Apache OpenOffice Wiki - User contributions [en]

OpenSUSE Build Instructions

2009-11-23T18:47:09Z

Pmladek: update for openSUSE-11.2

=== About openSUSE ===

[http://opensuse.org openSUSE] project is a worldwide community program sponsored by [http://www.novell.com/ Novell] that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. The program provides anyone with free and easy access to SUSE Linux.

=== Build Instructions ===

The [[Building|build procedure]] is the same as for other Linux systems.

=== Missing devel packages ===

The default openSUSE [http://software.opensuse.org/ installation media] do not include all the needed packages because of CD/DVD space limitation. The missing -devel packages, necessary to build OOo, are available via the full online installation sources at many [http://en.opensuse.org/Mirrors_Released_Version mirrors]. It is enough to add the respective installation source into YaST, for example::

ftp://ftp.rz.uni-wuerzburg.de/pub/linux/opensuse/distribution/10.3/repo/oss
ftp://ftp.rz.uni-wuerzburg.de/pub/linux/opensuse/distribution/10.3/repo/non-oss

The corresponding repositories at the [http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/ primary site] are:

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3/repo/oss/
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.3/repo/non-oss/

Some notes:

* The installation sources are quite big (provide packages for all architectures), and it takes a while until they are loaded. They are also quite memory demanding :-(

* The missing packages can also be found at [http://download.go-oo.org/openSUSE/ go-oo.org].

* For me, the following zypper line dragged in all packages I needed:

zypper install flex bison pam-devel gperf libxslt java-1_5_0-sun-devel
libxml libxml2-devel libxslt-devel python-devel boost-devel
openldap2-devel gnome-vfsmm-devel gstreamer010-devel kdesdk3
kdelibs3-devel qt3-devel gcc-c++ ccache perl-Archive-Zip cups-devel
ant automake autoconf mono-devel libcurl-devel unixODBC-devel
mozilla-xulrunner181-devel neon-devel gstreamer010-plugins-base-devel
perl-SOAP-Lite libdb-4_5-devel libwpd-devel libwps-devel libwpg-devel
icu libicu-devel hunspell-devel

* currently, libwp* requires the additional http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/fstrba/openSUSE_10.3 repo,
and hunspell-devel the http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/kkemenczy/openSUSE_10.3 one

* Then, fire up the build with

./autogen.sh --with-distro=SUSE-10.3 --with-ccache-allowed
./download
make

=== openSUSE 11.0 devel packages ===

On a pretty much virgin 11.0 install, this should give you all the necessary packages:

zypper install flex bison pam-devel gperf libxslt java-1_5_0-sun-devel
libxml libxml2-devel libxslt-devel python-devel boost-devel
openldap2-devel gnome-vfsmm-devel gstreamer010-devel kdesdk3 postgresql-devel
kdelibs3-devel qt3-devel gcc-c++ ccache perl-Archive-Zip cups-devel
ant ant-apache-regexp automake autoconf mono-devel libcurl-devel unixODBC-devel
mozilla-xulrunner181-devel neon-devel gstreamer010-plugins-base-devel
perl-SOAP-Lite libdb-4_5-devel libwpd-devel libwps-devel libwpg-devel
icu libicu-devel hunspell-devel poppler-devel make subversion

=== openSUSE 11.1 devel packages ===

On a pretty much virgin 11.1 install, this should give you all the necessary packages:

zypper si -d OpenOffice_org-bootstrap

If it does not work, you can try the full list:

zypper install flex bison pam-devel gperf libxslt java-1_5_0-sun-devel
libxml libxml2-devel libxslt-devel python-devel boost-devel
openldap2-devel gnome-vfsmm-devel gstreamer010-devel kdesdk3 postgresql-devel
kdelibs3-devel qt3-devel gcc-c++ ccache perl-Archive-Zip cups-devel
ant ant-apache-regexp automake autoconf mono-devel libcurl-devel unixODBC-devel
mozilla-xulrunner190-devel neon-devel gstreamer010-plugins-base-devel
perl-SOAP-Lite libdb-4_5-devel libwpd-devel libwps-devel libwpg-devel
icu libicu-devel hunspell-devel poppler-devel libexpat-devel
lpsolve-devel zip make subversion

=== openSUSE 11.2 devel packages ===

On a pretty much virgin 11.2 install, this should give you all the necessary packages:

zypper si -d OpenOffice_org-bootstrap

If it does not work, you can try the full list:

zypper install arts-devel avahi-lang brp-check-suse build-compare \
dbus-1-qt3-devel dbus-1-qt3 flac-devel gconf2-lang glib2-branding-upstream \
gnome-vfs2-lang gstreamer-0_10-lang gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base-lang \
hunspell-devel icu kdelibs3-arts kdelibs3-devel kdelibs3-doc kdelibs4-branding-upstream \
libbonobo-lang libicu-devel libjack-devel libogg-devel libsamplerate-devel libvorbis-devel \
libwpd-devel libwpg-devel libwps-devel lpsolve-devel pcre-tools post-build-checks \
postgresql-devel qt3-devel rpmlint-Factory rpmlint-mini sablot-devel unixODBC-devel \
unsermake xmlbeans-mini

[[Category: Distribution-Specific Build Instructions]][[Category:Build_System]]

Ooo-build

2009-04-02T18:41:45Z

Pmladek: Update for git

This collection of patches, artwork and build infrastructure exists solely as a reflection of the many problems encouraging reasonably responsive change up-stream. The process of change is painful for any organisation, the larger the more painful. However - the size of the problem is no excuse to not try; hence the evenutal aim is to remove the need for ooo-build by incrementally fixing the various problems.

== About ooo-build ==

ooo-build arose from acute frustration with the bad-old days of OOo process before the [[CWS|Child Workspace]] concept was introduced, it was
also fueled by a non-performant [[Infrastructure_Problems#CVS|CVS server]].

* [[ooo-build/bin]] - A description of the tools in bin/

== Checking out ==
To check out trunk ooo-build from the fd.o git repository, run one of the following in the command line:

# anonymous access
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/ooo-build/ooo-build
# if you have a freedesktop.org account
git clone ssh://[username@]git.freedesktop.org/git/ooo-build/ooo-build

If you need to work on a branch:

git checkout -b ooo-build-3-0-1 origin/ooo-build-3-0-1

(see [http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/ooo-build/GettingIt fd.o wiki] for authoritative info)

== Making a patch on a set of files ==
You can use git locally and it's really great for larger tasks.

make patch.apply
cd build/current
git init
../../bin/create-gitignores.sh
git add sc
git commit -m "initial"

And from now on you can locally commit to sc (git commit -a) until you are happy.
To generate the patch, just
git diff --no-prefix
You can see the diff from your initial commit with this command
git diff --no-prefix HEAD^
To remove the git tracking :
rm -rf .git

You can also think of more fancy use of git, like having a master branch for applying the patches, and other branches to track history of development you are doing, or use it to actually edit existing patches, to merge patches, etc. In that case, it is useful to track history of the entire tree; to do that, use
git add .
instead of the 'git add sc' in the example above.

Some people prefer stacked git (stg) over plain git when juggling with patches, after the initial "git init; git add .; git commit -a" do a "stg init" - and read the nice manual page.

== Adding Patch ==

One of the main ooo-build features is the ability to apply patches against the upstream sources. A patch can be added the following way:

* propose a patch file name:
** the file suffix ''.diff'' is required
** the file name ''<theme>-short-fix-description.diff'' is suggested when there are more thematic patches, e.g. ''warnigns'', ''unittesting'', ''speed'' that are not put in any thematic directory
** the file name ''<module>-short-fix-description.diff'' is suggested when the patch modifies only one source ''module'', e'g' ''vcl'', ''svx'', ''sd''
** the file name cws-<name> should be used for CWS backports
** the file name ''short-fix-description.diff'' is enough otherwise
* create the patch in the format to be applied in the top source directory with ''-P0'', see the sample content:
*:<pre>
*:--- jvmfwk/plugins/sunmajor/pluginlib/gnujre.cxx.old 2007-08-10 17:32:26.0000
*:+++ jvmfwk/plugins/sunmajor/pluginlib/gnujre.cxx 2007-08-16 22:40:42.0000
*:@@ -78,6 +78,7 @@ char const* const* GnuInfo::getJavaExePa
*:...
*:</pre>
*put the patch below ''ooo-build/patches/<group>''; most patches are located in the MWS specific directory. Some bigger groups of patches have their own thematic directory. For example:
*:<pre>
*:patches/src680/sc-save-split-view.diff
*:patches/src680/warning-return-values-filter.diff
*:
*:patches/scsolver/scsolver-source-inc-basedlg-hxx.diff
*:patches/scsolver/scsolver-source-inc-baselistener-hxx.diff
*:</pre>
* mention the patch in the ''apply'' file:
**ooo-build allows to sort the patches into groups and apply them conditionaly '''by distributions'''. Therefore, each patch has to be mentioned in the '''right section''' in the ''apply'' file. This file is usually located in the MWS-specific directory, e.g. ''patches/src680/apply''.
**the patch entry might look like:
**: <pre>
**: [ CalcFixes ]
**:
**: # Support Hungarian localized keywords for CELL and INFO functions.
**: sc-celltrans-hungarian-keywords.diff, i#80299, kohei
**: # Fix saving split-view information on 64-bit platforms.
**: sc-save-split-view.diff, n#235131, i#81936, jonp</pre>
**please do not forget to mention the '''issue numbers''' and the responsible '''developer name'''
**note that the patches are applied in the order in which they are listed in the apply file. If there are some conflicts between the patches, it might be necessary to '''split a section''', for example:
**:<pre>
**: [ Fixes ]
**:
**: # make unzip command not ask when overwriting files
**: unzip-command.diff, i#81087, fridrich
**:
**: [ CalcFixes ]
**:
**: #fix import filter for userforms with calc specific data ( rowsource )
**: svx-filter-userform-rowsource.diff, i#73753
**:
**:[ Fixes ]
**:
**: # edit fields text displaying
**: svx-sdrobjeditview-update-edit-area.diff, n#305205, rodo</pre>

== Committing a Change ==

''Please see the [http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/ooo-build/GettingIt freedesktop.org wiki] for the authoritative info.''

