would get displayed near the
> top that it is based upon the "Body Text" paragraph format and there would
> even be a button to reapply the base style.
I would get rid of every other dialog box exept for the styler. It
doesn't make sense to give the user two alternative ways of doing
things. I know this would be a breach with the old approach. Microsoft
does it the wrong way. It has invented a cool new interface but also
kept the old stuff for compatibility. If we want to be different from
Office, then we do have to take drastic measures. Just my 2ct.

Joey

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Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: Non-removable extensions

[Michel Gagnon]

Le 2010-11-01 07:34, Michael Meeks a écrit :

Hi there,

On Sun, 2010-10-31 at 17:53 -0400, Michel Gagnon wrote:

however I cannot modify my installation to remove the PDF Import and
Persenter Console.

So - there are lots of parts of LibreOffice that cannot be removed
easily; such as the clipart gallery, or say, the Quattro Pro file
filters, or whatever.
I know, but those are not extensions. My main beef is that we have a 
hybrid system, with many components (36 in my case) that appear in the 
extensions list, yet only one is an extension that really behaves like 
one, i.e. that can be removed (or added) via Tools –> Extensions.
In other words, if it is an extension, I should be able to manage it via 
Tools –> Extensions. If it becomes part of the program like the Quattro 
Pro file filters, then it should not appear in the list of extensions.



The more interesting thing to me is - why would you want to remove the
PDF Import ? or the Presenter Console ?

If there are bugs that make these unususable, or particularly
problematic - then, we should fix those instead IMHO. ie. can we fix the
bug in the right place ?
I used those two "extensions" as examples. I would not remove PDF Import 
because I find it rather useful. On the other hand, I am not totally 
comfortable with the Presenter Console and feel more at ease seeing only 
the real life presentation on screen. But maybe it is because I am not 
really comfortable with Impress per se?


Regards,

--

Michel Gagnon – mic...@mgagnon.net 
Montréal (Québec, Canada) – mgagnon.net 


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Re: [tdf-discuss] UI proposal

[Michel Gagnon]

Le 2010-11-01 12:59, Johannes Bausch a écrit :

Why "page setup" is outside "stiles"? One of the killer features on
Writer is page styles (Word do not have them).

That's just dummy text, I didn't realize it... of course "Page" should
also come as category for the stylesheets. Of course this is a killer
feature. You setup page font size once and have everything inherit it
from the page stuff.
But Page Setup is partly outside Styles and should work like other 
styles. For instance:
– In Writer, page styles cannot be linked to a base styles. Tweaking 
header spacing in First Page, Odd Pages and Even Pages is therefore 
rather painful.
– In Calc, there are page styles (not linked to base styles as far as I 
remember). But there is something with header and footer definition that 
is counter-intuitive.
– In Impress and Draw, there are no page styles. Draw would be a good 
candidate for dual commands: page size vs drawing size.

I think there should be an option for that on every drop down menu.
For example, on character styles for "Font" you could have, on top of
the font list, two options:
- From parent style
- From paragraph style

That's duplicate. Where's the difference between parent and paragraph?
Why can't paragraph be a parent? Obviously a paragraph can only be a
parent to another paragraph style (and not to, e.g. a heading), but
e.g. the page (which has no such things as paragraph styles) can be
parent to everything.
Another disadvantage of having individual parents would be that you
get non-transparent inheritance. You could think of having each
category inherit from a separate parent, though.
I see a difference between both. For example, one might want to apply 
the character style "Accented text" on the character style "Hypertext 
link" (to get the hyperlink in italics) on the character style 
"SansSerif" (to use the font Helvetica)... all that in a paragraph 
styled "Bibliography" which would have Times as its default font.



and the font size could have a check box for "Proportional": right now
it is not easy for new users to discover that you can simply delete a
point size and type a percentage to get a proportionally sized font.

In the dropdown to the right you can select "%" instead of "pt".


I rather think that it should be more clear on documentation that
images are inserted on frames than to create a new category of styles
for images.

Again, "images" was just a dummy. Still, you might want to consider a
style for an image container, including image caption style - this is
still painful in OO.


Even if I like the concept, I can see one big problem: most users will
end with lots of repeated, unneeded styles!

That's true. Any ideas how to prevent cluttering the style list?
One suggestion might be to keep all characteristics such as "paragraph 
level" "numbering type" and "numbering level" as available options for 
styles, yet not define default styles (or most default styles anyway). 
It would be similar to the approach used by InDesign, a commercial 
desktop publishing software (its approach to styles has other flaws, but 
that's another subject). So, for instance, one could define a style 
called "TheTitleNumber6" (or whatever name suits one's fancy), with 
hierarchical level 6, a given font and paragraph spacing. For the sake 
of simplicity, there could be 5 or 6 basic styles such as Body Text, 
Headings 1 to 4 defined as default, or they might even simply be defined 
in the "default document" and therefore entirely customizable. In my 
case, I would keep all heading levels, but only one style for numbering 
and one for bullets (after all, there are levels within it).



