Open Standards

  • UK Government speaks of open standards and ODF

    ODF file iconOn Wednesday the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) held an event called Sprint 14, in which it invited Ministers, civil servants, suppliers and the media along to showcase some major new digital public services for the first time.

    Among the speakers was Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, who in his speech made some interesting and welcome noises about document formats:

    Today I can announce that we’ve set out the document formats that we propose should be adopted across government – and we’re asking you to tell us what you think about them.

    He then continued with equally welcome and interesting noises on open standards:

    Technical standards for document formats may not set the pulse racing – it may not sound like the first shot in a revolution. But be in no doubt: the adoption of open standards in government threatens the power of lock-in to propriety vendors yet it will give departments the power to choose what is right for them and the citizens who use their services.

    The documents formats referred to by Mr Maude in his speech can be found on the Cabinet Office’s Standards Hub section of its website on the Sharing or collaborating with government documents webpage, which states

    When dealing with citizens, information should be digital by default and therefore should be published online. Browser-based editing is the preferred option for collaborating on published government information. HTML (4.01 or higher e.g. HTML5) is therefore the default format for browser-based editable text. Other document formats specified in this proposal – ODF 1.1 (or higher e.g. ODF 1.2), plain text (TXT) or comma separated values (CSV) – should be provided in addition. ODF includes filename extensions such as .odt for text, .ods for spreadsheets and .odp for presentations.

    Whilst the government has conceded that open formats and standards should be used when dealing with citizens, how long will it take for changes to take place before editable documents intended for use by we peasants citizens will be available in anything other than the quasi-ubiquitous MS Office formats currently provided?

  • LibreOffice 4.2 offers increased performance and interoperability

    The Document Foundation has announced the release of LibreOffice 4.2 for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. The new version is better integrated into Windows 7 and 8, as it now groups the preview of opened documents on the taskbar by application. A list of the last documents opened can now be displayed on the taskbar with a right mouse click.

    According to The Document Foundation, Calc – the spreadsheet application – has undergone the most extensive changes in its history, which should result in considerable increases in speed when calculating large volumes of data. A new optional formula interpreter enables massively parallel calculation of formula cells using the GPU via OpenCL.

    In addition to this, LibreOffice developers have improved interoperability with Microsoft Office, particularly when reading and writing .docx files. Amongst other things, LibreOffice 4.2 interprets MS SmartArt graphics better than the previous version. New import filters now also read Abiword documents and Apple Keynote presentations. A new start screen now shows a preview of recently opened documents.

    screenshot of new start screen in LibreOffice 4.2 running on Ubuntu Linux
    New start screen in LibreOffice 4.2 running on Ubuntu Linux

    The improvements also include the option in Windows environments the ability of centrally managing and locking down the configuration with Group Policy Objects via Active Directory and blocking individual options.

    On the mobile side, LibreOffice now supports an Impress Remote Control for iOS – in addition to the already available Impress Remote Control for Android – which allows visual management of presentation delivery on the laptop using the screen of an iPhone or iPad. The app is currently waiting for review from Apple, and will be announced as soon as it is available on iTunes Store.

    Moreover, the development team has also cleaned up and tweaked the user interface and revised 70% of dialog boxes. It will also look more modern due to the new flat Sifr icon set.

    All the new and improved features of LibreOffice 4.2 have been summarised here.

  • Wikipedia community votes on MP4

    Wikimedia Commons logoContent on Wikipedia should not only be made available under a free licence, but also in free formats. As this is associated with limitations the Wikimedia multimedia team has launched a request for comment to integrate the H.264 MP4 codec, Heise reports.

    Such proprietary codecs have so far not been allowed in Wikipedia and its sister projects; even MP3 files are not allowed. Videos can only be uploaded in Ogg Theora format and the open WebM format developed by Google.

    In the opinion of the multimedia team, this limitation is significantly preventing the use of videos. Although the Chrome and Firefox browsers can play WebM, other browsers have still not implemented the format. It looks even worse as regards mobile devices: according to an analysis, two-thirds of mobile calls to Wikimedia servers originate from devices which cannot play the video formats made available on Wikipedia. Even the uploading of videos is made more difficult since contributors must first convert their videos before they can upload them. The result is that only 38,000 videos can be found on the Wikimedia Commons multimedia platform, whereas YouTube makes 6.5 million videos available in the education category.

