Archives de catégorie : Trucs & astuces

New LibrePlanet LiveCode users group

I’ve recently been involved in a project with a customer to set up their development team to use LiveCode on Debian workstations. If you haven’t heard about LiveCode, they recently had 3,342 backers pledge £493,795 of the initial £350,000 goal on Kickstarter. That’s quite an accomplishment! I am not involved in the development part of this project, only in providing infrastructure support and services.

Since we needed to start working on documentation and I already work with other colleagues via IRC, I thought it would be useful to start a wiki space and IRC channel, and other resources via the dedicated resources provided by the Free Software Foundation in addition to upcoming resources that may be provided by RunRev, the creators of LiveCode.

The goal here is to collaborate with the community and help RunRev in this initial transition to open sourcing LiveCode, while offloading some of the self support to the FSF infrastructure (via LibrePlanet which is their community portal/resource).

If anyone is interested, a few initial resources and links have been put together already.

It looks like many people are already using LiveCode on Ubuntu, judging by the many screenshots in existing tutorials and guides. I hope other Debian derivatives benefit from this and perhaps even other distributions.

1

Ajenti, another web admin panel

I just found out about Ajenti, a system management Web UI (released as free open source software under the GPLv3 license), it may be useful to manage desktops and small server setups, as opposed to other projects like Zentyal which do a lot more.

Ajenti

I’ve asked if it’s compatible with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (which would mean also compatible with Trisquel 6).

Why is this interesting? There are tons of web interfaces out there and vendors of NAS hardware all implement a variation of this. A few years ago when I came across the Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services I decided that if I was to advocate the use of autonomous, self-hostined/managed services, I should try to Eat my own dog food whenever I could. With this in mind, I kept my eyes open for projects that would not only publish their source code under free open source licenses but also would be easy to implement at home, with consumer hardware, in typical DIY manner – just a bit shy of the current cloud this and cloud that madness.

I’ve been using OpenMediaVault for a couple of small NAS projects, and I love it. It’s based off Debian so I am in familiar territory, I wish this was part of Debian already, I prefer adding such web UIs to existing vanilla installs instead of using a dedicated/modified/derived distribution. I also like its plugins, specially the OpenVPN one, which even generates archives with files and instructions when creating a new access. But aren’t plugins much like packages, optional funcitonality which you should be able to add/remove without bvreaking the system? The main difference is when you have pluggins in such a web UI, such plugins aren’t of Debian-package quality, and introduce yet another layer of software you need to keep an eye on for updates, upgrades, security, etc. Oh, and yet another bug tracker, forum, blog, etc. to follow if you are to get involved.

I’ve always wondered why web UIs like those on OpenWRT or DD-WRT / Tomato are not part of all GNU/Linux distributions, as a separate package. A lot of commercial providers come up with their own too, it all seems like a huge duplication of effort when someone comes up with yet-another-web-ui. Having a common project or interface guidelines would make it easier to use 100% free software on such devices, while having an easy-to-use web interface.

When I researched alternative firmware to use with my DNS-323 Dlink NAS device, I came across Alt-F, yet another one! This motivated me into researching how to install a full distribution on it – eventually Debian was it. It’s very interesting that one can install Debian on several NAS-like devices or specialized hardware, but then you loose the access to a nice (though always different) web interface provided by the vendor.

In many ways it seems sysadmin work and infrastructure management can be done with 100% free software, but what good is it when you have to depend on proprietary interfaces or middleware? I think projects like OpenMediaVault and Ajenti go in the right direction.

What are your favorite Web UI implementations of every-day infrastructure administration tasks?

 

LibreOffice 3.5.5 released – categorized bug fixes

LibreOffice 3.5.5 has been released:

Berlin, July 11th, 2012. The Document Foundation today announces the immediate availability of LibreOffice 3.5.5, the current version of the free office suite.