ANOTHER SUGGESTION

Would it help the use of styles if the base style information were to be 
present in the Character, Paragraph and numbering dialogue boxes ? For 
example, when I select "Format –> Paragraph", I would get displayed near 
the top that it is based upon the "Body Text" paragraph format and there 
would even be a button to reapply the base style.


--

Michel Gagnon – mic...@mgagnon.net 
Montréal (Québec, Canada) – mgagnon.net 


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[tdf-discuss] Re: Non-removable extensions

[Marc Paré]

Le 2010-11-01 07:34, Michael Meeks a écrit :

Hi there,

On Sun, 2010-10-31 at 17:53 -0400, Michel Gagnon wrote:

however I cannot modify my installation to remove the PDF Import and
Persenter Console.


So - there are lots of parts of LibreOffice that cannot be removed
easily; such as the clipart gallery, or say, the Quattro Pro file
filters, or whatever.

The more interesting thing to me is - why would you want to remove the
PDF Import ? or the Presenter Console ?

If there are bugs that make these unususable, or particularly
problematic - then, we should fix those instead IMHO. ie. can we fix the
bug in the right place ?

ATB,

Michael.



Hi Michael:

To me, personally, I would prefer a distro that leaves the user in 
control. If there are extensions added to the distro, then the user 
should be able to remove this extension.


I agree to whoever suggest renaming the un-removable to something other 
than extension. This would be less objectionable.


We should not be adding some extensions because we think users will be 
better off with them.


Marc


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[tdf-discuss] Re: Compiling in Windows

[plino]

Hi

Really - this discussion belongs on the developer list; and the person
> who needs to be contributing is the one complaining :-) so - I greatly
> welcome your contribution here: there is a lot to do, but it is quite
> do-able, and I (and Fridrich + Jesus) would be happy to mentor anyone
> wanting to work on that.
>


Although I'm knowledgeable about this subject (I'm co-author of an Open
Source alternate shell for Windows, named Emerge Desktop, which is compiled
with MinGW-W64), I couldn't write a line of code even if my life depended on
it... I can write Hello World, though... on a keyboard :)

Those are excellent news!

Thanks, Michael!

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Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: Non-removable extensions

[Michael Meeks]

Hi there,

On Sun, 2010-10-31 at 17:53 -0400, Michel Gagnon wrote:
> however I cannot modify my installation to remove the PDF Import and
> Persenter Console.

So - there are lots of parts of LibreOffice that cannot be removed
easily; such as the clipart gallery, or say, the Quattro Pro file
filters, or whatever.

The more interesting thing to me is - why would you want to remove the
PDF Import ? or the Presenter Console ?

If there are bugs that make these unususable, or particularly
problematic - then, we should fix those instead IMHO. ie. can we fix the
bug in the right place ?

ATB,

Michael.

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Re: [tdf-discuss] Copyright Assignments & the Document Foundation

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Andrea,

On Sun, 2010-10-31 at 23:56 +0100, Andrea Pescetti wrote:
> I haven't seen any new contributor write that they joined because of 
> (the refusal of) a copyright agreement; while I have seen several new 
> contributors write that they started contributing because the "Easy 
> Hacks" were so easy that they didn't require any previous technical 
> knowledge.

Well - there is of course an element of truth to this. However - easy
hacks are attractive IMHO because not only are they easy, but because
the result gets included in the code-base, and the developer of them is
treated as a valued peer. Saying "sure you did some good work, but until
we get a faxed form it is worthless to us" to all your contributors has
a sterilising effect on volunteers - and it has a -huge- scalding effect
on other corporations wanting to contribute. Furthermore - the absence
of a corporate spider at the centre of the web makes it possible to
build a loyalty and sense of ownership of the project as a whole -
rather than to a company: which is critical.

To see ease of writing patches as the primary improvement is to miss
the fact that people don't just want to write patches, they want to get
them included, and be valued as contributors, co-owners and peers: not
as 'intellectual property production machines' to be 'harvested'
etc. :-)

> Now, without copyright assignment/agreement (granted by the LibreOffice 
> developers to the Document Foundation), the Document Foundation will be 
> in the awkward situation I described: it manages a product (LibreOffice) 
> but cannot represent the LibreOffice developers since it doesn't own the 
> code.

Sure - it can recommend, advise, and encourage people in directions; it
can lead the project via the brand, it can encourage collaboration and
resolve conflicts - but sure; it is not a monolithic entity that can
dictate ownership of the code.