In git, the [http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/ooo-build/GettingIt#committhechanges commits] happen locally. To make them available on the server, you have to either [http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/ooo-build/GettingIt#pushthechanges push] them (if you have the freedesktop.org account), or [http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/ooo-build/GettingIt#mailthechanges mail] them (if not).

# it is our first session, we have to clone the repository
git clone ssh://[username@]git.freedesktop.org/git/ooo-build/ooo-build
# develop something, now commit it
git commit -a
# continue developing, and commit it
git commit -a
# it is finished, patches apply, everything builds, let's check that we did not
# forget uncommitted changes
git status
# looks fine, let's double check the diff
git log -p
# everything is perfect, let's push to the remote repository
git push
# oh, it failed! - somebody committed some changes in the meantime, let's update
git pull -r
# double check
git log -p
# everything is fine
git push

The form of the commit message should be like the following:

First line roughly describing the change.

Leave one empty line, and then follow with more detailed description
what and why you changed. This is really important, because some
of the git tools (like gitk, git log --pretty=oneline, git rebase
--interactive, etc.) show just the first line. Also we don't have
a ChangeLog any more, so git log is now your source of the information
about the changes.

Please do not forget to mention the bugzilla numbers, like i#12345 or
bnc#234567.

* file1: Did this and that.
* file2: And something else here.

== Releasing ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a release, such as a distro needs a stable base or we want to do something potentially
disruptive, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* '''git pull -r''' - get the latest everything

* do a test build and a smoke test to make sure that the last commits are fine; you could commit any fix if needed; you need not push it, though

* read back through the ''git log'' and update the ''NEWS'' file for the release, summarizing and attributing the changes. See also below for ''"Tag vs. Push"''

* edit ''configure.in'', bump the version in the '''AC_INIT''' line, incrementing the minor version eg. '''AC_INIT(ooo-build, X.Y.Z)'''

* '''git commit -a''' - commit the changes with a handy comment, so we can roughly see where this happened in the flow:

<pre>
Released ooo-build-X.Y.Z (X.Y.Z-betaM)

* version X.Y.Z (X.Y.Z-betaM)
* tag OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z
</pre>

* '''git tag -s OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z''' - create a signed tag for the given release; it is IMPORTANT so that anyone could check out exactly these sources anytime later; note that we might need to push another version later, see below for ''"Tag vs. Push"''

* '''./autogen.sh''' - this re-builds configure with the version in place; a distro must be specified eg. '''./autogen.sh --with-distro=GoOoLinux'''

* '''make dist''' - this builds the archive containing everything.

* '''md5sum ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz > ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz.md5''' - so that users can do at least the basic consistency check

* '''scp ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz* ooweb@seagull.dreamhost.com:~/download.go-oo.org/<MWS_DIR>/''' - uploads the tarball and the .md5 file for the right Master Work Space, eg. OOO310

* It's then customary to announce the release, see the template in ''doc/announce.txt'' - update all the ***s to the right versions, insert the contents of ''NEWS'', fire and forget.

* '''git pull -r''' - get the last changes from the remote repository to be able to push the changes; this might cause reordering of the git log, see below ''"Tag vs. Push"''

* '''git push --tags''' - push the changes, including the tag, to the remote repository

=== Tag vs. Push ===

IMPORTANT: You should always check out the tag or check the released tarball to make sure what changes are included.

We do the tag in the local git copy. We need to do '''git pull -r''' before '''git push --tags'''. It means that the recent changes in the remote repository will be moved before the last local changes. It means that there might be added some entries in the ''"git log"'' before the ''"Released ooo-build-X.Y.Z"'' entry. It means that the global ''"git log"'' does not mention correctly what changes are included in what release.

Note that the mess is not too big. There might appear only few extra changes close before the ''"Released ooo-build"'' entry. For example, a tag might include the changes ''ABCDEFGH''. The branch might include ''ABXYCDEFGH'' ,where ''A'' is the release commit, ''B'' is hotfix of a potential build breakage, ''CDEFGH'' are normal changes committed by anyone to the remote repository before the deadline, ''XY'' are changes committed into the remote repository after the deadline but before the end of the release process.

== Branching ==

''Please see the [http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/ooo-build/GettingIt#createbranch freedesktop.org wiki] for the authoritative info.''

When there's a particularly good reason for a branch, such as a MWS is moved to the maintenance mode and we want open master for further development, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* create the branch and anchor:
** '''git checkout -b ooo-build-X-Y-Z master''' - do the branch for OOo-X.Y.Z from master
** '''git tag -s OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR''' - this tags the current state so we can diff against it and see the branch specific changes
** modify the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>This is ooo-build-2-0-4 - the stable branch for the 2.0.4 release. If you want to build something cool, unstable, and risky, use master.</tt>
** '''git commit -a''' - commit the changes, please make sure you mention the branch creation in the commit log
** '''git push origin ooo-build-X-Y-Z:ooo-build-X-Y-Z''' - push the branch
** '''git push --tags''' - push the tag

* make changes specific for the original tree (master):
** '''git checkout master''' - get sources from the original tree
** if it is an important branch, such as for a minor OOo version, add a line to the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>ooo-build-X-Y-Z branch for X.Y.Z</tt>
** '''git commit -a''' - commit the changes, please make sure you mention the branch creation in the commit log
** '''git push''' - push the changes

Sample commit log:

<pre>
Branched for X.Y.Z.

OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR - the anchor tag,
ooo-build-2-0-4 - the branch.
</pre>

== Support for new MWS ==

When the upstream branches new MWS and we want to support it in ooo-build, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* first, it is better to clean ooo-build and remove support for all old and obsolete milestones; FIXME: it will be described somewhere else
*'''git pull -r''' - get the latest everything
*edit ''download.in'', mention the new tarball file name and URL in the array ''%SRC_URLS'', something like:
*:<tt> 'oox680-m.*' => '@MIRROR@/OOX680',</tt>
*edit ''patches/src680/apply''
**fix the ''OLDEST_SUPPORTED'' option; note that more MWSs can be supported, it might be something like:
**:<tt>OLDEST_SUPPORTED=src680-m181,ooe680-m1</tt>
**fix the conditions for the various sections; note that you must add condition for the new MWS everywhere where a condition for another MWS already exists; it might look like:
**:<tt>[ Fixes >= src680-m182 >= ooe680-m2 ]</tt>
*might want to use the new milestone by default, then update ''DEFAULT_TAG'' in ''configure'' in, it looks like:
*:<tt>DEFAULT_TAG=oox680-mY</tt>
*'''git commit -a''' - describe all changes in the commit message; it is usually enough to mention something like:
*:<pre>
*:Support for oox300.
*:
*:* download.in, patches/src680/apply: Support for oox680
*:* configure.in: Default to oox680-mY
*:</pre>
*'''git push'''
*it's then customary to announce this kind of change

== Support for final OOo version ==

When the upstream releases final version of a MWS, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* must check whether the final sources differ from the latest milestone; if the sources are the same, only symlink is made at go-oo.org/packages; new sources are created otherwise; the new tarball name is something like ''OOO_X_Y_Z''
* do all the steps as in case of [[ooo-build#Support for new MWS|support for new MWS]] with the following modifications:
** use the tarball name ''OOO_X_Y_Z'' instead of the MWS- and milestone-based name ''oox680-mY''
** if the sources are only symlinks to the lates milestone, hack ''bin/unpack'', so it creates the symlink to the unpacked sources; it might look like:
**:<pre>
**:if test -d oox680-mY -a ! -d OOO_X_Y_Z ; then
**: echo "Linking rcZ to X.Y.Z"
**: ln -sf oox680-mY OOO_X_Y_Z
**:fi
**:</pre>

== Remaining unsolved issue summary ==

A helpful summary of these is provided here in no particular order along with suggestions for improvement.
Many of these are mercifully easy to fix, and should be fixed soon.

=== source handling ===

ooo-build has a post-configure 'download' mechanism, whereby the relevant source archives will be automatically downloaded to your system having configured it, in response to your various options.

=== non-responsiveness / lack of leadership ===

Many ooo-build patches are ready for up-streaming but there is no / little response from up-stream. Worse there is the perception that taking leadership and actually doing something about merging fixes would be firmly opposed. Finally - even when maintainers are active, responsive & friendly - there is no agreed mechanism for blanket
approving fixes - or sub-types of trivial fixes, which thus tend to fester in IssueZilla.

At the time of writing ooo-build's patches are available here: http://go-oo.org/ooo-build/patches/src680/apply.

=== font substitution ===

Many vendors ship AGFA's propriatory metric-compatible fonts with OO.o - it is thus necessary to run several seds on the VCL.xcu [ further bloating this already gigantic messy beast ]. We also remove some of the more foolish & enthusiastic font-usage of eg. the metrically-extremely-strange bitstream font eg. <code>bin/font-munge.pl</code>

s/(Bitstream Vera Sans;.*)Albany;/Albany;$1/;
# add AMT fonts
s/Albany;/Albany AMT;Albany;/g;
s/albany;/albanyamt;albany;/g;

=== no 'UI' team ===

The up-stream UI team have come up with master-pieces of UI design such as the Yes/No dialog on

"Would you like to not continue saving in the original OpenOffice.org 2.0 format or perhaps switch to another format"

that takes 10 seconds to parse each time ( presumably since it's a recent feature - with a specification too ).

The rest of us mere-mortals know that the UI in OO.o is shockingly broken - and hence are eager to fix it
without being blocked & frustrated for weeks by those responsible for the current mess.

A number of the changes / patches in apply/ are blocked on 'user experience' feedback.

=== different defaults ===

It is self evident to ooo-build users that a slew of dialogs on 1st run is a painful mess; eg. if there are settings to migrate, don't shout about it - do it silently. Furthermore - the registration dialog looks tacky,
we disable both. We also alter a number of other defaults. cf. the last point - I'm optimistic that these will
~never get up-stream agreement.

=== bleeding-edgeness ===

There is a 'cool factor' to building the very latest things yourself; and helping solve problems with them.
It's nice to be able to see your changes have an effect & help others rapidly, eg. a fix being immediately
useful to other people. Of course - you can have too much of a good thing here but ...