This release fixes a number of bugs and further improves the stability of the software, making it the best version available for corporate and enterprise adoption. Among the changes are improvements in Calc, Impress, in the handling of fonts as well as enhancements with regards to importing and exporting third-party formats. […]

Keep in mind if you are using Ubuntu or Trisquel you need to be using the LibreOffice PPA to upgrade to this version. Make sure you read the LibreOffice notes for Ubuntu if you choose to do this. Remember this is not covered by commercial support.

I took the liberty to categorize the detailed technical change logs, which are available here:

 

Legend:

  • BNC# = bugzilla.novell.com
  • FDO# = freedesktop.org
  • I# = issues.apache.org
  • RHBZ# = bugzilla.redhat.com
  1. Performance fixes
    • fdo#48932 super slow typing and scrolling in large documents [Caolán McNamara]
    • fdo#47636 Extremely slow display with font fallback [Caolán McNamara]
    • fdo#49582 FILESAVE: Long delays saving in XP .XLS format [Petr Mladek]
  2. Notable usability and UI fixes
    • fdo#49724 update filters for file selector’s file type categories [Alberto Ferreira]
    • fdo#49948 ignore corrupted items in Recent Documents [Stephan Bergmann]
    • fdo#50981 update of German dictionaries (2012.06.10) [Andras Timar]
    • rhbz#799628 related: crash with chewing-IM with g3g [Caolán McNamara]
    • rhbz#678440 opening urls fails with error 403 on picky servers [Fridrich Štrba, Stephan Bergmann]
  3. Functionality fixes
    • bnc#652364 & bnc#750255 column break without columns seems to be a page break [Luboš Luňák]
    • bnc#750255 column break without columns seems to be a page break [Luboš Luňák]
    • bnc#757609 import vmlshape ‘hidden’ style attribute and apply to controls [Noel Power]
    • bnc#762542 don’t rotate calc shapes if twoCellAnchor, partial fix [Noel Power]
    • fdo#35972 toolbarmanager must be aware of changes in SvtMiscOptions [Ivan Timofeev]
    • fdo#38116 fix double hairline border drawing some more: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#40874 make recorded border macros run: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#42379 hide separators before calculating line breaks [Ivan Timofeev]
    • fdo#33634 better drawing support for borders of different width, [Markus Mohrhard]
    • fdo#42405 remove this, nowadays MenuItemAllowed disables menu entries [Ivan Timofeev]
    • fdo#42865 privatized unique empty string symbol: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#43895 related Fixed shortcommings of FileDialogHelper_Impl::verifyPath [Stephan Bergmann]
    • fdo#45592 similar to type for property UNO_NAME_SAVE_FILTER_DATA is wrong [Noel Power]
    • fdo#45987 ensure that number of tabs is correctly set in ScViewData, [Markus Mohrhard]
    • fdo#46074 ignore corrupted items in Recent Documents [Stephan Bergmann]
    • fdo#46112 tweak condition to prevent guessing only… [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#47325 legacy reports: survive absence of Sorting hidden control [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#47473 try to set new order only after field columns are available [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#47520 use the already retrieved row instead of driver row [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#47805 rework handling of 64-bit registry entries [Andras Timar]
    • fdo#48018 legacy reports do not sort by group columns [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#48068 fix parsing of path d-attribute [Chr. Rossmanith]
    • fdo#48345 need to refresh row also when not m_bRowCountFinal [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#48647 fix double hairline border drawing some more: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#49430 fix missing form control, partial fix for [Noel Power]
    • fdo#49438 heuristic pseudo-hack to use hair-lines if width <= 0.5 pixel [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#50139 do not cut first character of field text [Andras Timar]
    • fdo#50141 character count (with spaces) incorrect with numbering on. [Muhammad Haggag]
    • fdo#50144 put full reference text to selection field [Andras Timar]
    • fdo#50676 silence SolarMutex not locked spew [Caolán McNamara]
    • i#110536 legacy reports do not sort by group columns [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • i#116848 revert « Fixed Shapes are at wrong position » [Fridrich Štrba]
    • i#118068 revert « calc69: handle all-hidden case in ScDrawUtil::CalcScale » [Eike Rathke]
    • fdo#30519 Bad transitions if « use hardware acceleration » is enabled [David Tardon]