> This makes it a weaker player:

Or does it ? sometimes influence can be rather valuable, more so than
ownership or control of the asset. In this case because people are
willing to give you far more influence than ownership :-)

> Do you need an example? Think of a "happy ending" where, to the benefit 
> of users, OOo and all derivatives merge in a common project. There are 
> many stakeholders (Oracle, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Redflag, the Document 
> Foundation...) and they might agree on a new, free, license with some 
> special provisions due to the long history of OOo. Now, without 
> copyright assignments/agreements every stakeholder would be able to join 
> the unified project except the Document Foundation.

Wait - this is an amusingly different side to the same coin that I see.
You try to draw a picture of a terrible dysfunctional situation where
companies have all this freedom to join something that individuals do
not :-)

The reality is quite different - that individual contributors to
LibreOffice have -collectively- a substantial say in how their aggregate
contribution is used - since no-one else can go away and "negotiate"
away ownership of their code / translation / artwork etc. Indeed -
individuals are peers of their corporate contributors in any such
discussion. That means that it cannot be done in a dark corner - for
sure !

This IMHO is a huge strength and reason for individual ownership.

> By choosing against copyright assignments/agreements you are killing
> this dream...

Personally I hope that the 'dream' of assigning exclusive ownership to
Oracle, that is not shared with others, is thoroughly dead.

To me the experience of this has been more of a nightmare than any
dream - in addition I have -never- seen evidence that Oracle actually
needs this right. Furthermore, I am persuaded that in general,
developers bear other contributors no ill will per-se, and would be open
to a new (non-abusive) [ie. copy-left] licensing regimen, if one is
proposed.

Clearly, the dream of working together is real, the licensing regimen
we suggest 'LGPLv3+/MPL' meets Oracle's product needs [ though not
behind-the-scenes license sale needs of course ] (of that I am certain).
So - I do believe this is a completely reasonable offer, made in good
faith, and that the (C) assignment issue is really a distraction; and
worse a dangerous one about concentrating control, whose merit (as you
suggest) is around non-transparent discussion and negotiation.

HTH,

Michael.

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Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: Compiling in Windows

[Michael Meeks]

Hi there,

On Sun, 2010-10-31 at 04:09 -0700, plino wrote:
> In the spirit of Open Source it doesn't make any sense that a closed
> source compiler is used.

I agree - at least; it should be possible to compile with MINGW, and
we're working on that. The big stumbling block, which is also a
performance nightmare and pile of cruft - is the '.rdb' file generation
- which demands that we dlopen a windows DLL to introspect the
components it supports, in order to write the component database for the
install set (services.rdb).

The good news is Stefan Bergman is re-writing this to use an XML
backend and we'll pick that up in the next version.

> This means that the script available to compile the Windows version,
> requires you to either use the limited free version from Microsoft or to buy
> a the full version from them...

Right - so at least Jesus has done the work to build with a non-price
Microsoft version - which is a big win,

> Currently MinGW-W64 is capable of compiling 32 and 64bit binaries... If the
> compiler is not up to the task maybe the developers could also contribute to
> that project...

Really - this discussion belongs on the developer list; and the person
who needs to be contributing is the one complaining :-) so - I greatly
welcome your contribution here: there is a lot to do, but it is quite
do-able, and I (and Fridrich + Jesus) would be happy to mentor anyone
wanting to work on that.

The hope is that with the new gcc Link Time Optimisation work, we may
even be able to get performance and size to the same region as the
Microsoft compilers do (which have traditionally produced smaller,
faster binaries).

HTH,

Michael.

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Re: [tdf-discuss] UI proposal

[jonathon]

On 10/31/2010 12:11 AM, Michel Gagnon wrote:

> or, to put it clearly, styles OF tables.

FWIW, I fake that by creating a set of styles just for tables, and a
master table.  Whenever I need a table, I simply copy the master table.

> I have been reminded it already exists (thanks Marc). 

Better documentation about styles, their attributes, their quircks, and
their characteristics is needed.  No question about it.

>But I also remember the last time I used character styles, they didn't
always work the same way.

Creating single attribute character styles is awkward.  Very
non-intuitive.  If things are done out of sequence, the character style
won't offer only one attribute.

Maybe I'll write about that on my libreoffice blog later this week.

jonathon
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Re: [steering-discuss] Version numbering of LibO

[Florian Effenberger]

Hi Sebastian,

Sebastian Spaeth wrote on 2010-11-01 16.36:

Dear all, all discussions seem to hint at that the first stable release
of LibreOffice is going to be a 3.3.0 release. I would like to have you
consider a different version for the following reasons:

- LO 3.3.0 suggests it is equivalent to OOo 3.3.0 (which it is not, we
   have different bugs :-)). Seriously. LO 3.3.0 suggests 100%
   interoperability with OOo which we can't guarantee.

- It is the first release of LO, but we consider it stable and useful,
   so 1.0 would make most sense to me. That shouts "USE ME", but at the
   same time does not convey "I am an OOo ripoff with a different brand
   by some people with too big egos."

