State of the project, the fuller account

In my speech on the State of the Project, which I gave at the recent OOoCon in Barcelona, I promised I'd provide the fuller account here, in this blog. I meant to do it immediately after the conference, but as is the nature of these promises, other things intervened. But, here is the fuller account.

Every year I ask the project leads to tell me (and the community) what their project has done that is interesting, cool, important, and to let us all know who was responsible. FOSS thrives on community recognition. Below is simply the responses, more or less in the order I received them. A few, I have edited.


Joost Andrae, QA Project
Speaking for the QA project one of the highlights were the introduction of Nakata Maho as new QA project lead and Caio Tiago Oliveira de Sousa as co-lead besides myself. The structure of the QA project has been widened by application related sub teams. The QA homepage has been re-worked. The skills of QA team members improved considerably. There were QA related meetings in Germany (eg. in Essen) and the OpenOffice.org team in Germany was present at the CeBIT trade fair. Most important: Various versions of OpenOffice.org got released. The cooperation between native language teams and the QA project intensified.


Charles-H. Schulz, Native Language Confederation.
I think we should mention our struggle for open standards and freedom, the (so far) triumph of ODF worldwide. As for names, I have many: Davide Dozza, Florian Effenberger, Claudio Filho, Pavel Janik, Leif Lodahl, Jeongkyu Kim, Rail Aliev, Alexandro Colorado Michael Brauer, Erwin Tenhumberg, you, my humble self... and I'm forgetting some others.


Frank Schönheit, Base
For Base, the Report Builder is certainly the most important accomplishment over the last year. It provides a dedicated user interface for creating reports, using Pentaho's reporting engine, formerly known as JFreeReport. Ocke Janssen was the brave man :) who implemented this nearly alone.


Jürgen Schmidt, API and Extensions.
Well new API's are developed always when new features are implemented. But often requested in the past and now provided is a new awt TreeControl. Many other new API's were introduced. With OO.org 2.3 for example 223 new UNOIDL types are introduced that allow to program certain parts of the office from macros, extensions or even from remote.

Addons were improved, support of more complex toolbars ....

Service provider interface for embedded objects. I think a really useful and powerful SPI that for example allows Java embedded objects that can be activated outplace.

We did a lot of good stuff in the area of programmability. The SDK example ObjectInspector can help developers to get necessary context info of real objects. It allows to browse through an object hierarchy and can of course generate code snippets in Basic, Java and C++ for smaller parts.

A lot of improvements related to the extensions infra structure. Improved extension manager in the office. Online update for extensions, PackageInformationProvider API to get easy access to local package content and many more ...

The extensions repository web site. A really huge step forward to promote extensions for OO.org and allow easy access to new extensions. We now have one and well integrated access point for extensions. Check out the "Get more extensions" link in the extensions manager.

We have released a first version of our OpenOffice.org API plugin for NetBeans. Also a tool for developers to simplify the development with and for OO.org. 4 wizards for client programs, general and specialized components (special service provider interfaces SPI). It support type completion, context sensitive help, ... Version 1.1 should be available next week.

Hand over the Developer's Guide to the documentation. Well we will probably still provide the content but the documentation team has taken over the maintenance. The guide will be published in the wiki (soon) to simplify the contribution. It was often requested by the community and we are now in the situation where we have a suitable solution for the wiki (status will be presented on the conference). And of course the guide was extended with two chapters for extensions and graphical user interfaces.

Many many more stuff.


Matthias Bauer, Writer
I think *the* highlight for the whole project was that ODF officially had become an ISO standard in November (or was it December?) 2006.

The main highlight for the Writer project is the increased community interest and contribution we are seeing and feeling everywhere. Some examples:

• the number of received patches has increased (and we integrate them much faster now ;-))
• on several occasions developers worked together with us to implement new features
• we get a lot of feedback to specifications we have written; some community members also wrote specifications by themselves

Though we have done a lot of work in Writer in the last year I don't see a single particular highlight that should be mentioned. We have been very busy (and still are), but not doing "cool" things. Well, there will always be people that have to do the dirty work. :-)

Thinking a little bit more about it I think that perhaps it is worth mentioning that the Writer team now tries to address highly requested features as much as possible. We had two great Google Summer Of Code projects in areas that belong to those that needed improvements most (notes, text language selection).


Éric Bachard, Philipp Lohmann, Mac Porting Project
About Mac OS X porting project:

• 6 new Domain Developers joined the Macport and thus, the OpenOffice.org community
• Sun MicroSystems provided us 2 dedicated developers at full time
• 2000 cvs commits, a lot of cws, and an Aqua version of OpenOffice.org better at every milestone.