=== Philosophical differences ===

==== compatibility ====

Up-stream believe that the most important data set to be compatible with is existing [[StarOffice]] / OO.o users.
ooo-build users believe that nearly all the world's data is stored in Microsoft Office format - hence we
sacrifice legacy support for better interop.
This is of course a continuum, up-stream are at the luny extreme of pushing back-compatibility regardless
of it's impact on interoperability, even in cases deliberately excluding useful interoperability improvements
on that basis. ooo-build appreciates backwards comaptibility, but is in favour of viewing core differences
that are non-interoperable as bugs not features.

==== process complexity ====

ooo-build users believe in programmer lead development, with strong peer review and user QA.
up-stream believe in process based development, with teams, consensus building, specification writing, test-instead-of-detailed-code-review-or-unit-testing, and all these 'Professional' pasttimes.
ooo-build users believe the OO.o we have today is broadly a product of these processes. Up-stream users
believe the previous sentence is a compliment.

==== cross-platform ====

ooo-build enables patch sub-setting, thus we include patches for features (eg. Mono integration) that are
most likely not well separated, and will break the Win32 build. Of course, for ooo-build these are not
enabled on Win32 thus causing no problem. This is an impediment to getting work up-stream. Hopefully
the 'experimental' process may help encourage good behavior here.

== Conclusion ==

If you read all that don't get depressed - these issues can all be fixed - many of them almost painlessly. We hope to shrink this page quickly.

[[Category: Development]]
[[Category:Build_System]]

File:Praha-Hradcany.jpg

2008-03-05T12:30:30Z

Pmladek:

This file is licensed under the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License]. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one.

Author: Stefan Bauer, http://www.ferras.at

GoOOCon 2008

2008-03-04T18:35:00Z

Pmladek: remove duplicit info about the public transport company

[[Category:Conferences]]

= Why Go-OO Conference 2008 Prague, (Czech Republic) ? =

While OOoCon is a great conference, in 2008 it will be [http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/cfl/vote.html held in Asia], which is likely to reduce the number of Europeans able to attend. Of course, developers still need to meet, talk, drink beer & so on - so, we're tacking a mini-meetup / hack-fest to the end of the Novell team meeting planned for next month.

[http://www.pis.cz/en/index.php Prague] is a great location - easy to get to in Europe, and a (compatively) low-cost location.

[[Image:Praha-Hradcany.jpg]]

= Schedule =

April 10th - arrive in the evening, meet up for dinner.
April 11th - ad-hoc presentations, hacking
evening drinks / meal.
April 12th, am: more of the same
pm: fun ropes course / team building; meal
April 13th - leave, or stay to enjoy historic Prague.

= Programme =

To be decided; there will be a network, so hacking in groups is entirely possible. Presentations on tangled pieces of the OO.o code-base, discussions of the merits (or otherwise) of 'boost', sessions on Emacs vs. Vi, git vs. svn, the internals of Calc's calculation engine, Impress' rendering model, Writer's layout system, improving the build-boy system etc. appreciated.

Hopefully we'll aim to have a broad selection of talks which together give a nice high-level overview of the internals of OpenOffice.org, the problems & what people are hacking on now. If you want to give a talk, mail your suggestions to [mailto:kendyNOSPM@suse.de Kendy], and/or CC [mailto:dev@lists.go-oo.org dev@lists.go-oo.org] for discussion - the more the merrier. We'll post a more formal program closer to the time.

= Logistics =
Everything you need to know to attend, print out, cover in marmalade & accidentally leave behind the sofa.

== Location ==

The SUSE Office, see
[http://www.mapy.cz/#x=133227936@y=136011808@z=15@mm=ZP@ax=133224320@ay=136013504@at=SUSE@ad=SUSE%20office@sa=s@st=s@ssq=Metro%20Ceskomoravska,%20Praha@sss=1@ssp=133217958_136009514_133230534_136019914 mapy.cz].

Address:

SUSE LINUX, s. r. o.
Lihovarská 1060/12
190 00 Prague 9
Czech Republic

== Travel ==

There are plenty of cheap flights available to Prague, from England, Italy, Switzerland & Germany ([http://www.easyjet.com EasyJet]), Ireland ([http://ryanair.com Ryanair]), and perhaps others (?).

You could use a bus, route 100, from the [http://www.pragueairport.co.uk/ Prague airport] to the metro station '''Zlicin'''. The fact that it's the last stop of the bus and a terminal station of the underground leaves very little room for any mistakes ;-)

From '''Zlicin''', go by underground directly to '''Ceskomoravska''', get out, and continue according to the
[http://www.mapy.cz/#x=133227936@y=136011808@z=15@mm=ZP@ax=133224320@ay=136013504@at=SUSE@ad=SUSE%20office@sa=s@st=s@ssq=Metro%20Ceskomoravska,%20Praha@sss=1@ssp=133217958_136009514_133230534_136019914 map].

== Prague public transport ==

The [http://www.dpp.cz/index.php?q=en Prague public transport system] is fully automated - you don't need to speak to anybody. The bus drivers, usually understand very little English, but definitely are not hostile to foreigners and try to understand.

You buy a 26 Kc (CZK) ticket at the airport, in a coin-slot ticket vending machine. If you don't have any coins, it should be possible to buy it at the information desk at the airport. If that doesn't work, you can buy it in a bus, when entering through the front door. It'll cost you a little bit more (30 Kc). The ticket is then valid for one hour, and for that time you can use any means of public transport available, no need to get transfer tickets or anything like that. You can be checked for the validity of the ticket during the journey by the public transport officers.

Once you have a ticket, you can enter or exit the bus by any door. The bus stops at every stop, no signaling to the driver is needed.
After getting on the bus, you need to mark the ticket in a ticket marking machine - one of several very noticeable yellow boxes with a
green arrow light in every bus.

If traveling by underground first, you mark the ticket at the entrance to the station.

More expensive tickets (also available) last longer, up to several days.

== Shelter ==

We recommend the [http://www.hotelcarol.com/ Hotel Carol] which is 1 block from the SUSE office: ~2 minutes walk even for a geriatric hacker. A double room for the duration is around Euro:250.

You might also try the [http://www.a1hotel.cz/en/main.html A1 hotel] which is two blocks from the SUSE office: ~5 minutes walk. A single bed rood from about Euro:30 per night.

The cheapest variant would be the [http://www.a1hotel.cz/en/main.html A1 hostel] or the [http://www.firmy.cz/detail/313656-zbyhnev-jelinek-hotel-sunshine-praha-liben.html Hotel Sunshine]. It is not easy to recommend them, though ;-)

== Contact ==

Email: Lucie Louzecka <llouzecka@suse.cz>
Phone: +420 775 928 867

= Politics =

To make the event even more accessible, there will be a '''ban''' on talks / panel discussion of the form: ''"Sun screwed me over"'' or ''"Kill the SCA today"''. In addition we are encouraging primarily hackers to attend, ie. this is a pure developers meeting, with a horribly technical agenda: we promise to make sure you won't enjoy it if you're not writing code. In addition no talks of the form ''"ODF solves the problems of world hunger"'' or ''"OpenXML - hell-spawn in text form"'' will be tolerated.

= Ropes Course =

We will also get some more adrenaline in the [http://www.lanovecentrum.cz/eng/homepage.php rope center PROUD]. No particular climbing ability required, though decent footware is essential, and non-flismy clothing helpful. Failing that, the ability to laugh at others would be helpful.

[[Image:ropes.jpg]]

GoOOCon 2008

2008-03-04T18:27:57Z

Pmladek: updated maps and added cheeper hotels

[[Category:Conferences]]

= Why Go-OO Conference 2008 Prague, (Czech Republic) ? =

While OOoCon is a great conference, in 2008 it will be [http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/cfl/vote.html held in Asia], which is likely to reduce the number of Europeans able to attend. Of course, developers still need to meet, talk, drink beer & so on - so, we're tacking a mini-meetup / hack-fest to the end of the Novell team meeting planned for next month.

[http://www.pis.cz/en/index.php Prague] is a great location - easy to get to in Europe, and a (compatively) low-cost location.

[[Image:Praha-Hradcany.jpg]]

= Schedule =

April 10th - arrive in the evening, meet up for dinner.
April 11th - ad-hoc presentations, hacking
evening drinks / meal.
April 12th, am: more of the same
pm: fun ropes course / team building; meal
April 13th - leave, or stay to enjoy historic Prague.

= Programme =

To be decided; there will be a network, so hacking in groups is entirely possible. Presentations on tangled pieces of the OO.o code-base, discussions of the merits (or otherwise) of 'boost', sessions on Emacs vs. Vi, git vs. svn, the internals of Calc's calculation engine, Impress' rendering model, Writer's layout system, improving the build-boy system etc. appreciated.

Hopefully we'll aim to have a broad selection of talks which together give a nice high-level overview of the internals of OpenOffice.org, the problems & what people are hacking on now. If you want to give a talk, mail your suggestions to [mailto:kendyNOSPM@suse.de Kendy], and/or CC [mailto:dev@lists.go-oo.org dev@lists.go-oo.org] for discussion - the more the merrier. We'll post a more formal program closer to the time.

= Logistics =
Everything you need to know to attend, print out, cover in marmalade & accidentally leave behind the sofa.

== Location ==

The SUSE Office, see
[http://www.mapy.cz/#x=133227936@y=136011808@z=15@mm=ZP@ax=133224320@ay=136013504@at=SUSE@ad=SUSE%20office@sa=s@st=s@ssq=Metro%20Ceskomoravska,%20Praha@sss=1@ssp=133217958_136009514_133230534_136019914 mapy.cz].

Address:

SUSE LINUX, s. r. o.
Lihovarská 1060/12
190 00 Prague 9
Czech Republic

== Travel ==

There are plenty of cheap flights available to Prague, from England, Italy, Switzerland & Germany ([http://www.easyjet.com EasyJet]), Ireland ([http://ryanair.com Ryanair]), and perhaps others (?).