I'd love if you could briefly think about that in the next SC
meeting. I'll be happy about any decision, but it should be discussed
(and communicated) publicly.


thanks for the proposal. There have been already discussions about that, 
and we came to the conclusion to start with 3.3, but not to follow all 
version changes OOo does. Time will tell how our release cycle and 
future version numbering would look like.


I doubt we'll go back to LibO 1.1, now that 3.3 has been announced, but 
I'm open for the future which step(s) we want to make.


Happy to hear thoughts of the other SC members. :-)

Florian

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Re: [tdf-discuss] UI proposal

[Johannes Bausch]

> Why "page setup" is outside "stiles"? One of the killer features on
> Writer is page styles (Word do not have them).
That's just dummy text, I didn't realize it... of course "Page" should
also come as category for the stylesheets. Of course this is a killer
feature. You setup page font size once and have everything inherit it
from the page stuff.

> I think there should be an option for that on every drop down menu.
> For example, on character styles for "Font" you could have, on top of
> the font list, two options:
> - From parent style
> - From paragraph style
That's duplicate. Where's the difference between parent and paragraph?
Why can't paragraph be a parent? Obviously a paragraph can only be a
parent to another paragraph style (and not to, e.g. a heading), but
e.g. the page (which has no such things as paragraph styles) can be
parent to everything.
Another disadvantage of having individual parents would be that you
get non-transparent inheritance. You could think of having each
category inherit from a separate parent, though.

> and the font size could have a check box for "Proportional": right now
> it is not easy for new users to discover that you can simply delete a
> point size and type a percentage to get a proportionally sized font.
In the dropdown to the right you can select "%" instead of "pt".

> I rather think that it should be more clear on documentation that
> images are inserted on frames than to create a new category of styles
> for images.
Again, "images" was just a dummy. Still, you might want to consider a
style for an image container, including image caption style - this is
still painful in OO.

> Even if I like the concept, I can see one big problem: most users will
> end with lots of repeated, unneeded styles!
That's true. Any ideas how to prevent cluttering the style list?

I changed my original image to reflect the changes you have suggested.
Joey.

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Re: [tdf-discuss] UI proposal

[RGB ES]

2010/11/1 Johannes Bausch :
> Hey,
>
> Here's what I think the whole style and document setup should look
> like. It's done very quickly in Inkscape, so don't expect anything
> spectacular. Still, I hope you get the general idea.
> http://bausch-lai.de/img_ex/LibO/draft-styler.png

Why "page setup" is outside "stiles"? One of the killer features on
Writer is page styles (Word do not have them).

> - Styling is relative and inherits from parent (changes to the
> inherited things should be marked somehow, e.g. by a small icon)

I think there should be an option for that on every drop down menu.
For example, on character styles for "Font" you could have, on top of
the font list, two options:
- From parent style
- From paragraph style
and the font size could have a check box for "Proportional": right now
it is not easy for new users to discover that you can simply delete a
point size and type a percentage to get a proportionally sized font.

> - You can import them from other documents
> - They are categorized: Paragraphs, Tables, Images

I rather think that it should be more clear on documentation that
images are inserted on frames than to create a new category of styles
for images.

> Now, I think that direct formatting should behave as follows:
> - If you mark a word and want it red, you simply change its color
> - The style manager creates a new style, inherited from the
> surrounding words' styles (maybe in a new section "auto styles" or
> something along these lines) or some kind of class that only affects
> this property, like color: red (much like css works).
> - You get a dropdown in your direct formatting toolbar showing "recent styles"

Even if I like the concept, I can see one big problem: most users will
end with lots of repeated, unneeded styles!

Ricardo

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Re: [tdf-discuss] Copyright Assignments & the Document Foundation

[Roberto Resoli]

2010/11/1 Giuseppe Castagno :
> Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
>>
>> Hello BRM,
>>
>>
>> Le Thu, 28 Oct 2010 07:12:59 -0700 (PDT),
>> BRM  a écrit :
>>
>>> - Original Message 
>>>
 From: Charles-H. Schulz 
 4) the notion that we cannot change license  because we don't have
 copyright assignment needs to be put to rest once and  for all
 today. There is a very simple explanation with respect to this
>
> [big snip]
>
>>> Perhaps the way around that is to require those contributing TDF to
>>> use the "or later" language; though some may not want to.
>>>
>>> Even without copyright assignment the only thing standing in the way
>>> of changing the license - whether to LGPLv4 or even GPLv3 or whatever
>>> else - is getting the permission of _all_ the copyright holders.
>>
>> Good objection indeed! Actually, the problem is partly solved, since we
>> now license our software under "LGPL v3 or later". At least it would be
>> solved for the LGPL side of things. But my real answer here though, is
>> perhaps more provocative: if Oracle changes the licence, do we really
>> care? for the 3.3 we stick to the codebase of OOo, but I'm unsure we'll
>> stick that much  to it in further releases. In fact, I can already
>> point out, looking at our development activity, that we're not taking
>> the path of being "OpenOffice.org, just recompiled by the community". I
>> think as the time will go by, we will diverge more and more and end up
>> becoming quite different software.
>>>
>>> >From what I understand this is already impossible to do under Linux