After the fantastic effort the Community and Sun did, the Mac OS X porting project is proud to announce the Aqua version is scheduled for 3.0, and - we hope -, will become a new major port.

Joerg Sievers confirmed we did the first steps in the QA process, and serious things, to integrate the Mac OS X Aqua version will start after OOoCon Barcelona.


Kai Ahrens, Graphics
For the Graphics area, the new Chart implementation (Chart2) is surely a real benefit and of interest for many many people, especially the fact that we now have a solid base on which further improvements are possible, which wasn't the case before.

For the other graphics applicalications like Draw and Impress, there's been a lot of work ongoing regarding modularization of core and UI components to easily develop extensions. Those extensions are currently under development and expected to be released, at least as a prerelease, within the next months.

The currently developed PDF-Import as well as PDF/A support are also highlights among many others.


Christian Lippka, Graphics
In addition to what Kai said about the graphics team, I like to point out that SUN released
its direct x canvas for windows as open source. See Thorstens blog here

http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/windows_display_driver_woes_what

Also the work on modularization will soon spin of some very useful download able extensions. The first
that is soon to come is a minimizer component that can hugely reduce the size of presentation documents by
rescaling images, replacing ole objects and removing hidden slides and many more. Expect a blog entry
about this soon.


Carsten Driesner, Framework
I think the framework project implemented many new features to support a better extension integration into OpenOffice.org.

• Dialog and localization support for extensions
• Merging of items into toolbars and menus
• Support for complex toolbar controls (e.g. comboboxes, editfields, ...) for extensions
• Easy to use message boxes
• Flexible and extensible paths to support:
• Gallery items, Templates and Autotext within extensions


Rafaella Braconi, l10n
The highlights of the last year for the Localization project are:

• contribution: more and more teams are providing translations and are updating the localization of their version on a regular basis. The collaboration on localization efforts between Sun and the native-language teams has enormously increased not only in terms of number of teams contributing but also in terms of volume provided.
• teams expertise: the skills of the team members have improved considerably both in terms of translation quality delivered and in terms of tools and process knowledge.
• project structure: the l10n project has a new co-lead focusing on i18n, Eike Rathke, the irreplaceable and indispensable guidance and support of Pavel Janík and a new lead (myself).


Niklas Nebel, Calc
Some highlights from Calc:

• We started to concentrate usability activities (see http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/improving_calc_usability, http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Calc/To-Dos/Usability lists some issues that have already been resolved).
• There was a successful "Summer of Code" project to integrate R with Calc (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/R_and_Calc).
• Ongoing: Compatibility improvements (GETPIVOTDATA, array constants, JIS/ASC, ...).
• ...and (John McC addes,) surely a 12857% speed improvement is worth a mention :-)
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/another_12857_speed_improvement



Frank Peters, Documentation
Documentation is in the middle of a major restructuring since I took over as the co-lead 4 months ago. We started to move to the OOo wiki consolidating the available information sources. Sun open sourced all StarOffice documentation bits inm 2007 to be included in the community set. The Administration Guide is already on the wiki, the Dev Guide with 900+ wiki pages will very soon follow.

For the first time, community members contributed large parts of the help content for the new chart module, first and foremost the German community with Regina Hentschel.

And, there was the successful Template and Clipart contest, sponsored by Worldlabel. And thanks to Jean Weber, who has worked on migrating many docs to the wiki.

Last not least you may consider paying tribute to the longtime documentation project lead Gerry Singleton who unexpectedly passed away in May.


These updates represent but a fraction of the interesting work that has been done this last year. OpenOffice.org has well over a hundred projects and probably more regional efforts. Let me know what you've been doing and I'll add you to this list.

OOoCon Impressions

My reaction after just the first morning in Barcelona, where we held this year's OOoCon was: I want to stay here, live here. And judging from others' reactions, I was not alone. We had reason for our desire: This year's event was held in the grandly gorgeous Universitat de Barcelona, a building and location that offered what we wanted--pleasant rooms, a lovely interior garden, and outside, across the street, cafés and restaurants where we could mingle. Softcatalà, the organizers, did a fine job of making sure we had rooms and excellent food. I can well imagine how much work they had to do, especially given the commencement of classes.