You could use a bus, route 100, from the [http://www.pragueairport.co.uk/ Prague airport] to the metro station '''Zlicin'''. The fact that it's the last stop of the bus and a terminal station of the underground leaves very little room for any mistakes ;-)

From '''Zlicin''', go by underground directly to '''Ceskomoravska''', get out, and continue according to the
[http://www.mapy.cz/#x=133227936@y=136011808@z=15@mm=ZP@ax=133224320@ay=136013504@at=SUSE@ad=SUSE%20office@sa=s@st=s@ssq=Metro%20Ceskomoravska,%20Praha@sss=1@ssp=133217958_136009514_133230534_136019914 map].

== Prague public transport ==

The [http://www.dpp.cz/index.php?q=en Prague public transport system] is fully automated - you don't need to speak to anybody. The bus drivers, usually understand very little English, but definitely are not hostile to foreigners and try to understand.

You buy a 26 Kc (CZK) ticket at the airport, in a coin-slot ticket vending machine. If you don't have any coins, it should be possible to buy it at the information desk at the airport. If that doesn't work, you can buy it in a bus, when entering through the front door. It'll cost you a little bit more (30 Kc). The ticket is then valid for one hour, and for that time you can use any means of public transport available, no need to get transfer tickets or anything like that. You can be checked for the validity of the ticket during the journey by the public transport officers.

Once you have a ticket, you can enter or exit the bus by any door. The bus stops at every stop, no signaling to the driver is needed.
After getting on the bus, you need to mark the ticket in a ticket marking machine - one of several very noticeable yellow boxes with a
green arrow light in every bus.

If traveling by underground first, you mark the ticket at the entrance to the station.

More expensive tickets (also available) last longer, up to several days.

For more information see the Prague Public Transport Company pages.

== Shelter ==

We recommend the [http://www.hotelcarol.com/ Hotel Carol] which is 1 block from the SUSE office: ~2 minutes walk even for a geriatric hacker. A double room for the duration is around Euro:250.

You might also try the [http://www.a1hotel.cz/en/main.html A1 hotel] which is two blocks from the SUSE office: ~5 minutes walk. A single bed rood from about Euro:30 per night.

The cheapest variant would be the [http://www.a1hotel.cz/en/main.html A1 hostel] or the [http://www.firmy.cz/detail/313656-zbyhnev-jelinek-hotel-sunshine-praha-liben.html Hotel Sunshine]. It is not easy to recommend them, though ;-)

== Contact ==

Email: Lucie Louzecka <llouzecka@suse.cz>
Phone: +420 775 928 867

= Politics =

To make the event even more accessible, there will be a '''ban''' on talks / panel discussion of the form: ''"Sun screwed me over"'' or ''"Kill the SCA today"''. In addition we are encouraging primarily hackers to attend, ie. this is a pure developers meeting, with a horribly technical agenda: we promise to make sure you won't enjoy it if you're not writing code. In addition no talks of the form ''"ODF solves the problems of world hunger"'' or ''"OpenXML - hell-spawn in text form"'' will be tolerated.

= Ropes Course =

We will also get some more adrenaline in the [http://www.lanovecentrum.cz/eng/homepage.php rope center PROUD]. No particular climbing ability required, though decent footware is essential, and non-flismy clothing helpful. Failing that, the ability to laugh at others would be helpful.

[[Image:ropes.jpg]]

GoOOCon 2008

2008-03-04T17:21:37Z

Pmladek: added more details about Prague, transport, ...

[[Category:Conferences]]

= Why Go-OO Conference 2008 Prague, (Czech Republic) ? =

While OOoCon is a great conference, in 2008 it will be [http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/cfl/vote.html held in Asia], which is likely to reduce the number of Europeans able to attend. Of course, developers still need to meet, talk, drink beer & so on - so, we're tacking a mini-meetup / hack-fest to the end of the Novell team meeting planned for next month.

[http://www.pis.cz/en/index.php Prague] is a great location - easy to get to in Europe, and a (compatively) low-cost location.

[[Image:Praha-Hradcany.jpg]]

= Schedule =

April 10th - arrive in the evening, meet up for dinner.
April 11th - ad-hoc presentations, hacking
evening drinks / meal.
April 12th, am: more of the same
pm: fun ropes course / team building; meal
April 13th - leave, or stay to enjoy historic Prague.

= Programme =

To be decided; there will be a network, so hacking in groups is entirely possible. Presentations on tangled pieces of the OO.o code-base, discussions of the merits (or otherwise) of 'boost', sessions on Emacs vs. Vi, the internals of Calc's calculation engine, Impress' rendering model, Writer's layout system, improving the build-boy system etc. appreciated.

Hopefully we'll aim to have a broad selection of talks which together give a nice high-level overview of the internals of OpenOffice.org, the problems & what people are hacking on now. If you want to give a talk, mail your suggestions to [mailto:dev@lists.go-oo.org dev@lists.go-oo.org] - the more the merrier.

= Logistics =
Everything you need to know to attend, print out, cover in marmalade & accidentally leave behind the sofa.

== Location ==

The SUSE Office in Prague
[http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=&daddr=50.104912,14.486192&mra=mi&mrsp=0&sz=17&sll=50.105235,14.486772&sspn=0.005526,0.013046&ie=UTF8&z=17 Google map].

Address:

SUSE LINUX, s. r. o.
Lihovarská 1060/12
190 00 Prague 9
Czech Republic

== Travel ==

There are plenty of cheap flights available to Prague, from England, Italy, Switzerland & Germany ([http://www.easyjet.com EasyJet]), Ireland ([http://ryanair.com Ryanair]), and perhaps others (?).

You are changing from bus to underground on "Zlicin". The fact that it's the last stop of the bus and a terminal station of the
underground leaves very little room for any mistakes ;-)

From "Zlicin", go by underground directly to "Ceskomoravska", get out, and continue according to the map:

[[Image:suse-map.jpg|200px|center]]

== Prague public transport ==

The [http://www.dpp.cz/index.php?q=en Prague public transport system] is fully automated - you don't need to speak to anybody. The bus drivers, usually understand very little English, but definitely are not hostile to foreigners and try to understand.

You buy a 26 Kc (CZK) ticket at the airport, in a coin-slot ticket vending machine. If you don't have any coins, it should be possible to buy it at the information desk at the airport. If that doesn't work, you can buy it in a bus, when entering through the front door. It'll cost you a little bit more (30 Kc). The ticket is then valid for one hour, and for that time you can use any means of public transport available, no need to get transfer tickets or anything like that. You can be checked for the validity of the ticket during the journey by the public transport officers.

Once you have a ticket, you can enter or exit the bus by any door. The bus stops at every stop, no signaling to the driver is needed.
After getting on the bus, you need to mark the ticket in a ticket marking machine - one of several very noticeable yellow boxes with a
green arrow light in every bus.

If traveling by underground first, you mark the ticket at the entrance to the station.

More expensive tickets (also available) last longer, up to several days.

For more information see the Prague Public Transport Company pages.

== Shelter ==

We recommend the [http://www.hotelcarol.com/ Hotel Carol] which is 1 block from the SUSE office: ~2 minutes walk even for a geriatric hacker. A double room for the duration is around Euro:250.

== Contact ==

Email: Lucie Louzecka <llouzecka@suse.cz>
Phone: +420 775 928 867

= Politics =

To make the event even more accessible, there will be a '''ban''' on talks / panel discussion of the form: ''"Sun screwed me over"'' or ''"Kill the SCA today"''. In addition we are encouraging primarily hackers to attend, ie. this is a pure developers meeting, with a horribly technical agenda: we promise to make sure you won't enjoy it if you're not writing code. In addition no talks of the form ''"ODF solves the problems of world hunger"'' or ''"OpenXML - hell-spawn in text form"'' will be tolerated.

= Ropes Course =

We will also get some more adrenaline in the [http://www.lanovecentrum.cz/eng/homepage.php rope center PROUD]. No particular climbing ability required, though decent footware is essential, and non-flismy clothing helpful. Failing that, the ability to laugh at others would be helpful.

[[Image:ropes.jpg]]

File:Praha-Hradcany.jpg

2008-03-04T17:08:20Z

Pmladek:

GoOOCon 2008

2008-03-04T16:26:12Z

Pmladek: update infor about rope course

File:Ropes.jpg

2008-03-04T15:29:11Z

Pmladek:

Ooo-build

2007-11-12T13:31:19Z

Pmladek: New sections: Adding Patch, Commiting a Change

This collection of patches, artwork and build infrastructure exists solely as a reflection of the many problems encouraging reasonably responsive change up-stream. The process of change is painful for any organisation, the larger the more painful. However - the size of the problem is no excuse to not try; hence the evenutal aim is to remove the need for ooo-build by incrementally fixing the various problems.

== About ooo-build ==

ooo-build arose from acute frustration with the bad-old days of OOo process before the [[CWS|Child Workspace]] concept was introduced, it is
also fueled by a non-performant [[Infrastructure_Problems#CVS|CVS server]].