 due to
>>>
>>> deaths of at least one contributor.
>>
>> Yes, and in this case a rewrite is needed.
>
> this can work in practice for small addendum, but what about bigger one?
>
> That may take some time.
>
> I implemented PDF/A-1a in OOo around 3 years ago
> (http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/news_in_pdfexport), rewriting it
> from scratch would not be a quick matter.
>
> And, my personal opinion only, years back I signed the then Sun (J)CA, I
> will sign a TDF one or similar without problem.
>
> May be the CA should be on a voluntary basis.
>
> Just my 0,02 as a dev, and not a lawyer.

I can only add an example: Mozilla relicensing took "four and a half
years, 445 contributors and 28522 files":

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2006/03/relicensing_complete.html

And i think that OOo/LibO is one order magnitude (10 times) than
Mozilla in terms of lines of code.

bye,
rob

>
> beppec56

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[steering-discuss] Version numbering of LibO

[Sebastian Spaeth]

Dear all, all discussions seem to hint at that the first stable release
of LibreOffice is going to be a 3.3.0 release. I would like to have you
consider a different version for the following reasons:

- LO 3.3.0 suggests it is equivalent to OOo 3.3.0 (which it is not, we
  have different bugs :-)). Seriously. LO 3.3.0 suggests 100%
  interoperability with OOo which we can't guarantee.

- It is the first release of LO, but we consider it stable and useful,
  so 1.0 would make most sense to me. That shouts "USE ME", but at the
  same time does not convey "I am an OOo ripoff with a different brand
  by some people with too big egos."

I'd love if you could briefly think about that in the next SC
meeting. I'll be happy about any decision, but it should be discussed
(and communicated) publicly.

Thanks, Sebastian

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Re: [tdf-discuss] Copyright Assignments & the Document Foundation

[Roberto Resoli]

2010/11/1 Harri Pitkänen :
> Hi!

Hi all,

> On Monday 01 November 2010, Andre Schnabel wrote:
>> If we want an answer on this (would developers not have joined if there
>> was a CA) we would need to ask them. This should indeed be asked
>> at the dev-list. I'd bet, that at least some of them would state
>> that they not would have joined.
>
> I can at least say that I would most likely not have contributed if a CA had
> been required. "Most likely" means that I would have read the assignment and
> looked at the organization behind it before making the decision. If they were
> both solid and there were strong enough justification for it, I would sign. In
> this case neither the organization nor the assignment text exist yet so I
> cannot do that.

The same holds for me. CA is  possibly a "necessary evil", it doesn't
make much sense
asking an unbiased opinion to developers, they don't like it in
general, of course.

TDF has to have a very clear position about it, nevertheless, for the
very good reasons Andrea already
pointed out. TDF is going to be in a much weaker position if it does
not asks a JCA or CLA or
something like that to his contributors.
Weaker regarding his position towards commercial companies, weaker in his
ability to provide support to his contributors against patent claims
or other litigations.
As a developer, i think that protection from patent claims provided by
L/GPL3 in not sufficient, I would like if TDF could be in charge in
such cases, not me.

> I am not a major contributor so this may not weight much in the final
> decision. But one rather large problem that I see with the assignments is that
> if they are required also from developers of external libraries then the
> assignment would also be needed from developers that may not have any interest
> in LibreOffice but may still have some common development interest with us.
>
> Let's take Word import/export filters for example. They could (at least in
> theory, I saw the idea somewhere in the Wiki) be split to a separate library
> and shared with KOffice or someone who wanted to write a free competitor for
> Google Docs. People developing such libraries might react badly if they would
> be required to sign a CA just to get a patch in to support a product that they
> have no personal interest in. One of the strengths of free software is that we
> can work together on such things even if our own goals were totally different,
> perhaps even competing.
>
> We could solve this by excluding all external libraries, including the
> hypothetical Word import/export library, from the CA requirement. But would
> such arrangement lose most of the benefits of CA that covered everything? My
> (perhaps incorrect) understanding of the situation is that many proprietary
> derivatives of OOo were shipped without providing any source code under the
> LGPL.
> If the import/export library was LGPL only then no-one could do such
> thing anymore. Not that I understand why avoiding LGPL this way is important
> for anyone, but probably the companies have their reasons.

These are very good points. At the moment, anyway, all new files are
(or should be)
contributed in a Mozilla-like three-license fashion[1]. Comparing it
with the Mozilla
boilerplate [2] from which it is presumably derived, it lacks the
final part, but i think it's clear that
anyone is free to use the contribution under any one of GPLV3+, LGPV3+
or MPL license.