    • fdo#41556VIEWING: Incomplete font substitution when FontConfig matches italic font [Caolán McNamara]
    • fdo#43967 VIEWING: legacy report designer wizard improperly formats dates [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#51243 Trying to edit a report from new (but awful) Report Builder hangs libreoffice [Lionel Elie Mamane]
  4. Crash fixes
    • fdo#46687 fix Styles and Formatting gtk crasher [Bjoern Michaelsen]
    • fdo#50169 band-aid another crash in GraphiteLayout::expandOrCondense: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#50173 fix Styles and Formatting gtk crasher [Bjoern Michaelsen]
    • fdo#50372 crash when refresh of last already-known row unexpectedly fails [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#50868 fix potential further crashes like the one in [Fridrich Štrba]
    • fdo#51249 Crash while saving a document with track-changes enabled [Pierre-Eric Pelloux-Prayer]
    • fdo#51619 [CRASH] legacy reports: asks for parameters, then for empty parameters list then CRASH [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#50178 reading Visio file causes crash [Julien Nabet]
    • fdo#50988 Draw crashes on loading MS Logical Design Diagram example visio file. [Julien Nabet]
  5. Update/installer fixes
    • fdo#50603 Unable to update LibreOffice without resetting user profile [Stephan Bergmann]
    • fdo#43989 let unopkg.exe run with elevated privileges during install [Andras Timar]
    • fdo#48914 uninstall process should remove .pyc files from install directory [Andras Timar]
    • fdo#51270 On UNINSTALLING, LibreOffice leaves dirt behind [Andras Timar]
  6. GNU/Linux fixes
    • fdo#34638 and fdo#50415 Fix Shortcut names which are not localized on Linux [Thomas Arnhold]
    • i#86306 revert fix for « prepare against really broken CUPS installations… » [Stephan Bergmann]
  7. Mac/PPC fixes
    • fdo#47035 fix loading of jpeg files on Mac/PPC [Christian Lohmaier]
    • i#81127 revert « sw34bf03: patch by pmladek: linux/ppc: remove -fsigned-char » [Caolán McNamara, Rene Engelhard]
    • rhbz#820554 & rhbz#826609 fix smoketest on ppc[64] and s390 [Caolán McNamara]
    • i#86306 revert fix for « prepare against really broken CUPS installations… » [Stephan Bergmann]
  8. Windows fixes
    • fdo#47044 adapt to different Windows versions’ InternetQueryOption behavior [Stephan Bergmann]
    • fdo#50509 MSI: UI language selection from command line (e.g. silent install) [Andras Timar]
  9. .doc/.docx/.xslx/Visio import fixes
    • bnc#747461 implement relativeHeight (z-order) in .docx import (part of [Luboš Luňák]
    • bnc#750838 .docx wrap values mean different things than in LO, map them [Luboš Luňák]
    • bnc#751077 handle recursive <w:p> because of shapes [Luboš Luňák]
    • i#17200 & bnc#757118 fix horizontal rule width in .doc documents [Luboš Luňák]
    • bnc#757910 fix WW8 import of textboxes with thin border/inner margin [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#43249 WW8: fix double border import: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#50178 reading Visio file causes crash [Julien Nabet]
    • fdo#50304 fix excel row height export problems ( I hope ) [Noel Power]
    • i#93609, i#94028 better import xlsx heights [Noel Power]
    • fdo#46738 Cell background and border color formatting information of empty cells lost in particular document after FILESAVE as xls and xlsx [Petr Mladek]
    • fdo#48601 FILEOPEN: Open Visio’s file with bitmap’s blocks [Julien Nabet, Fridrich Štrba]
    • fdo#48602 FILEOPEN: The Greek codepage instead the Russian codepage (*.vsd by MS_Visio-2000) [Fridrich Štrba]
    • fdo#49582 FILESAVE: Long delays saving in XP .XLS format [Petr Mladek]
    • fdo#50988 Draw crashes on loading MS Logical Design Diagram example visio file. [Julien Nabet]
    • fdo#51601 Cannot open xlsx file [Eike Rathke]
  10. RTF import fixes
    • fdo#44174 RTF_TITLEPG when title page has no header [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#45190 import of RTF_LI should reset inherited RTF_FI [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#45522 fix crash on RTF export of sub-tables during copy&paste [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#49968 speed up RTF import of repeated character/paragraph properties [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#50539 fix RTF import of automatic character background color [Miklos Vajna]
    • rhbz#825548 speed up RTF import of repeated character/paragraph properties [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#49178 CRASH when FILEOPEN particular RTF [Julien Nabet]
 