* [[ooo-build/bin]] - A description of the tools in bin/

== Checking out ==
To check out ooo-build from the gnome subversion repository, run one of the following in the command line:

<code>[fundamental,N]
svn co svn://svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build/trunk ooo-build (trunk)
svn co svn://svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build/branches/ooo-build-2-2 ooo-build (ooo-build-2-2 branch)
svn co svn://svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build/branches/ooo-build-2-1 ooo-build (ooo-build-2-1 branch)

svn co svn+ssh://[your gnome account]@svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build/trunk ooo-build (trunk via ssh tunnel)
</code>

== Making a patch on a set of files ==
You can use git locally and it's really great for larger tasks.

make patch.apply
cd build/current
git init
echo unxlng*.pro > sc/.gitignore
git add sc
git commit

And from now on you can locally commit to sc (git commit -a) until you are happy.
To generate the patch, just
git diff | sed 's#^$---\|+++$ [ab]/#\1 #'

To remove the git tracking :
rm -rf .git

== Adding Patch ==

One of the main ooo-build features is the ability to apply patches against the upstream sources. A patch can be added the following way:

* propose a patch file name:
** the file suffix ''.diff'' is required
** the file name ''<theme>-short-fix-description.diff'' is suggested when there are more thematic patches, e.g. ''warnigns'', ''unittesting'', ''speed'' that are not put in any thematic directory
** the file name ''<module>-short-fix-description.diff'' is suggested when the patch modifies only one source ''module'', e'g' ''vcl'', ''svx'', ''sd''
** the file name cws-<name> should be used for CWS backports
** the file name ''short-fix-description.diff'' is enough otherwise
* create the patch in the format to be applied in the top source directory with ''-P0'', see the sample content:
*:<pre>
*:--- jvmfwk/plugins/sunmajor/pluginlib/gnujre.cxx.old 2007-08-10 17:32:26.0000
*:+++ jvmfwk/plugins/sunmajor/pluginlib/gnujre.cxx 2007-08-16 22:40:42.0000
*:@@ -78,6 +78,7 @@ char const* const* GnuInfo::getJavaExePa
*:...
*:</pre>
*put the patch below ''ooo-build/patches/<group>''; most patches are located in the MWS specific directory. Some bigger groups of patches have their own thematic directory. For example:
*:<pre>
*:patches/src680/sc-save-split-view.diff
*:patches/src680/warning-return-values-filter.diff
*:
*:patches/scsolver/scsolver-source-inc-basedlg-hxx.diff
*:patches/scsolver/scsolver-source-inc-baselistener-hxx.diff
*:</pre>
* mention the patch in the ''apply'' file:
**ooo-build allows to sort the patches into groups and apply them conditionaly '''by distributions'''. Therefore, each patch has to be mentioned in the '''right section''' in the ''apply'' file. This file is usually located in the MWS-specific directory, e.g. ''patches/src680/apply''.
**the patch entry might look like:
**: <pre>
**: [ CalcFixes ]
**:
**: # Support Hungarian localized keywords for CELL and INFO functions.
**: sc-celltrans-hungarian-keywords.diff, i#80299, kohei
**: # Fix saving split-view information on 64-bit platforms.
**: sc-save-split-view.diff, n#235131, i#81936, jonp</pre>
**please do not forget to mention the '''issue numbers''' and the responsible '''developer name'''
**note that the patches are applied in the order in which they are listed in the apply file. If there are some conflicts between the patches, it might be necessary to '''split a section''', for example:
**:<pre>
**: [ Fixes ]
**:
**: # make unzip command not ask when overwriting files
**: unzip-command.diff, i#81087, fridrich
**:
**: [ CalcFixes ]
**:
**: #fix import filter for userforms with calc specific data ( rowsource )
**: svx-filter-userform-rowsource.diff, i#73753
**:
**:[ Fixes ]
**:
**: # edit fields text displaying
**: svx-sdrobjeditview-update-edit-area.diff, n#305205, rodo</pre>

== Committing a Change ==

The following process describes how to commit any change to the ooo-build:

* '''svn up''' - get the latest everything
* do your changes
* create a changelog entry:
** list all the modified files; hint: use the command '''svn stat'''
** add a good description of the changes
** mention the related issue or bug numbers
** for example, it might look like:
**:<pre>
**:2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>
**:
**: * patches/src680/xmlhelp-work-with-symlinks.diff, patches/src680/apply:
**: display help correctly even when the files are symlinked, i#81138
**:</pre>
* '''svn up''' - if it took some more time to finish the changes, there is a high chance that anybody else committed another change and it might be necessary to resolve conflicts
* '''svn stat''' - it is a good practice to double check that only the expected files are modified
* '''svn diff''' - it is a good practice to double check all changes, especially after resolving some conflicts
* '''svn commit''' - use the same text for SVN changelog that was used for the ''Changelog'' file

== Releasing ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a release, such as a distro needs a stable base or we want to do something potentially
disruptive, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* '''svn up''' - get the latest everything

* Read back through the ''ChangeLog'' and update the ''NEWS'' file for the release, summarizing and attributing the changes.

* edit ''configure.in'', bump the version in the '''AC_INIT''' line, incrementing the minor version eg. '''AC_INIT(ooo-build, X.Y.Z)'''

* Add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Version X.Y.Z
</pre>

* '''svn commit''' - so what's there is what's there. If there was a collision you get to loop to the first stage here, but don't re-increment the number.

* '''svn -r <id> copy svn+ssh://<user>@svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build/<tree>/ svn+ssh://<user>@svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build/tags/OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z''' - this creates a copy of the current state so we can reproduce the build at any time and easily diff between releases. The '''id''' is the revision number printed when the '''commit''' command finishes, e.g. ''10364''. The '''tree''' is either ''trunk'' or ''branches/ooo-build-M-N''.

* '''./autogen.sh''' - this re-builds configure with the version in place; a distro must be specified eg. '''./autogen.sh --with-distro=GoOoLinux'''

* '''make dist''' - this builds the archive containing everything.

* '''md5sum ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz > ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz.md5''' - so that users can do at least the basic consistency check

* '''scp ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz* ooweb@seagull.dreamhost.com:~/download.go-oo.org/<MWS_DIR>/''' - uploads the tarball and the .md5 file for the right Master Work Space, eg. SRC680

* It's then customary to announce the release, see the template in ''doc/announce.txt'' - update all the ***s to the right versions, insert the contents of ''NEWS'', fire and forget.

== Branching ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a branch, such as a MWS is moved to the maintenace mode and we want open TRUNK for further development, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* create the branch and anchor copies:
** '''svn copy svn+ssh://<user>@svn.gnome.org/svn/tags/OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z svn+ssh://<user>@svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build/branches/ooo-build-M-N''' - do the branch for OOo-M.N from a previous release of ooo-build-X.Y.Z
** '''svn copy svn+ssh://<user>@svn.gnome.org/svn/tags/branches/ooo-build-M-N svn+ssh://<user>@svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build/tags/OOO-BUILD-M-K-ANCHOR''' - this creates a copy of the current state so we can diff against it and see the branch specific changes
* make changes specific for the original tree (TRUNK):
** '''svn co svn+ssh://<user>@svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build/<tree>/ ooo-build''' - get sources from the original tree, either from ''trunk'' or ''branches/ooo-build-M-N''.
** if it is an important branch, such as for a minor OOo version, add a line to the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>ooo-build-X-Y-Z branch for X.Y.Z</tt>
** add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow. Of course, if you branched an older tag, you must put the comment into the right context. See below for a sample comment.
** '''svn commit'''
* make changes specific for the branch:
** '''svn co svn+ssh://<user>@svn.gnome.org/svn/ooo-build/branches/ooo-build-M-N ooo-build-M-N''' - get sources from the branch
** modify the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>This is ooo-build-2-0-4 - the stable branch for the 2.0.4 release. If you want to build something cool, unstable, and risky, use trunk.</tt>
** add the same comment to the ''ChangeLog'' as in the original tree
** '''svn commit'''
* it's then customary to announce the release

Sample comment:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Branched for X.Y.Z:
OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR - the anchor tag,
ooo-build-2-0-4 - the branch.
</pre>

== Support for new MWS ==

When the upstream branches new MWS and we want to support it in ooo-build, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* first, it is better to clean ooo-build and remove support for all old and obsolete milestones; FIXME: it will be described somewhere else
*'''svn up''' - get the latest everything
*edit ''download.in'', mention the new tarball file name and URL in the array ''%SRC_URLS'', something like:
*:<tt> 'oox680-m.*' => '@MIRROR@/OOX680',</tt>
*edit ''patches/src680/apply''
**fix the ''OLDEST_SUPPORTED'' option; note that more MWSs can be supported, it might be something like:
**:<tt>OLDEST_SUPPORTED=src680-m181,ooe680-m1</tt>
**fix the conditions for the various sections; note that you must add condition for the new MWS everywhere where a condition for another MWS already exists; it might look like:
**:<tt>[ Fixes >= src680-m182 >= ooe680-m2 ]</tt>
*might want to use the new milestone by default, then update ''DEFAULT_TAG'' in ''configure'' in, it looks like:
*:<tt>DEFAULT_TAG=oox680-mY</tt>
*describe all changes in ''ChangeLog''; it is usually enough to mention something like:
*:<pre>
*:2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>
*:
*: * configure.in, download.in, patches/src680/apply: support for oox680
*: * configure.in: Default to oox680-mY
*:</pre>
*'''svn commit'''
*it's then customary to announce this kind of change

== Support for final OOo version ==

When the upstream releases final version of a MWS, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* must check whether the final sources differ from the latest milestone; if the sources are the same, only symlink is made at go-oo.org/packages; new sources are created otherwise; the new tarball name is something like ''OOO_X_Y_Z''
* do all the steps as in case of [[ooo-build#Support for new MWS|support for new MWS]] with the following modifications:
** use the tarball name ''OOO_X_Y_Z'' instead of the MWS- and milestone-based name ''oox680-mY''
** if the sources are only symlinks to the lates milestone, hack ''bin/unpack'', so it creates the symlink to the unpacked sources; it might look like:
**:<pre>
**:if test -d oox680-mY -a ! -d OOO_X_Y_Z ; then
**: echo "Linking rcZ to X.Y.Z"
**: ln -sf oox680-mY OOO_X_Y_Z
**:fi
**:</pre>

== Remaining unsolved issue summary ==

A helpful summary of these is provided here in no particular order along with suggestions for improvement.
Many of these are mercifully easy to fix, and should be fixed soon.

=== source handling ===

ooo-build has a post-configure 'download' mechanism, whereby the relevant source archives will be automatically downloaded to your system having configured it, in response to your various options.

=== non-responsiveness / lack of leadership ===

Many ooo-build patches are ready for up-streaming but there is no / little response from up-stream. Worse there is the perception that taking leadership and actually doing something about merging fixes would be firmly opposed. Finally - even when maintainers are active, responsive & friendly - there is no agreed mechanism for blanket
approving fixes - or sub-types of trivial fixes, which thus tend to fester in IssueZilla.

At the time of writing ooo-build's patches are available here: http://go-oo.org/ooo-build/patches/src680/apply.

