Monthly Archives: April 2021

  • ASF’s spring clean

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

    Apache Software Foundation logoDuring the first week of April, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) announced it was moving some projects to a virtual attic, German IT news site heise reports. Projects which are no longer being worked on and are to a certain extent regarded as “retired” end up in Apache’s attic.

    The official announcement is the final stage of the journey to the attic and may take some time to implement. Ironically, a project with the dashing name of Falcon (the peregrine falcon is the fastest moving animal on Earth with a dive speed of some 380 km/h. Ed.) is taking some time to make the move: Falcon was abandoned in June 2019.

    Falcon for data management

    The ASF took Falcon 2013 under its wing in 2013 and the data management project was promoted to a top level after two years’ incubation. At the time the project’s was widespread in big data projects with Hadoop and inter alia with Hortonworks and Talend.

    Apache Falcon’s retirement means there will be no further development of the project by the ASF. The Foundation’s virtual attic was created in 2008. It contains all the projects which have officially reached their end of life. The Attic webpage describes the retirement process.

    The time frame between the decision to retire a project and the end of removal works varies considerably. Hervé Boutemy, the manager of Apache’s Attic is expected to announce the official retirement of a further 19 projects in the next few days in addition to Falcon. The retirement process has likewise been officially concluded for the Apex, Aurora, Forrest, Hama, Stanbol and VXQuery projects.

    Still available but no longer developed

    Projects in the Attic remain available there and project pages can still exist, as for Apache Falcon. However, the ASF no longer pays attention to either further development or bug fixes. Anyone interest can fork the projects at any time and ASF lists these forks.

    From time to time, if a project proves to be more popular than expected when it was retired, it will be retrieved from the attic and revived. For example, the Foundation dug XMLBeans out of the attic in summer 2018 after four years’ “retirement“.

  • A Scots terminology question

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

    One Twitter account I follow is Miss PunnyMany for her insights into Scots English. She’s just asked a very important question of manners and terminology in this tweet, as shown below.

    Tweet reads Is hen rude?

    Well, is “hen” rude?

    Let us see.

    An accurate definition would be a good place to start.

    A general glossary of Scots vocabulary posted on Stirling University’s website provides the following definition:

    hen: vocative term for a woman (e.g. ‘It’s aw richt, hen’), or a general term of endearment for anyone.

    Note the phrase “general term of endearment“. That’s a big clue, indicating that its use is confined to close friends and acquaintances.

    This view is largely borne out by the tone of the responses to Miss PunnyMany’s tweet.

    Furthermore, a few respondents rightly point out that, like “pal” south of the Border, “hen” may be used in a pejorative or threatening manner to people outside one’s immediate social circle.

    Mhairi Black MP
    You don’t talk shite, hen!

    An example of this can be found in a place a fair way from Scotland, namely the chamber of the House of Commons in Westminster.

    Back in March 2017, SNP Member of Parliament Mhairi Black gave rise to comment in the media and on social media when appearing to mouth the words “You talk shite, hen” to a response by Tory minister Caroline Nokes, then the Under Secretary of State in the Department for Work and Pensions.

    Ms Black had just made an impassioned speech that criticised a Government proposal to withdraw housing benefits for 18-21-year-olds. Her silent, but lip-read comment denoting her clear displeasure came during Ms Nokes’ reply which naturally defended the government’s cruel proposal.

    So there you have it, use “hen” sensibly and restrict it to family, close friends and acquaintances, you shouldn’t go too wrong.

  • Shabby? Not me, says PM

    Steve WoodsMedia, Politics

    Worzel Gummidge, the British Prime Minister, has responded to criticism in the press regarding his “shabby” and “disrespectful” appearance, and that he “couldn’t even do his hair” when making a statement in Downing Street about the death on Friday of Philip Mountbatten-Windsor, aged 99.

    Lookalikes - Boris Johnson and Worzel Gummidge
    Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the scruffiest of them all?

    Speaking from Chequers, a visibly shocked an astounded Worzel Gummidge apologised to those who had expressed their anger on social media and added: “Anyone would think I always looked as if I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, like former London Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson!”

  • Brazilian Portuguese LibreOffice guide now available

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

    Last week The Document Foundation blog announced the release of the LibreOffice 7.0 Getting Started Guide in Brazilian Portuguese. This new guide is based on the English language guide released last month (posts passim).

    Cover of Brazilian Portuguese LibreOffice guide

    In fact the Brazilian Portuguese guide is based on the English version. Its basis was a machine translation of the English guide which was then revised by members of the LibreOffice Brazilian community. Future editions of the Getting Started Guide will be done without translation, but by writing directly in Portuguese about new features in LibreOffice and information about the suite.

    Like its English counterpart, the Brazilian Portuguese Getting Started Guide outlines the development of LibreOffice and introduces each of its modules: spreadsheets (Calc), presentations (Impress), vector drawings (Draw), text processing (Writer), equations (Maths) and databases (Base). In addition to these modules, there are several chapters describing important concepts common to all modules such as styles, printing, electronic signing, macros, exporting in various formats, redacting and document classification.

    Contributors to the new guide were Vera Cavalcante, Jackson Cavalcanti Jr., Timothy Brennan Jr., Flávio Schefer, Felipe Viggiano, Raul Pacheco da Silva, Túlio Macedo and Olivier Hallot.

    The new Brazilian Portuguese LibreOffice 7.0 Getting Started Guide can be downloaded in PDF format.

    In addition to the new guide, the Brazilian LibreOffice Community also produces its own LibreOffice magazine.

  • Abroad thoughts from home

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics

    One fascinating aspect of the country’s foolhardy departure from the European Union is the fate of Britons in the 27 member states of the European Union; and more particularly how they are depicted here now that the “free and independent coastal state” of Brexitannia has “taken back control“.

    Keen observers of the British media will note all foreigners seeking to come to the English Empire (which some refer to as the United Kingdom. Ed.) to settle are referred to as “migrants“. When used by the right-wing press or politicians, “migrants” has a clear pejorative tone to the effect that these people are not as good as us.

    However, in line with British exceptionalism as Brits seeking to or having taken up residence abroad are termed “expats” by the fourth estate, as per this typical specimen from yesterday’s Daily Brexit, which some still call Daily Express.

    Headline reads Brexit BACKLASH: British expats could abandon Canary Islands for Greece and Cyprus
    Expats? Emigrés? Immigrants?

     

    Of course, what the Daily Brexit forgets is that even in Greece and Cyprus, holders of those nice, new and allegedly blue British passports will still be classed as third country citizens by the Greek and Cypriot authorities; and if they try staying there for longer than the maximum period without applying for a residence permit, they’ll be regarded as illegal immigrants, just as they are now finding out on the Costa del Sol.

    “Expat” is of course a truncation of the term “expatriate“, with the shorter form’s first recorded use in the first half of the 1960s.

    When people move for work, settlement or other reasons, the language used about them is always full of meaning. In earlier, less judgemental times those who left British shores to settle abroad might have been referred to as “émigrés” or “emigrants“, whilst those coming here for permanent settlement were “immigrants“, which had more than its fair share of negative connotations in times past.

    Nowadays all those negative connotations are to a certain effect by “migrant“, which, unlike “immigrant” or “emigrant” is not specific about the person’s direction of travel.

    Nevertheless, I can see the exceptionalism continuing and am not expecting the Daily Brexit to refer to Brits resident abroad as “British immigrants” at any time soon. 😉

    PS: Apologies to Robert Browning for this post’s title.

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