> I'm not totally against the CA. I have signed the JCA for Sun and contributed
> some small patches to OOo in a few cases where that was needed to solve some
> issue that affected only Finnish users or something similar. But after reading
> this discussion and thinking about it I do feel that there is more to win by
> not replicating that process for LibreOffice.

My feelings are slightly on the other side, for the reasons i told at
start, but let's see how this interesting thread will evolve...

bye,
rob

> Harri

[1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/LibreOffice/LicenseHeader
[2] http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/boilerplate-1.1/mpl-tri-license-c

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Re: [tdf-discuss] UI proposal

[Johannes Bausch]

Hey,

Here's what I think the whole style and document setup should look
like. It's done very quickly in Inkscape, so don't expect anything
spectacular. Still, I hope you get the general idea.
http://bausch-lai.de/img_ex/LibO/draft-styler.png
- There's a central place for the style setup, much like the current
window (I don't remember how it was called in English), but fancier
and more to the point.
- On the left there are style classes, predefined and custom ones
- This window is easily accessible, much like the current "direct style" things
- Styling is relative and inherits from parent (changes to the
inherited things should be marked somehow, e.g. by a small icon)
- You can import them from other documents
- They are categorized: Paragraphs, Tables, Images
...

Now, I think that direct formatting should behave as follows:
- If you mark a word and want it red, you simply change its color
- The style manager creates a new style, inherited from the
surrounding words' styles (maybe in a new section "auto styles" or
something along these lines) or some kind of class that only affects
this property, like color: red (much like css works).
- You get a dropdown in your direct formatting toolbar showing "recent styles"

What do you think?

Joey

2010/10/31 Michel Gagnon :
> Le 2010-10-30 15:47, Mirek M. a écrit :
>>
>> Hi Michael, everyone,
>> Here's an experimental mockup of how style editing could work:
>> http://clickortap.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/citrus-editing-styles/
>>  It
>> changes a few things in an effort to be less daunting and more
>> comprehensible to newbies. All the old features should still be there,
>> though, just under different terminology.
>>
>
> It looks nice. The approach, however, is similar to one that might be used
> in Ms Office 2003. There are two possible problems with it:
> - It is harder to define many styles at once this way than in the
> traditional dialogue box. On the other hand, the visual approach you have is
> great for fine tuning or for adding one or two styles to an existing
> document.
> - There has to be a way to define, and more importantly to see the
> specifications that are linked vs those that are not, those that are defined
> in relative vs absolute terms. In your example, I should see that Heading 5
> is defined using Heading 6 as base style and that it will be followed by
> Body Text. I should also see that the only elements modified from base style
> are typeface (+Bold) and line (-Underline).
>
>
> Groups vs linking a style to a style.
> I actually see it as two very different concepts. We already know how a
> style may be linked to another "base style". But apart from that, I see
> groups such as: styles used for the main document, styles for annexes
> (typically smaller type)
>
> You also suggest that bundled styles should now be deletable. I think it is
> a great idea, at least for all non-essential styles. In other words, it
> might be easier for the casual user to see by default the following: Body
> text, Headings 1 to 4.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Michel Gagnon
> Montréal (Québec, Canada) -- http://mgagnon.net
>
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[tdf-discuss] Re: Compiling in Windows

[plino]

Issue 107217

It is obsolete because it referred to a problem concerning the number of
lines in a spreadsheet which has been increased since then (the current
version supports 2^20 lines instead of the traditional 2^16)

It is ignored because it is not closed.

Maybe it could still be fixed to display a warning if someone is brave
enough to load a file with more than 2^20 lines... Or better yet, making
sure that whatever is the current limit a warning will be issued if the
number of lines in the file exceeds the spreadsheet limits (lines and
columns!). Obviously this has to apply to all file formats accepted by LO.
It doesn't make sense that there is a warning for cvs but not for xlsx or
any other...

Cheers!

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Re: [tdf-discuss] Non-removable extensions

[Sebastian Spaeth]

On Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:44:31 -0700, Andy Brown wrote:
> Who had the "bright" idea to require the non-removable extensions in 
> LibreOffice?  This, IMO, is totally uncalled for.  This is a great way 
> to lose users.

While I agree that there should be no non-removable extensions by
default, the tone of you email is pretty uncalled for as well. It sounds
arrogant and offends people who are working hard towards a better LO.

Sorry if my mail is harsh. But do try to be somewhat more polite towards
those doing actual development work. "Who never acts, makes no
mistakes."

Thanks,
Sebastian

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Re: [tdf-discuss] Copyright Assignments & the Document Foundation

[Harri Pitkänen]

Hi!

On Monday 01 November 2010, Andre Schnabel wrote:
> If we want an answer on this (would developers not have joined if there
> was a CA) we would need to ask them. This should indeed be asked
> at the dev-list. I'd bet, that at least some of them would state
> that they not would have joined.