    The proposal is not meeting with much approval in the community. On the first day of the discussion which started a month ago, must users spoke out against any support for MP4; however, supporters are not occupying too inferior a position. In particular, the secret licence agreements and any licensing payment due for commercial use of videos are being criticised. A compromise in which the Wikimedia Foundation will convert all uploaded MP4 videos into open formats is only supported by very few contributors.

    The multimedia team must now put more effort into convincing people if it wants to convert its plans into reality. Heise says the Wikimedia Foundation is adopting a neutral official position.

  • EU also recommends ODF as a standard format

    ODF file iconAs an answer to a question from a Swedish politician the EU Commission has also confirmed ODF as a standard document format, Germany’s Linux Magazin writes. However, free software advocates are criticising the step as “not far-reaching enough”.

    image of Amelia Andersdotter MEP
    Amelia Andersdotter MEP
    At the end of November 2013 Amelia Andersdotter MEP, a member of the Swedish Pirate Party, submitted a written question to the EU Commission in which she dug deeper in two points into what was happening with file formats recommended by the EU. In 2011 Inter-Institutional Committee for Informatics had instructed all departments to support the OOXML standard developed and controlled by Microsoft. Andersdotter inquired what sense this still made when only one manufacturer is implementing the standard and how communication could take place with public sector organisations who are using other standards.

    The Commission’s answer was given a few days ago. According to a report on Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site, EU Commission Vice-president Maroš Šefčovič himself responded to the written question and mentioned OOXML and ODF as minimum requirements for document exchange. Šefčovič maintains that this ensures no vendor lock-in exists or can occur. In addition, public sector organisations should support other file formats in accordance with the best effort principle, i.e. if this is practically possible.

    Open source activists, such as the Open Forum Europe are describing the decision as overdue, but are criticising the EU for missing an opportunity for the EU to lead by example for not daring to stipulate ODF as a single open standard. Switzerland’s Open Systems Group welcomes this first step, Joinup states. Mathias Stürmer is even hoping that the Swiss government will follow suit, even though it is not within the EU; although it would definitely help to prompt other public sector organisations to make the change to ODF.

  • British Library releases over 1 million images to public domain

    The British Library has released over one million scanned images into the public domain. A post on the British Library’s Digital Scholarship blog reveals that the public domain – i.e. freely usable – images which have been made available via the British Library’s Flickr page, originate from 17th, 18th and 19th century books. They were digitised by Microsoft from 65,000 books.

    sample image from British Library collection
    “The Coming of Father Christmas” by Eliza F. Manning

    Microsoft and the British Library started collaborating eight years ago. The contents of 100,000 books should be searchable in the near future via Microsoft’s book search project.

    All the images are provided with details of their origin and year of publication. The British Library is planning a crowdsourcing project as the next stage for automatically classifying the content of the images. The images’ data has been made available on github by the British Library. The code is being made available under an open licence.

  • Norway’s National Library digitising its collection

    The National Library of Norway has announced it is digitising its entire collection. The Norwegian Legal Deposit Act requires that all published content in all media – i.e. paper, microforms, photographs, combined documents, electronic documents and the radio and television recordings from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation – be deposited with the National Library of Norway.

    The Library’s collection is also being expanded through purchases and gifts. The digital collection contains material dating from the Middle Ages up to the current day.

    Digital deposit

    In parallel with digitising analogue material, the National Library of Norway is working to expand the scope of publications covered by legal digital deposit legislation. The Library wishes to receive the digital source of the publication and thus the collection’s digital content.

    The digitising programme started in 2006 and it is estimated that it will take 20–30 years for the Library’s entire collection to be digitised.

    image of Dickens engraving being digitised
    A Dickens engraving being digitised. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    Furthermore, The Atlantic reports that people accessing the Library’s digital collection from a Norwegian IP address will be able to access all 20th-century works – even those still under copyright. Non-copyrighted works of any age will be available for download.

    Hat tip: Mike Ellis

  • An open source framework for the “internet of things”

    Today’s Le Monde Informatique reports that the AllSeen Alliance, an umbrella group for major consumer electronics manufacturers, is working on an open source framework with which it will be possible to connect almost anything to the internet.

