Plan-B for Software Documentation

Really, what would Dan Heintzman, the director of strategy at Lotus, say about IBM joining the OpenOffice.org community? Andy Undergrove wondered too and interviewed Dan Heintzman from Lotus. Dan makes some interesting points, including:

• IBM hopes to signal its commitment to ODF and the OpenOffice.org to IT managers that are not sure how long this technology will last. he mentions the $1 Billion invetment tha tIBM announced for Linux way back. However, I must have missed an announcement that impressive or any direct number at all.
• He acknowledges that there have been tensions between Sun Microsystems and IBM over community governance and that IBM’s announcement means IBM will help to make change in the governance structure of the OpenOffice community happen.
• Dan’s vision of a document is a container that brings elements toghether, but retains their source. It is more a collage of text, graphics, data then the coherent print form we often think of. He thinks ODF is a viable platform to start this transformation.
• Dan dodges the speculation if IBM would add an e-mail/calendar program to the Open Office suite.

I don’t know how you visualize ecosystems, for me they resemble a picture of a jungle with lots of nurishing water, beautiful plants, colorful birds and some dangerous snakes lurking on trees.

The newest take on the multitude of products derived from OpenOffice.org is to call it an ecosystem. While Sun Microsystem thinks the multiple distributions of OpenOffice.org are an ecosystem, I often feel lost in the Jungle that is. Lets list the well known distributions:

• OpenOffice.org - the “Original”
• StarOffice - the commercial version from Sun Micosystems
• StarSuite - a sun distribution targeted at the Asian market
• StarOffice from Google - a free commercial (?) distribution
• OpenOffice.org Novell Edition - free version with new developments by Novell and in the pipeline for integration into the “Original”
• NeoOffice - a distribution with integration into Mac OS X Aqua UI, also contains some Novell additions
• Retro Office - a distribution from the NeoOffice project, adding some of the Novell derived integration but not the Aqua UI integration
• … various commercial distributions that sell the office suite with minor alterations and support plans

The jungle becomes more dense if you consider that Open Office calls its development steps “release”, while Sun counts Star Office in “version.” I find it also confusing that Sun Microsystems does offer support with its commercial Star Office but also offers support plans for Open Office.

I do welcome various distributions of the same core open source base. However, what confuses me is the product strategy of Sun. Wouldn’t it be much easier if they offered a commercial OpenOffice.org Plus packages with the add ons that can’t be licensed under open source licenses? This would simplify the value for the buyer and unify the support plan offering. It would also put the power of Sun’s advertising behind the whole project and put more mindshare into Open Office, while still retaining Sun’s ability to make money from its work.

You got two choices for going Retro Office:

1. You can order some steel furniture for your office
2. You can download RetroOffice for your Mac OS X

RetroOffice is a tongue in cheek version of NeoOffice. While the NeoOffice project is primarily about integration of the Mac look and feel, NeoOffice has recently jumped the gun and integrated some features of OpenOffice.org Novell Edition as well. RetroOffice is simply the additional features with the X Window system UI or original Open Office on the Mac. RetroOffice is delivered as is and does not enjoy any support. It is for users that need to have the latest and can’t wait until the different contributions are integrated into official releases.

Most users know that Sun Microsystems is the main force behind OpenOffice.org and its development community. Historically they did buy StarDivision and release Open Office as open source. Today, IBM announced to commit to the OpenOffice.org development community with a team of 35 developers in China working full time on the project. IBM also contributed today a chunk of code making the open source office suite more accessible for users with disabilities.

While IBM has developed the accessibility interface called iAccessible2 for a while and also supported ODF (ISO 26300) in its Lotus Notes products, this announcement is a long term commitment to develop OpenOffice.org as a competitive suite.

Here are the new screencast video topics for he week beginning August 27th. We did continue to concentrate on creating database applications with OpenOffice.org Base.

In some of the topics we create, rename, delete and manipulate "database objects". This is a generic term for table, form, view, query or report.