I can at least say that I would most likely not have contributed if a CA had 
been required. "Most likely" means that I would have read the assignment and 
looked at the organization behind it before making the decision. If they were 
both solid and there were strong enough justification for it, I would sign. In 
this case neither the organization nor the assignment text exist yet so I 
cannot do that.

I am not a major contributor so this may not weight much in the final 
decision. But one rather large problem that I see with the assignments is that 
if they are required also from developers of external libraries then the 
assignment would also be needed from developers that may not have any interest 
in LibreOffice but may still have some common development interest with us.

Let's take Word import/export filters for example. They could (at least in 
theory, I saw the idea somewhere in the Wiki) be split to a separate library 
and shared with KOffice or someone who wanted to write a free competitor for 
Google Docs. People developing such libraries might react badly if they would 
be required to sign a CA just to get a patch in to support a product that they 
have no personal interest in. One of the strengths of free software is that we 
can work together on such things even if our own goals were totally different, 
perhaps even competing.

We could solve this by excluding all external libraries, including the 
hypothetical Word import/export library, from the CA requirement. But would 
such arrangement lose most of the benefits of CA that covered everything? My 
(perhaps incorrect) understanding of the situation is that many proprietary 
derivatives of OOo were shipped without providing any source code under the 
LGPL. If the import/export library was LGPL only then no-one could do such 
thing anymore. Not that I understand why avoiding LGPL this way is important 
for anyone, but probably the companies have their reasons.

I'm not totally against the CA. I have signed the JCA for Sun and contributed 
some small patches to OOo in a few cases where that was needed to solve some 
issue that affected only Finnish users or something similar. But after reading 
this discussion and thinking about it I do feel that there is more to win by 
not replicating that process for LibreOffice.

Harri

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Re: [tdf-discuss] Copyright Assignments & the Document Foundation

[Giuseppe Castagno]

Charles-H. Schulz wrote:

Hello BRM,


Le Thu, 28 Oct 2010 07:12:59 -0700 (PDT),
BRM  a écrit :


- Original Message 


From: Charles-H. Schulz 
4) the notion that we cannot change license  because we don't have
copyright assignment needs to be put to rest once and  for all
today. There is a very simple explanation with respect to this


[big snip]


Perhaps the way around that is to require those contributing TDF to
use the "or later" language; though some may not want to.

Even without copyright assignment the only thing standing in the way
of changing the license - whether to LGPLv4 or even GPLv3 or whatever
else - is getting the permission of _all_ the copyright holders.


Good objection indeed! Actually, the problem is partly solved, since we
now license our software under "LGPL v3 or later". At least it would be
solved for the LGPL side of things. But my real answer here though, is
perhaps more provocative: if Oracle changes the licence, do we really
care? for the 3.3 we stick to the codebase of OOo, but I'm unsure we'll
stick that much  to it in further releases. In fact, I can already
point out, looking at our development activity, that we're not taking
the path of being "OpenOffice.org, just recompiled by the community". I
think as the time will go by, we will diverge more and more and end up
becoming quite different software. 


>From what I understand this is already impossible to do under Linux
due to 

deaths of at least one contributor.


Yes, and in this case a rewrite is needed.


this can work in practice for small addendum, but what about bigger one?

That may take some time.

I implemented PDF/A-1a in OOo around 3 years ago
(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/news_in_pdfexport), rewriting it
from scratch would not be a quick matter.

And, my personal opinion only, years back I signed the then Sun (J)CA, I
will sign a TDF one or similar without problem.

May be the CA should be on a voluntary basis.

Just my 0,02 as a dev, and not a lawyer.

beppec56

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Acca Esse http://www.acca-esse.eu
giuseppe.castagno at acca-esse.eu
beppec56 at openoffice.org






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Re: [tdf-discuss] Better defaults

[Inge Wallin]

On Wednesday, October 27, 2010 23:02:43 Andras Timar wrote:
> 2010.10.26. 9:06 keltezéssel, Xi Embalsado írta:
> > Can you make the defaults:
> > - White fill in shapes rather than light blue
> 
> I was thinking of LibreOffice Green instead of Blue 8... What do you
> think? This is easy to change.

This is actually a pretty important interoperability issue. I work with
KOffice, and we sometimes receive bug reports saying that "KOffice shows
the wrong color for X". When investigating it turns out that the color
for X is actually undefined and that what the user sees when he looks at
the document in OOo is the default color -- the light blue.

I think the ODF TC should specify the default values for all the properties
of all types of styles.  But until that happens, can we please come to
an agreement between at least KOffice and LibO?  Hopefully one that follows
the principle of least astonishment.

This would mean blank or white as the default background for shapes, not
blue or green or any other color.