=== font substitution ===

Many vendors ship AGFA's propriatory metric-compatible fonts with OO.o - it is thus necessary to run several seds on the VCL.xcu [ further bloating this already gigantic messy beast ]. We also remove some of the more foolish & enthusiastic font-usage of eg. the metrically-extremely-strange bitstream font eg. <code>bin/font-munge.pl</code>

s/(Bitstream Vera Sans;.*)Albany;/Albany;$1/;
# add AMT fonts
s/Albany;/Albany AMT;Albany;/g;
s/albany;/albanyamt;albany;/g;

=== no 'UI' team ===

The up-stream UI team have come up with master-pieces of UI design such as the Yes/No dialog on

"Would you like to not continue saving in the original OpenOffice.org 2.0 format or perhaps switch to another format"

that takes 10 seconds to parse each time ( presumably since it's a recent feature - with a specification too ).

The rest of us mere-mortals know that the OO.o is shockingly broken - and hence are eager to fix it
without being blocked & frustrated for weeks by those responsible for the current mess.

A number of the changes / patches in apply/ are blocked on 'user experience' feedback.

=== different defaults ===

It is self evident to ooo-build users that a slew of dialogs on 1st run is a painful mess; eg. if there are settings to migrate, don't shout about it - do it silently. Furthermore - the registration dialog looks tacky,
we disable both. We also alter a number of other defaults. cf. the last point - I'm optimistic that these will
~never get up-stream agreement.

=== bleeding-edgeness ===

There is a 'cool factor' to building the very latest things yourself; and helping solve problems with them.
It's nice to be able to see your changes have an effect & help others rapidly, eg. a fix being immediately
useful to other people. Of course - you can have too much of a good thing here but ...

=== Philosophical differences ===

==== compatibility ====

Up-stream believe that the most important data set to be compatible with is existing [[StarOffice]] / OO.o users.
ooo-build users believe that nearly all the world's data is stored in Microsoft Office format - hence we
sacrifice legacy support for better interop.
This is of course a continuum, up-stream are at the luny extreme of pushing back-compatibility regardless
of it's impact on interoperability, even in cases deliberately excluding useful interoperability improvements
on that basis. ooo-build appreciates backwards comaptibility, but is in favour of viewing core differences
that are non-interoperable as bugs not features.

==== process complexity ====

ooo-build users believe in programmer lead development, with strong peer review and user QA.
up-stream believe in process based development, with teams, consensus building, specification writing, test-instead-of-detailed-code-review-or-unit-testing, and all these 'Professional' pasttimes.
ooo-build users believe the OO.o we have today is broadly a product of these processes. Up-stream users
believe the previous sentence is a compliment.

==== cross-platform ====

ooo-build enables patch sub-setting, thus we include patches for features (eg. Mono integration) that are
most likely not well separated, and will break the Win32 build. Of course, for ooo-build these are not
enabled on Win32 thus causing no problem. This is an impediment to getting work up-stream. Hopefully
the 'experimental' process may help encourage good behavior here.

== Conclusion ==

If you read all that don't get depressed - these issues can all be fixed - many of them almost painlessly. We hope to shrink this page quickly.

[[Category: Development]]

Ooo-build

2007-11-09T17:12:00Z

Pmladek: update the releasing, branching, support for new MWS processes for SVN and new Go-oo site

OpenSUSE Build Instructions

2007-11-09T13:10:31Z

Pmladek: updated URLs and cleaned up

Ooo-build

2006-12-15T18:37:00Z

Pmladek: /* Support for final OOo version */

This collection of patches, artwork and build infrastructure exists solely as a reflection of the many problems encouraging reasonably responsive change up-stream. The process of change is painful for any organisation, the larger the more painful. However - the size of the problem is no excuse to not try; hence the evenutal aim is to remove the need for ooo-build by incrementally fixing the various problems.

== About ooo-build ==

ooo-build arose from acute frustration with the bad-old days of OOo process before the [[CWS|Child Workspace]] concept was introduced, it is
also fueled by a non-performant [[Infrastructure_Problems#CVS|CVS server]].

* [[ooo-build/bin]] - A description of the tools in bin/

== Building ==

FIXME

== Fixing ==

FIXME
=== Sample simple fixes ===

==== Win32 / configure auto-detection ====

We have a nice perl script 'oowintool' that does a rather better job of auto-detecting various system tools than up-stream, we should integrate it there - it makes the common case much easier. cf. the last point though.

==== branding / artwork / splash bits ====

Many of the ooo-build patches are simply branding changes for other distros. Getting that up-stream plus a combination of selectable 'experimental' features would prolly remove the usefulness of ooo-build substantially
for these people. Altenatively perhaps good docs and a <code>--with-splash=/tmp/foo.png --with-logo=/tmp/baa.bmp</code> might work nicely.

==== faster 1st time (packagers/developers) build ====

Dependency generation takes a huge chunk of CPU time - simply detecting a pristine build & exporting 'nodep=1' trivially saves a chunk of time - should get that up-stream.

==== easier developer experience ====

Trivial, built-in, automated use of the system malloc allocator checker (via linkoo & source ooenv), also - by default disabling the (incredibly annoying) 'recover from crash' dialog stuff via a similar trivial environment variable patch: i#54275.

== Releasing ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a release, such as a distro needs a stable base or we want to do something potentially
disruptive, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* '''cvs update''' - get the latest everything

* Read back through the ''ChangeLog'' and update the ''NEWS'' file for the release, summarizing and attributing the changes.

* edit ''configure.in'', bump the version in the '''AC_INIT''' line, incrementing the minor version eg. '''AC_INIT(ooo-build, X.Y.Z)'''

* Add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Version X.Y.Z
</pre>

* '''./autogen.sh''' - this re-builds configure with the version in place; a distro must be specified eg. '''./autogen.sh --with-distro=SUSE'''

* '''make dist''' - this builds the archive containing everything.

* '''cvs commit''' - so what's there is what's there. If there was a collision you get to loop to the first stage here, but don't re-increment the number.

* '''cvs -z3 tag OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z''' - this leaves a static tag so we can reproduce the build at any time and easily diff between releases.

* '''md5sum ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz > ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz.md5''' - so that users can do at least the basic consistency check

* '''scp ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz* ooo@go-oo.org:/var/www/packages/<MWS_DIR>/''' - uploads the tarball and the .md5 file for the right Master Work Space, eg. SRC680

* It's then customary to announce the release, see the template in ''doc/announce.txt'' - update all the ***s to the right versions, insert the contents of ''NEWS'', fire and forget.

== Branching ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a branch, such as a MWS is moved to the maintenace mode and we want open HEAD for further development, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* create the tags:
** '''cvs update''' or '''cvs update -r OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z'''- get the latest everything or a tagged sources
** '''cvs -z3 tag -b ooo-build-X-Y-Z''' - do the branch
** '''cvs tag OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR''' - this leaves a static tag so we can diff against it and see the branch specific changes
* make changes specific for the original tree (HEAD):
** '''cvs co ooo-build''' - get sources from the original tree
** if it is an important branch, such as for a minor OOo version, add a line to the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>ooo-build-X-Y-Z branch for X.Y.Z</tt>
** add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow. Of course, if you branched an older tag, you must put the comment into the right context. See below for a sample comment.
** '''cvs commit'''
* make changes specific for the branch:
** '''cvs co -r ooo-build-X-Y-Z''' - get sources from the branch
** modify the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>This is ooo-build-2-0-4 - the stable branch for the 2.0.4 release. If you want to build something cool, unstable, and risky, use HEAD.</tt>
** add the same comment to the ''ChangeLog'' as in the original tree
** '''cvs commit'''
* it's then customary to announce the release

Sample comment:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Branched for X.Y.Z:
OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR - the anchor tag,
ooo-build-2-0-4 - the branch.
</pre>

== Support for new MWS ==

When the upstream branches new MWS and we want to support it in ooo-build, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* first, it is better to clean ooo-build and remove support for all old and obsolete milestones; FIXME: it will be described somewhere else
*'''cvs update''' - get the latest everything
*edit ''download.in'', mention the new tarball file name and URL in the array ''%SRC_URLS'', something like:
*:<tt> 'oox680-m.*' => '@MIRROR@/OOX680',</tt>
*edit ''patches/src680/apply''
**fix the ''OLDEST_SUPPORTED'' option; note that more MWSs can be supported, it might be something like:
**:<tt>OLDEST_SUPPORTED=src680-m181,ooe680-m1</tt>
**fix the conditions for the various sections; note that you must add condition for the new MWS everywhere where a condition for another MWS already exists; it might look like:
**:<tt>[ Fixes >= src680-m182 >= ooe680-m2 ]</tt>
*might want to use the new milestone by default, then update ''DEFAULT_TAG'' in ''configure'' in, it looks like:
*:<tt>DEFAULT_TAG=oox680-mY</tt>
*describe all changes in ''ChangeLog''; it is usually enough to mention something like:
*:<pre>
*:2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>
*:
*: * configure.in, download.in, patches/src680/apply: support for oox680
*: * configure.in: Default to oox680-mY
*:</pre>
*'''cvs commit'''
*it's then customary to announce this kind of change

== Support for final OOo version ==

When the upstream releases final version of a MWS, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* must check whether the final sources differ from the latest milestone; if the sources are the same, only symlink is made at go-oo.org/packages; new sources are created otherwise; the new tarball name is something like ''OOO_X_Y_Z''
* do all the steps as in case of [[ooo-build#Support for new MWS|support for new MWS]] with the following modifications:
** use the tarball name ''OOO_X_Y_Z'' instead of the MWS- and milestone-based name ''oox680-mY''
** if the sources are only symlinks to the lates milestone, hack ''bin/unpack'', so it creates the symlink to the unpacked sources; it might look like:
**:<pre>
**:if test -d oox680-mY -a ! -d OOO_X_Y_Z ; then
**: echo "Linking rcZ to X.Y.Z"
**: ln -sf oox680-mY OOO_X_Y_Z
**:fi
**:</pre>

== Remaining unsolved issue summary ==

A helpful summary of these is provided here in no particular order along with suggestions for improvement.
Many of these are mercifully easy to fix, and should be fixed soon.

=== source handling ===

==== src packaging ====

We have habitually split the source into several pieces to aid downloading. The process of achieving this is codified in a
simple shell-script [[http://go-oo.org/ooo-build/bin/src-pack here]]. It is of course necessary to have source archives that include the CVS directories & information, (or perhaps split that out into another package - but yet make it available) - such that developers can easily 'cvs diff -u' to extract their changes, and of course tinderbox slaves can base off these archives.