    Household electrical goods, cars and computers could soon communicate with each other thanks to an open source framework developed by the AllSeen Alliance with the support of the Linux Foundation. This group of major consumer electronics manufacturers includes Cisco, D-Link, Haier, LG Electronics, Qualcomm, Panasonic and Sharp. According to the Linux Foundation, “the framework, originally developed by Qualcomm under the name of the AllJoyn Project, will enable different systems to see each other, to connect and to interact transparently, irrespective of their manufacturer or the operating system they use”. Members of the alliance will contribute to the framework by providing engineering resources and software resources to enable developers, manufacturers and suppliers to provide interoperable services and devices. “Qualcomm has contributed to the AllJoyn code under the aegis of the AllSeen Alliance. This will hold the copyright, offering the project a broader reach,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. “The open source community can also contribute to this code,” he added.

    internet of things graphic

    The framework runs on Linux, Android, iOS, Windows and other OS variants involved. “Developers can download the code already and find details of APIs using the reference source allseenalliance.org and start working,” the Foundation announced. “Once APIs comprising an interoperability layer are supplied to the open source community, it will be possible to graft all sorts of services onto them,” Zemlin stated in an email. For example, the framework could enable users to play music easily because there are various wireless loudspeakers nearby. “Today this would be difficult because the majority of consumers have audio systems from different manufacturers, they store their music on various media and use different cloud storage services,” Zemlin explained. “This framework will therefore enable easy playing of music on compatible loudspeakers near these sources,” he added. “Engineers are already at work writing this code and implementing it in existing products. We are expecting several announcements of this type at the next CES (7th -10th January 2014), ” he stated.

    A truly universal framework

    The framework could also be used to enable a domestic electrical system to turn of a home’s heating system when the house is empty and thus contribute to reducing household energy bills. “Such a system could be adapted to different scenarios; for example, to put household equipment on standby when its occupants are out and turn them on gradually before their return,” Zemlin declared. “The same system could enable the family car to be detected when it’s a mile away, switch on the lights and start up the heating or even open the garage door automatically when the car is approaching,” he added. “All these communications could work with existing transmission technologies – wifi, Bluetooth – and future ones, such as those based on radio waves,” Zemlin also stated.

    The AllSeen Alliance is the Linux Foundation’s 11th collaborative project. “As companies create more products integrating this code, the developer community devoting time to extending and improving this code will grow, just like what happened with other projects based on Linux or OpenStack,” Zemlin stated.

  • USL Umbria 1 migrates 300 workstations to LibreOffice

    USL Umbria 1 logoItalian regional health organisation USL Umbria 1 has completed the first phase of its migration to Libre Office, Libre Umbria reports.

    USL Umbria 1’s territory includes the districts of Perugia, Assisi, Trasimeno, the middle and upper Tiber valley and the upper Chiasco valley (the Chiasco is a tributary of the Tiber. Ed.).

    LibreOffice menu screen
    LibreOffice start centre

    After some two months from the start of the migration, USL Umbria 1 has already converted 300 stations from running proprietary office suites to LibreOffice and is scheduled to migrate the rest of its PC pool within the next few months.

    In parallel with the LibreOffice installation, users are being offered training in the new software; those who’ve already been switched to the open source office suite should complete their training by the end of the year.

    In the opinion of the LibreUmbria project, USL Umbria 1 is a good example of how it is possible for public sector organisations to adopt free and open source software.

  • LibreOffice 4.2 international bug hunting session announced

    the LibreOffice logoThe Document Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind the free and open source LibreOffice productivity suite, announced earlier today that the LibreOffice 4.2 International Bug Hunting Session will start on 6th December and end on 8th December. During the three days, volunteers from all over the world will test the beta of LibreOffice 4.2 to find bugs and regressions.

    bug hunting image

    LibreOffice 4.2 will be released at the end of January 2014 with a large number of new features and loads of fixed bugs. See the release notes for more details. The community is working to make this major release the finest in the history of the free office suite.

    In order to join the bug hunting session, volunteers should download LibreOffice 4.2 Beta 2 from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/pre-releases/.

    Mentors will be available at least from 08:00 UTC to 22:00 UTC and will be reachable through IRC (irc://chat.freenode.net/libreoffice-qa) and the QA mailing list (libreoffice-qa@freedesktop.org).

    Other information on the LibreOffice 4.2 International Bug Hunting Session can be found on the Document Foundation wiki.

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