The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3

This just in:

The Internet, January 25, 2011 – The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project.Not only does it ship a number of new and original features, LibreOffice 3.3 is also a significant achievement for a number of reasons:

  1. the developer community has been able to build their own and independent process, and get up and running in a very short time (with respect to the size of the code base and the project’s strong ambitions);
  2. thanks to the high number of new contributors having been attracted into the project, the source code is quickly undergoing a major clean-up to provide a better foundation for future development of LibreOffice;
  3. the Windows installer, which is going to impact the largest and most diverse user base, has been integrated into a single build containing all language versions, thus reducing the size for download sites from 75 to 11GB, making it easier for us to deploy new versions more rapidly and lowering the carbon footprint of the entire infrastructure.

The full announcement is available here.

There are important release notes regarding this version of LibreOffice.

A complete list of new features and fixes included in LibreOffice (with screenshots) is also available.

LibreOffice logo

Getting involved in LibreOffice

Most importantly, the LibreOffice project needs all the help it can get. If you want to join a vibrant, active community around a very visible and dynamic project, there are plenty of ways to do so.

If you or someone you know has some time and resources to dedicate to this important part of Ubuntu and of every libre desktop, come by sometime to the #libreoffice IRC channel and we’ll take care of you 🙂

Getting help for LibreOffice

I joined the LibreOffice project a few weeks ago and I must say this is a very exciting day ! I am mostly involved in marketing and documentation, but I’m also proposing the following two resources to become official support and self-help channels:

The LibreOffice project has a dedicated page listing all available online help resources.

I believe having additional self-help and support communities that complement the exiting OpenOffice.org existing ones is important, as the LibreOffice code-base will inevitably diverge more and more, and as we have more version-specific issues and bugs that can’t be treated equally. Furthermore, having language-specific communities and tools that can be used in your own language is also an important way to advocate LibreOffice in any part of the world – without depending on English-only tools.

Installing LibreOffice in Ubuntu

If you haven’t tried LibreOffice in Ubuntu yet, this would be a good time 🙂

If you are using Ubuntu do not download the .deb files for manual installation, there is a PPA repository that has been available for a few weeks now. Follow these instructions to install LibreOffice from the PPA so you get automatic updates. If you are running Ubuntu 11.04 LIbreOffice is already part of the standard packages, just search for libreoffice in your favorite package manager. Keep in mind the PPA shows version 3.3 rc4 as of this writing (which is bit-for-bit identical to the released 3.3), however a 3.3-numbered release should be available shortly.

The following is needed and works for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 10.10. Keep in mind a PPA is always considered a third-party application and unfit for production purposes (as far as official commercial support goes), however LibreOffice is becoming part of Ubuntu officially in the next release, due in April 2011, so the PPA will get a lot of attention and care. Make sure you test this and perhaps wait a few weeks if you intend to use this in 10.04 LTS or 10.10 in any significant way.

Here are the steps, then to install LibreOffice in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or Ubuntu 10.10:
Start a terminal window and issue these commands (you’ll be asked for your password):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libreoffice

To complete the integration to Ubuntu (Gnome) or Kubuntu (KDE), you will also need to either

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome

or

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde

… accordingly.