==== src download ====

ooo-build has a post-configure 'download' mechanism, whereby the relevant source archives will be automatically downloaded to your system having configured it, in response to your various options.

=== cvs slowness ===

It can take multiple hours to tag (once) the full up-stream CVS; this is not conducive to some of the more funky
'nested workspace' ideas based on the [[CWS]] tooling becoming a reality. Adding large modules to a cws currently
takes way too long. Interestingly, it's can be quicker to do a $ cvs diff, create a new cws and apply the patch
than re-sync a cws. It also helps to have the diff in hand in case the cws tools fail mid-flow, since that has been known to loose data.
A 'diff -u' by contrast, or an anonymous diff from cvs - combined with ooo-build's intelligent patch application
process often results in an extremely fast development cycle unincumbered by low performance [[Infrastructure_Problems#CVS|CVS server]].

=== compile fragility ===

To use up-stream OO.o it is not possible to use HEAD, due to multiple concurrent (slow) incomplete merges constantly in progress, instead one must use a milestone release. Unfortunately milestone releases build on a small number of tested setups - but these typically do not include out-of-the-box, stock Linux distributions
such as OpenSUSE, Fedora, Debian etc. Thus from day-1 it is necessary to patch a milestone to get it to build
at all. Issues such as different gcc versions, different platform libraries etc. tend to cause this.
However - there is no central place where such patches can be collected to avoid constant duplication of effort,
apart from ooo-build.

It is hoped a [[Tinderbox Setup | tinderbox]] server with many disparate slaves building the CWS in the 'Ready for QA' state might
help fix this problem in future.

=== interlocking changes ===

While a cws is waiting to be integrated / going through QA - it is entirely possible that another feature
requires the functionality it provides; furthermore there is no easy way to include multiple features that we
judge to be ready, yet would not pass up-stream QA (on multiple platforms etc.) into our builds. Thus ooo-build
becomes a place to test multiple new features concurrently. It is hoped that the new experimental CWS
regimen may help fix this problem & accelerate up-streaming of patches.

=== non-responsiveness / lack of leadership ===

Many ooo-build patches are ready for up-streaming but there is no / little response from up-stream. Worse there is the perception that taking leadership and actually doing something about merging fixes would be firmly opposed. Finally - even when maintainers are active, responsive & friendly - there is no agreed mechanism for blanket
approving fixes - or sub-types of trivial fixes, which thus tend to fester in IssueZilla.

At the time of writing ooo-build's patches are available here: http://go-oo.org/ooo-build/patches/src680/apply.

FIXME - add some humerous details here / bug links etc.

=== symbol font ===

ooo-build contains a substantially improved OpenSymbol font: opens___.ttf improved mostly but cut/pasting existing glyphs to new positions to match the mapping table in vcl. This results in a massively improved PPT/Word bullet experience with little effort. It is not acceptable up-stream for reasons unexplained.

=== font substitution ===

Many vendors ship AGFA's propriatory metric-compatible fonts with OO.o - it is thus necessary to run several seds on the VCL.xcu [ further bloating this already gigantic messy beast ]. We also remove some of the more foolish & enthusiastic font-usage of eg. the metrically-extremely-strange bitstream font eg. <code>bin/font-munge.pl</code>

s/(Bitstream Vera Sans;.*)Albany;/Albany;$1/;
# add AMT fonts
s/Albany;/Albany AMT;Albany;/g;
s/albany;/albanyamt;albany;/g;

=== parallel build support ===

There are a chunk of ice-cream / massively parallel fixes in ooo-build, it's not clear who owns reviewing / accepting these up-stream.

=== no 'UI' team ===

The up-stream UI team have come up with master-pieces of UI design such as the Yes/No dialog on

"Would you like to not continue saving in the original OpenOffice.org 2.0 format or perhaps switch to another format"

that takes 10 seconds to parse each time ( presumably since it's a recent feature - with a specification too ).

The rest of us mere-mortals know that the OO.o is shockingly broken - and hence are eager to fix it
without being blocked & frustrated for weeks by those responsible for the current mess.

A number of the changes / patches in apply/ are blocked on 'user experience' feedback.

=== different defaults ===

It is self evident to ooo-build users that a slew of dialogs on 1st run is a painful mess; eg. if there are settings to migrate, don't shout about it - do it silently. Furthermore - the registration dialog looks tacky,
we disable both. We also alter a number of other defaults. cf. the last point - I'm optimistic that these will
~never get up-stream agreement.

=== bleeding-edgeness ===

There is a 'cool factor' to building the very latest things yourself; and helping solve problems with them.
It's nice to be able to see your changes have an effect & help others rapidly, eg. a fix being immediately
useful to other people. Of course - you can have too much of a good thing here but ...

=== Philosophical differences ===

==== compatibility ====

Up-stream believe that the most important data set to be compatible with is existing StarOffice / OO.o users.
ooo-build users believe that nearly all the world's data is stored in Microsoft Office format - hence we
sacrifice legacy support for better interop.
This is of course a continuum, up-stream are at the luney extreme of pushing back-compatibility regardless
of it's impact on interoperability, even in cases deliberately excluding useful interoperability improvements
on that basis. ooo-build appreciates backwards comaptibility, but is in favour of viewing core differences
that are non-interoperable as bugs not features.

==== process complexity ====

ooo-build users believe in programmer lead development, with strong peer review and user QA.
up-stream believe in process based development, with teams, consensus building, specification writing, test-instead-of-detailed-code-review, and all these 'Professional' pasttimes.
ooo-build users believe the OO.o we have today is broadly a product of these processes. Up-stream users
believe the previous sentence is a compliment.

==== cross-platform ====

ooo-build enables patch sub-setting, thus we include patches for features (eg. Mono integration) that are
most likely not well separated, and will break the Win32 build. Of course, for ooo-build these are not
enabled on Win32 thus causing no problem. This is an impediment to getting work up-stream. Hopefully
the 'experimental' process may help encourage good behavior here.

=== FIXME ===

Lots more to be said here ...

== Conclusion ==

If you read all that don't get depressed - these issues can all be fixed - many of them almost painlessly. We hope to shrink this page quickly.

[[Category: Development]]

Ooo-build

2006-12-15T18:07:50Z

Pmladek: /* Support for new MWS */

This collection of patches, artwork and build infrastructure exists solely as a reflection of the many problems encouraging reasonably responsive change up-stream. The process of change is painful for any organisation, the larger the more painful. However - the size of the problem is no excuse to not try; hence the evenutal aim is to remove the need for ooo-build by incrementally fixing the various problems.

== About ooo-build ==

ooo-build arose from acute frustration with the bad-old days of OOo process before the [[CWS|Child Workspace]] concept was introduced, it is
also fueled by a non-performant [[Infrastructure_Problems#CVS|CVS server]].

* [[ooo-build/bin]] - A description of the tools in bin/

== Building ==

FIXME

== Fixing ==

FIXME
=== Sample simple fixes ===

==== Win32 / configure auto-detection ====

We have a nice perl script 'oowintool' that does a rather better job of auto-detecting various system tools than up-stream, we should integrate it there - it makes the common case much easier. cf. the last point though.

==== branding / artwork / splash bits ====

Many of the ooo-build patches are simply branding changes for other distros. Getting that up-stream plus a combination of selectable 'experimental' features would prolly remove the usefulness of ooo-build substantially
for these people. Altenatively perhaps good docs and a <code>--with-splash=/tmp/foo.png --with-logo=/tmp/baa.bmp</code> might work nicely.

==== faster 1st time (packagers/developers) build ====

Dependency generation takes a huge chunk of CPU time - simply detecting a pristine build & exporting 'nodep=1' trivially saves a chunk of time - should get that up-stream.

==== easier developer experience ====

Trivial, built-in, automated use of the system malloc allocator checker (via linkoo & source ooenv), also - by default disabling the (incredibly annoying) 'recover from crash' dialog stuff via a similar trivial environment variable patch: i#54275.

== Releasing ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a release, such as a distro needs a stable base or we want to do something potentially
disruptive, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* '''cvs update''' - get the latest everything

* Read back through the ''ChangeLog'' and update the ''NEWS'' file for the release, summarizing and attributing the changes.

* edit ''configure.in'', bump the version in the '''AC_INIT''' line, incrementing the minor version eg. '''AC_INIT(ooo-build, X.Y.Z)'''

* Add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Version X.Y.Z
</pre>

* '''./autogen.sh''' - this re-builds configure with the version in place; a distro must be specified eg. '''./autogen.sh --with-distro=SUSE'''

* '''make dist''' - this builds the archive containing everything.

* '''cvs commit''' - so what's there is what's there. If there was a collision you get to loop to the first stage here, but don't re-increment the number.

* '''cvs -z3 tag OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z''' - this leaves a static tag so we can reproduce the build at any time and easily diff between releases.

* '''md5sum ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz > ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz.md5''' - so that users can do at least the basic consistency check

* '''scp ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz* ooo@go-oo.org:/var/www/packages/<MWS_DIR>/''' - uploads the tarball and the .md5 file for the right Master Work Space, eg. SRC680

* It's then customary to announce the release, see the template in ''doc/announce.txt'' - update all the ***s to the right versions, insert the contents of ''NEWS'', fire and forget.

