Daily Archives: Saturday, February 1, 2014

  • UK Government speaks of open standards and ODF

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

    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

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

    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.

  • Swiss canton of Bern focuses open source

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

    Bern coat of armsWith a massive majority of 130 in favour, 0 against and one abstention, the Grand Council (Grossrat), the parliament of the Canton of Bern, has passed the motion “To exploit synergies when using software in the Canton of Bern”, Computerworld.ch reports. The cantonal administration had previously announced its support for the request by the Evangelical People’s Party (EVP), Social Democratic Party (SP), Conservative Democratic Pary (BDP), the Green Party (GPS) and the Green Liberal Party (GLP). The individual points of the motion will now go to the Canton’s chief civil servant for implementation.

    With this motion the parliament wants the Cantonal Office for Computing and Organisation (KAIO) and Bedag Informatik AG, which is owned by the Canton, to co-operate in the information technology sector with other authorities on open source projects. Its own developments for which the Canton holds the copyright shall be released as open source software where reasonable so that other authorities can use the software and future development costs can be shared.

    In addition, managers for each new IT project must disclose in future which open source alternatives have been investigated during procurement. If none is included, this must be justified. The same criterion shall be applicable to every new specialist application or one that is to be adapted. Either a release under an open source licence must be planned here or a justification given as to why it should not be released as open source.

    Finally, the Canton of Bern is to be more actively involved in existing and new open source development and specialist applications and their respective organisations.