Filing a bug for LIbreOffice in Ubuntu is easy, I have documented the process here.

Additional language modules, help files and extensions are also available if you search for libreoffice in your package manager.

 

LibreOffice est ici: êtes-vous prêts ? Getting ready for LibreOffice

(English version follows)

LibreOffice 3.3 (release candidate 2) est disponible, grâce aux contributeurs de la Document Foundation. Comme vous l’avez probablement déjà constaté, LibreOffice sera la suite bureautique par défaut dans la prochaine version d’Ubuntu (11.04), du moins c’est le but pour Natty alpha 3 tel qu’indiqué sur le bogue #651124 [needs-packaging] LibreOffice Productivity Suite. Abonnez-vous si vous voulez suivre le progrès des package pour Ubuntu. Alors, pendant les vacances ou en attendant la nouvelle année, pourquoi ne pas augmenter votre bon karma en participant à ce projet ? 🙂

On peut parier que LibreOffice remplacera donc OpenOffice.org non seulement dans Ubuntu mais aussi dans la multitude de distributions dérivées mais aussi dans Debian, d’ailleurs on l’y retrouve déjà. Parmi mes lectures à ce sujet, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols résume la petite histoire dans une série d’articles sur son blog, Ralph Janke donne les détails techniques et logistiques du projet sur son blog.

LibreOffice et la Document Foundation progressent rapidement, et on retrouve déjà des versions de leur site en danois, allemand, espagnol, français, galicien, néerlandais et russe en plus d’une centaine de language packs pour l’application elle-même!

Essayer LibreOffice sous GNU/Linux, Mac OSX ou Windows

Pour l’instant il n’y a pas de dépôt officiel ou de PPA pour installer LibreOffice pour Ubuntu ni pour Trisquel. Les installateurs Mac OSX et Windows fonctionnent bien, et je les ai trouvé très utiles pour remplacer rapidement des installations OpenOffice.org existantes. Vous pouvez consulter des instructions d’installation détaillés sur leur site mais j’ai préféré résumer mon expérience Ubuntu et Trisquel ici:

  1. Si vous désirez supprimer complètement OpenOffice.org, utilisez cette commande:
    sudo apt-get remove openoffice.org*
  2. Si vous avez déjà une version antérieure de LibreOffice, il faudra la désinstaller. Consultez les instructions pour GNU/Linux (traduction en cours).
  3. Dirigez-vous à http://www.libreoffice.org/download/
  4. Assurez-vous d’avoir le bon choix de système d’exploitation
  5. Choisissez votre langue (!) Si vous voulez installer d’autres langues, il faudra les choisir et télécharger les fichiers un par un.
  6. Une fois que vous aurez les fichiers, dans le cas qui nous intéresse ici (GNU/Linux, paquets deb pour distributions Debian), ouvrez une fenêtre de terminal et éxécuter ces commandes:
    tar -xzvf LibO_3.3.0rc2_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz
    tar -xzvf LibO_3.3.0rc2_Linux_x86_langpack-deb_fr.tar.gz
    sudo dpkg -R -i .

Attention, le point « . » est important à la fin de la dernière commande!

Après quelques minutes vous devriez voir le lanceur de LibreOffice.org et ses applications sous le menu Applications > Bureautique. J’ai beaucoup apprécié le nouveau site et surtout la version plus intelligente de cette page de téléchargement!

Vous remarquerez que j’ai ajouté une étape pour supprimer OpenOffice.org. Personellement je n’ai pas constaté de problème majeurs à l’utilisation de LibreOffice, j’ai donc préfére de remplacer OpenOffice.org sur tous mes ordinateurs de bureau, à vous de décider si vous faites la même chose.

Note: j’ai effectué mes tests sous Trisquel 4.0.1 et Ubuntu 10.10 32-bit et 64-bit (pour ces deux distributions) ainsi que Windows 7 et Mac OSX.