-Inge


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Re: [tdf-discuss] Copyright Assignments & the Document Foundation

[Andre Schnabel]

Hi Andrea,

( just to mention: I did not make my mind on this yet, I'm just 
providing some thoughts)

> Von: Andrea Pescetti 
> An: discuss@documentfoundation.org

> > The paperwork was only a practical detail: not relinquising your
> > copyright is the most important.
> 
> I haven't seen any new contributor write that they joined because of 
> (the refusal of) a copyright agreement; while I have seen several new 
> contributors write that they started contributing because the "Easy 
> Hacks" were so easy that they didn't require any previous technical 
> knowledge.

If we want an answer on this (would developers not have joined if there 
was a CA) we would need to ask them. This should indeed be asked
at the dev-list. I'd bet, that at least some of them would state
that they not would have joined.


> 
> Do you need an example? Think of a "happy ending" where, to the benefit 
> of users, OOo and all derivatives merge in a common project. There are 
> many stakeholders (Oracle, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Redflag, the Document 
> Foundation...) and they might agree on a new, free, license with some 
> special provisions due to the long history of OOo. Now, without 
> copyright assignments/agreements every stakeholder would be able to join 
> the unified project except the Document Foundation. By choosing against 
> copyright assignments/agreements you are killing this dream... And I 
> can't see how the Document Foundation could realistically say it is open 
> to discuss with companies in this setting.


Ok, got your point. But I (personally) see that this is very unlikely to 
happen. I might be wrong, but everything I heard from the OOo main
sponsor so far indicated that they will never ever debate the CA /
licensing issue on a common ground.

Anyway - it all depends on the question if developers would sign the CA.
And we can only ask developers on this.

André




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Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: Compiling in Windows

[Andrea Pescetti]

plino wrote:

One of the bugs I reported (which is now obsolete, but still there) caused
that a user would loose data ...
And the bug has been ignored since then (this was in
November 25th 2009)


Could you provide the OpenOffice.org issue number?

Honestly I can't understand how you can state that the bug is obsolete 
and at the same time complain it is being ignored, but if it is 
meaningful it can be solved in LibreOffice or upstream in OpenOffice.org.


Best regards,
  Andrea Pescetti.


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Re: [tdf-discuss] Copyright Assignments & the Document Foundation

[Andrea Pescetti]

Charles-H. Schulz wrote:

Andrea Pescetti a écrit :
Honestly, I believe new developers joined because the bar for 
contribution was lowered ... 
the paperwork reduction may have helped too, but I don't see

it as the most effective improvement.

The paperwork was only a practical detail: not relinquising your
copyright is the most important.


I haven't seen any new contributor write that they joined because of 
(the refusal of) a copyright agreement; while I have seen several new 
contributors write that they started contributing because the "Easy 
Hacks" were so easy that they didn't require any previous technical 
knowledge.


So, unless this theory can be supported by numbers, the mere refusal of 
copyright assignments/agreements does not seem to me the reason why new 
contributors were attracted.



So we do take for granted that Oracle will not contribute to the
Document Foundation, because that's what Oracle clearly implied in their
last press release and what they told us (informally). This has to be
very clear from now on. We are still open for future discussions, of
course, but what you seem to imply is that conditions for a cooperation
would require the document foundation to assign copyright (the
contributions of the LibreOffice developers) back to Oracle again.


No, I never thought this, let alone write, let alone imply.


if we find a way to cooperate, I can assure you that the
condition will not be that we give our copyright to Oracle.


Of course. I'll retry.

If the Document Foundation wants to live in the real world, it will have 
to discuss with companies that work on OpenOffice.org and its 
derivatives (and this is peculiar to the OpenOffice.org codebase, so 
examples taken from elsewhere might not fit).


Now, without copyright assignment/agreement (granted by the LibreOffice 
developers to the Document Foundation), the Document Foundation will be 
in the awkward situation I described: it manages a product (LibreOffice) 
but cannot represent the LibreOffice developers since it doesn't own the 
code.


This makes it a weaker player: if the Document Foundation MANAGED, say, 
20% of the "OOo+LibreOffice" code, then its "weight" in talks with 
corporations can be proportional to it. But if it merely REPRESENTS 20% 
of the code but still any decisions must be ratified by the individual 
developers, its "weight" will be much lower.


Do you need an example? Think of a "happy ending" where, to the benefit 
of users, OOo and all derivatives merge in a common project. There are 
many stakeholders (Oracle, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Redflag, the Document 
Foundation...) and they might agree on a new, free, license with some 
special provisions due to the long history of OOo. Now, without 
copyright assignments/agreements every stakeholder would be able to join 
the unified project except the Document Foundation. By choosing against 
copyright assignments/agreements you are killing this dream... And I 
can't see how the Document Foundation could realistically say it is open 
to discuss with companies in this setting.


Regards,
  Andrea Pescetti.


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