• How to open a generic database object using the toolbar,
• How to rename a generic database object using the toolbar,
• How to delete a generic database object using the toolbar,
• How to edit a generic database object using the toolbar,
• How to denife a new relationship between two tables,
• How to use the design view to create a new query,
• How to use the sql view to create a new query,
• How to add an extra field to a query,
• How to open the results of a query,
• How to copy a query to the clipboard,
• How to paste a query after cut or copy,
• How to rename query,
• How to resize a form element,
• How to rename a form from the application,
• How to delete a form from the application,
• How to access a form for data entry from the context menu,
• How to use a form to edit data records,
• How to enter new records into a table.
• How to delete a table row or record.

In addition we added new glossary entries for database table, form, form wizard, electronic form, database form, database form, table, database table, database record, field label, table-wizard.

This brings Plan-B for OpenOffice.org to 40 screencast videos for OpenOffice.org Base and 204 Open Office glossary terms.

NeoOffice just announced its latest release 2.2.1. All over the net is praise for NeoOffice’s new features, such as

• Support for the native Mac OS X spellchecker
• Support for the native Mac OS X address book
• Support for high resolution printing
• Reading and writing many Microsoft OOXML (Office 2007) Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents
• The latest features from OpenOffice.org 2.2.1

While OpenOffice.org announced a native version for the Mac OS X and its user interface, and Sun Microsystems committed two full time developers to the project, NeoOffice has obviously worked hard to stay ahead. The integration of native features such as the address book and spell checker are certainly welcome. It makes working on a Mac much more consistent.

However, some report issues with this version of NeoOffice 2.2.1. I have no way to verify that.

The competing effort from the mother project seems to make good progress with frequent OOo Mac OS X port developer snapshots. However, I don’t think the upcoming release as part of OOo release 2.3 will be as comprehensive as NeoOffice yet. I guess competition does improve the product(s) for consumers. I applaud both efforts.

On the GullFoss blog, Matthias Mueller-Prove has bravely assembled a nice graphic of users in the various OpenOffice.org sub projects. Makes for a great graphic and on first blush one does think it does tell you something.

However, Matthias immediately came under critic that the number of members signed up in the OpenOffice.org project website tells little about involvement and most likely contains a load of “dead” members. and Matthias readily admitted that this might be so. He volunteered to assemble a similar graphic with better data if someone could point to a better metric. If you have an idea, please help him out.

If you always wanted to extend OOo with your features, Open Office 2.3 will make you a happy developer.

Kai Sommerfeld, just blogged about the latest features for OpenOffice.org extension developers. I must say many seem essential to make more than tricial extensions:

• Extending preference dialogs
• Extending menus and toolbars
• Link to the "official" Open Office extension repository from the repository manager

Be aware that this is hot of the pressses for developers. All this will only be working for ordinary users with the release of Open Office 2.3 this fall. This includes the extension repository, which is still in beta testing.

In addition, Sun also released its 1.0 version of the OpenOffice.org API plugin for Netbeans its IDE. Developers will clearly rejoyce with the next release and I’m looking forward to a vibrant extension infrastructure that makes OOo even more useful.

Discovering the WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind) website, I wanted to share there various comments on OpenOffice.org and Accessibility.

WebAIM has presented at the California State University Northbridge &quto;Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference" about OpenOffice and how to create accessible content.

Michael Brauer clarifies the status of OpenOffice.org’s work on MS-OOXML (aka ECMA-376).

He says that OpenOffice.org does work on supporting the format with input and output filters. this means you will be able to open a document from MS Office 2007 and to save it for Office 2007 users. Office 2007 is currently the only application that supports the new format our of the box. Older MS Office versions can be upgraded.

Michael reports that the current status is reading text from OOXML documents and that there is still a lot of work to do to reach satisfactory compliance. However, he remarks that as the format is now looked at by the International Standard Organization (ISO) for further standardization and that there are many complains from interested parties about incomplete definitions and contradictions of other standards. So he expects the format to evolve and undergo changes.

Michael also points out that OpenOffice.org will fully continue to support ODF (ISO 26300) as it’s default document format.