Un document intéressant qui saura guider et rassurer les utilisateurs débutants ou experts est déjà disponible: le Getting Started Guide. L’équipe de documentation est d’ailleurs à la recherche de contributeurs et traducteurs. Si vous voulez contribuer aux traductions de documentation anglais -> français, inscrivez-vous à la liste discuss@fr.libreoffice.org.

J’en profite pour laisser quelques liens pour ceux et celles qui voudront bien aider à mener LibreOffice à bon port:

Pour une prochaine fois, j’écrirais sur comment utiliser et tester LibreOffice en plusieurs langues.

English, as promised 🙂

LibreOffice 3.3 (release candidate 2) is now available, thanks to all the contributors to the Document Foundation. As you may have noticed, LibreOffice will be the default office applications suite in the upcoming Ubuntu version (11.04), at least that’s where its heading starting with Natty alpha 3 as indicated on Bug #651124 [needs-packaging] LibreOffice Productivity Suite. Subscribe to it if you wish to follow its packaging progress in Ubuntu. So, during these holidays or while waiting for the New Year to come, is there any excuse not to earn some extra karma by contributing to this project ? 🙂

I would bet LibreOffice will be replacing OpenOffice.org in many of the Ubuntu-based distributions but also in others too – see it’s already making its way into Debian. While reading about LibreOffice few writers caught my attention like Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols with his blog where one can grasp what happened and when, and Ralph Janke’s opinions and detailed accounts of technical and logistical progress of this project.

LibreOffice and the Document Foundation make great progress each day, and we already see versions of the site in Danish, German, Spanish, French, Galician, Dutch and Russian – nevermind having LibreOffice itself already offering more than a hundred languages packs for immediate consumption!

Trying LibreOffice in GNU/Linux, Mac OSX or Windows

There isn’t an official LibreOffice repository yet (or even a PPA) for Ubuntu or Trisquel, but installing it is rather trivial. The Mac OSX and Windows installers worked really well, and I found them very useful when wanting to quickly replace existing OpenOffice.org. You can find detailed installation instructions on their site but I’ve summarized my experience in Ubuntu and Trisquel here:

  1. If you want to completely remove an existing OpenOffice.org installation, issue the following command:
    sudo apt-get remove openoffice.org*
  2. If you already have an existing LibreOffice installation, you will need to remove it completely before proceeding any further. see the Linux instructions for that.
  3. Go to http://www.libreoffice.org/download/
  4. Make sure the right operating system is selected
  5. Choose your language (!) If you want to install support for several languages, you will have to download all the language packs separately.
  6. Once you have all the files, in my example (GNU/Linux, deb packages for Debian distributions), you can open a terminal window and issue the following commands::
    tar -xzvf LibO_3.3.0rc2_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz
    tar -xzvf LibO_3.3.0rc2_Linux_x86_langpack-deb_fr.tar.gz
    sudo dpkg -R -i .

Make sure you don’t forget the dot « . » at the end of the last command!

After a few minutes you should be done and LibreOffice applications will be available in the Applications > Office menu. I really appreciated the clear and easy web site and was impressed by the download page!

You will notice my first step above is to completely remove OpenOffice.org. LibreOffice and OOo will happily co-exist but I like LibreOffice so much after a few weeks using it that I decided to replace all my desktops OOo installations right now. Of course you can decide not to do so!

Note: I made all my tests using Trisquel 4.0.1 and Ubuntu 10.10 32-bit and 64-bit (for those two distributions) as well as Windows 7 and Mac OSX.

An interesting document that will help new users and guide old hats is already available for review: the Getting Started Guide. The documentation team is always looking for contributors and translators, BTW. If you want to help English -> French translation, join the discuss@fr.libreoffice.org mailing list – note all the local mailing lists in that page!

I’ll take this opportunity to share some links that will help those of you interested in joining this project and make it rock:

Coming up next: Using and testing LibreOffice in several languages