How did the several hundred attendees like this event? From all reports, they greatly enjoyed it. Each of these conferences serves to build community, to undo the differences that distance imposes. Most of us only see each other this one time and learn to communicate via email, IRC, IM--wholly inadequate media for resolving misunderstandings or quickly coming to understandings. This is especially so given that OOo is such an international community with many, many languages spoken, though English remains the language for development and general communication. But for those for whom English is not just the second but fourth language, meeting in person and seeing the real smile not the smiley makes a difference.

My regret: I could attend only a few panels, and I evidently missed a lot of the really good ones. My excuse? I was pressed into meeting after meeting and listened to vendors show their ideas. I don't think I am in wrong to say that this year saw more vendors with clever solutions attend with briefcases in hand. Startups like what we offer, to be sure, and not only startups. Look at IBM, with 1M downloads of its derived product Symphony in just the first week or so: OOo has achieved what is utterly remarkable, a recognizable position in the market, and all without meaningful marketing money being spent. Why is this so remarkable? Well, to sell a commodity like an office suite, some companies must spend astronomical sums, hundreds of millions of dollars each year. We spend nothing. But we have a community, not a consumer base, and that makes all the difference between our incandescent rise and the others' steady descent. The cost of vendor lockin is too high, and freedom is, well, free.

Update on the native Mac Port

Ran in to Éric B, and he politely corrected me on last blog, in which I described the latest Mac port to Aqua as being purely cocoa'd. It's not: just some elements. That said, it is still quite nice and really amazingly fast. Nice work!

Of course, now is the time to make it pure cocoa, so if you want to join.....

Fun at OOoCon with the new Aqua Port

Haven't slept much since I arrived here in Barcelona for OOoCon 2007 and feel I should get biological but I have to write that not only did I do my morning presentation using the new native-Aqua port but also my afternoon one--and had no, none port-related glitches. It worked brilliantly.

Chapeau to Éric Bachard, Philipp Lohmann, and everyone else who has worked furiously and tirelessly to make the native port possible these last few months (!). I, along with the rest of the millions of Mac users thank you--but I am ahead of myself: the port is still Alpha.

I'm downloading now the very latest one that Éric posted to his ftp site and I believe it's purely Cocoa, not Carbon, plus it fixes lots of issues.

Again, this is a native port: no X11, just the very fast OOo application running natively on Mac OS X Aqua.

The IBM Agreement

The IBM agreement announced today represents a milestone in OpenOffice.org's trajectory. It's not just that IBM is implicitly confirming OpenOffice.org's mission--others have done that, not least of which we can number Redflag--but that it is also throwing its weight behind OpenOffice.org's ODF implementation, as well as furthering it with its accessibility technology.

That last element is particularly relevant for governments, which righty insist on technology all can use, not just a segment of the population. Governments previously chary of committing to the ODF and OpenOffice.org because they were either unsure of accessibility support or unsure of the project's future and nature, may think twice now, assured that the technology will be there--only better and more flexible than the proprietary alternative.

Built by thousands of contributors working from every region of the globe and backed by some of the world's most powerful and visionary IT companies, OpenOffice.org is hardly any longer a thing of wonder, an alternative suite whose main virtue was that it could do for free what others did for a fee. Rather, it can rightly claim to be the first choice and also the right choice.

Oh, memory

Michael Meeks' blog today, 10 Sept. was pointed out to me by more than one person earlier today. Meeks is a reliable blogger and his entries are useful for keeping up with OOo development. Today, his blog focused on the IBM agreement but took a nice swipe at me. And what he wrote surprised me.

"Louis Suarez Potts famously re-assured IBM (Don) in Koper that no-one in the community thinks not-releasing your OO.o code-changes is anti-social (or words to that effect). As a person who had spent some time hammering Don on this topic the night before, I was appalled."

"Famously"? Wow. No, I do not recall saying what Meeks attributes to me at all. And second, as I pointed out to Meeks, not only do I recall that evening session quite clearly (I had put the session together and moderated it), I actually have a public and published record of saying exactly the opposite: that I and the community wanted then and even before that night two years ago for IBM to contribute its work to the project. That community is quite pleased with today's announcement, as am I. It culminates several years' of waiting and proves very clearly the merits of the project both Meeks and I work on. Expect now a brilliant and I am sure interesting future.

Interesting new extension--Teacher's Pet

Teacher's Pet is a menu pulldown that can be added to OpenOffice.org as an extension. Still in Beta, the menu features many clever and useful scripts as commands that will surely help teachers, students (of all levels) and writers. As far as I know, it's available only in English now.

Download it and see how it works with your OpenOffice.org. The URL: www.teachers-pet.org.