== Branching ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a branch, such as a MWS is moved to the maintenace mode and we want open HEAD for further development, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* create the tags:
** '''cvs update''' or '''cvs update -r OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z'''- get the latest everything or a tagged sources
** '''cvs -z3 tag -b ooo-build-X-Y-Z''' - do the branch
** '''cvs tag OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR''' - this leaves a static tag so we can diff against it and see the branch specific changes
* make changes specific for the original tree (HEAD):
** '''cvs co ooo-build''' - get sources from the original tree
** if it is an important branch, such as for a minor OOo version, add a line to the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>ooo-build-X-Y-Z branch for X.Y.Z</tt>
** add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow. Of course, if you branched an older tag, you must put the comment into the right context. See below for a sample comment.
** '''cvs commit'''
* make changes specific for the branch:
** '''cvs co -r ooo-build-X-Y-Z''' - get sources from the branch
** modify the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>This is ooo-build-2-0-4 - the stable branch for the 2.0.4 release. If you want to build something cool, unstable, and risky, use HEAD.</tt>
** add the same comment to the ''ChangeLog'' as in the original tree
** '''cvs commit'''
* it's then customary to announce the release

Sample comment:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Branched for X.Y.Z:
OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR - the anchor tag,
ooo-build-2-0-4 - the branch.
</pre>

== Support for new MWS ==

When the upstream branches new MWS and we want to support it in ooo-build, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* first, it is better to clean ooo-build and remove support for all old and obsolete milestones; FIXME: it will be described somewhere else
*'''cvs update''' - get the latest everything
*edit ''download.in'', mention the new tarball file name and URL in the array ''%SRC_URLS'', something like:
*:<tt> 'oox680-m.*' => '@MIRROR@/OOX680',</tt>
*edit ''patches/src680/apply''
**fix the ''OLDEST_SUPPORTED'' option; note that more MWSs can be supported, it might be something like:
**:<tt>OLDEST_SUPPORTED=src680-m181,ooe680-m1</tt>
**fix the conditions for the various sections; note that you must add condition for the new MWS everywhere where a condition for another MWS already exists; it might look like:
**:<tt>[ Fixes >= src680-m182 >= ooe680-m2 ]</tt>
*might want to use the new milestone by default, then update ''DEFAULT_TAG'' in ''configure'' in, it looks like:
*:<tt>DEFAULT_TAG=oox680-mY</tt>
*describe all changes in ''ChangeLog''; it is usually enough to mention something like:
*:<pre>
*:2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>
*:
*: * configure.in, download.in, patches/src680/apply: support for oox680
*: * configure.in: Default to oox680-mY
*:</pre>
*'''cvs commit'''
*it's then customary to announce this kind of change

== Support for final OOo version ==

== Remaining unsolved issue summary ==

A helpful summary of these is provided here in no particular order along with suggestions for improvement.
Many of these are mercifully easy to fix, and should be fixed soon.

=== source handling ===

==== src packaging ====

We have habitually split the source into several pieces to aid downloading. The process of achieving this is codified in a
simple shell-script [[http://go-oo.org/ooo-build/bin/src-pack here]]. It is of course necessary to have source archives that include the CVS directories & information, (or perhaps split that out into another package - but yet make it available) - such that developers can easily 'cvs diff -u' to extract their changes, and of course tinderbox slaves can base off these archives.

==== src download ====

ooo-build has a post-configure 'download' mechanism, whereby the relevant source archives will be automatically downloaded to your system having configured it, in response to your various options.

=== cvs slowness ===

It can take multiple hours to tag (once) the full up-stream CVS; this is not conducive to some of the more funky
'nested workspace' ideas based on the [[CWS]] tooling becoming a reality. Adding large modules to a cws currently
takes way too long. Interestingly, it's can be quicker to do a $ cvs diff, create a new cws and apply the patch
than re-sync a cws. It also helps to have the diff in hand in case the cws tools fail mid-flow, since that has been known to loose data.
A 'diff -u' by contrast, or an anonymous diff from cvs - combined with ooo-build's intelligent patch application
process often results in an extremely fast development cycle unincumbered by low performance [[Infrastructure_Problems#CVS|CVS server]].

=== compile fragility ===

To use up-stream OO.o it is not possible to use HEAD, due to multiple concurrent (slow) incomplete merges constantly in progress, instead one must use a milestone release. Unfortunately milestone releases build on a small number of tested setups - but these typically do not include out-of-the-box, stock Linux distributions
such as OpenSUSE, Fedora, Debian etc. Thus from day-1 it is necessary to patch a milestone to get it to build
at all. Issues such as different gcc versions, different platform libraries etc. tend to cause this.
However - there is no central place where such patches can be collected to avoid constant duplication of effort,
apart from ooo-build.

It is hoped a [[Tinderbox Setup | tinderbox]] server with many disparate slaves building the CWS in the 'Ready for QA' state might
help fix this problem in future.

=== interlocking changes ===

While a cws is waiting to be integrated / going through QA - it is entirely possible that another feature
requires the functionality it provides; furthermore there is no easy way to include multiple features that we
judge to be ready, yet would not pass up-stream QA (on multiple platforms etc.) into our builds. Thus ooo-build
becomes a place to test multiple new features concurrently. It is hoped that the new experimental CWS
regimen may help fix this problem & accelerate up-streaming of patches.

=== non-responsiveness / lack of leadership ===

Many ooo-build patches are ready for up-streaming but there is no / little response from up-stream. Worse there is the perception that taking leadership and actually doing something about merging fixes would be firmly opposed. Finally - even when maintainers are active, responsive & friendly - there is no agreed mechanism for blanket
approving fixes - or sub-types of trivial fixes, which thus tend to fester in IssueZilla.

At the time of writing ooo-build's patches are available here: http://go-oo.org/ooo-build/patches/src680/apply.

FIXME - add some humerous details here / bug links etc.

=== symbol font ===

ooo-build contains a substantially improved OpenSymbol font: opens___.ttf improved mostly but cut/pasting existing glyphs to new positions to match the mapping table in vcl. This results in a massively improved PPT/Word bullet experience with little effort. It is not acceptable up-stream for reasons unexplained.

=== font substitution ===

Many vendors ship AGFA's propriatory metric-compatible fonts with OO.o - it is thus necessary to run several seds on the VCL.xcu [ further bloating this already gigantic messy beast ]. We also remove some of the more foolish & enthusiastic font-usage of eg. the metrically-extremely-strange bitstream font eg. <code>bin/font-munge.pl</code>

s/(Bitstream Vera Sans;.*)Albany;/Albany;$1/;
# add AMT fonts
s/Albany;/Albany AMT;Albany;/g;
s/albany;/albanyamt;albany;/g;

=== parallel build support ===

There are a chunk of ice-cream / massively parallel fixes in ooo-build, it's not clear who owns reviewing / accepting these up-stream.

=== no 'UI' team ===

The up-stream UI team have come up with master-pieces of UI design such as the Yes/No dialog on

"Would you like to not continue saving in the original OpenOffice.org 2.0 format or perhaps switch to another format"

that takes 10 seconds to parse each time ( presumably since it's a recent feature - with a specification too ).

The rest of us mere-mortals know that the OO.o is shockingly broken - and hence are eager to fix it
without being blocked & frustrated for weeks by those responsible for the current mess.

A number of the changes / patches in apply/ are blocked on 'user experience' feedback.

=== different defaults ===

It is self evident to ooo-build users that a slew of dialogs on 1st run is a painful mess; eg. if there are settings to migrate, don't shout about it - do it silently. Furthermore - the registration dialog looks tacky,
we disable both. We also alter a number of other defaults. cf. the last point - I'm optimistic that these will
~never get up-stream agreement.

=== bleeding-edgeness ===

There is a 'cool factor' to building the very latest things yourself; and helping solve problems with them.
It's nice to be able to see your changes have an effect & help others rapidly, eg. a fix being immediately
useful to other people. Of course - you can have too much of a good thing here but ...

=== Philosophical differences ===

==== compatibility ====

Up-stream believe that the most important data set to be compatible with is existing StarOffice / OO.o users.
ooo-build users believe that nearly all the world's data is stored in Microsoft Office format - hence we
sacrifice legacy support for better interop.
This is of course a continuum, up-stream are at the luney extreme of pushing back-compatibility regardless
of it's impact on interoperability, even in cases deliberately excluding useful interoperability improvements
on that basis. ooo-build appreciates backwards comaptibility, but is in favour of viewing core differences
that are non-interoperable as bugs not features.

==== process complexity ====

ooo-build users believe in programmer lead development, with strong peer review and user QA.
up-stream believe in process based development, with teams, consensus building, specification writing, test-instead-of-detailed-code-review, and all these 'Professional' pasttimes.
ooo-build users believe the OO.o we have today is broadly a product of these processes. Up-stream users
believe the previous sentence is a compliment.

==== cross-platform ====

ooo-build enables patch sub-setting, thus we include patches for features (eg. Mono integration) that are
most likely not well separated, and will break the Win32 build. Of course, for ooo-build these are not
enabled on Win32 thus causing no problem. This is an impediment to getting work up-stream. Hopefully
the 'experimental' process may help encourage good behavior here.

=== FIXME ===

Lots more to be said here ...

== Conclusion ==

If you read all that don't get depressed - these issues can all be fixed - many of them almost painlessly. We hope to shrink this page quickly.

[[Category: Development]]

Ooo-build

2006-12-15T17:27:00Z

Pmladek:

This collection of patches, artwork and build infrastructure exists solely as a reflection of the many problems encouraging reasonably responsive change up-stream. The process of change is painful for any organisation, the larger the more painful. However - the size of the problem is no excuse to not try; hence the evenutal aim is to remove the need for ooo-build by incrementally fixing the various problems.

== About ooo-build ==

ooo-build arose from acute frustration with the bad-old days of OOo process before the [[CWS|Child Workspace]] concept was introduced, it is
also fueled by a non-performant [[Infrastructure_Problems#CVS|CVS server]].

* [[ooo-build/bin]] - A description of the tools in bin/

== Building ==

FIXME

== Fixing ==

FIXME
=== Sample simple fixes ===

==== Win32 / configure auto-detection ====

We have a nice perl script 'oowintool' that does a rather better job of auto-detecting various system tools than up-stream, we should integrate it there - it makes the common case much easier. cf. the last point though.

==== branding / artwork / splash bits ====

Many of the ooo-build patches are simply branding changes for other distros. Getting that up-stream plus a combination of selectable 'experimental' features would prolly remove the usefulness of ooo-build substantially
for these people. Altenatively perhaps good docs and a <code>--with-splash=/tmp/foo.png --with-logo=/tmp/baa.bmp</code> might work nicely.

==== faster 1st time (packagers/developers) build ====

Dependency generation takes a huge chunk of CPU time - simply detecting a pristine build & exporting 'nodep=1' trivially saves a chunk of time - should get that up-stream.

==== easier developer experience ====

Trivial, built-in, automated use of the system malloc allocator checker (via linkoo & source ooenv), also - by default disabling the (incredibly annoying) 'recover from crash' dialog stuff via a similar trivial environment variable patch: i#54275.

== Releasing ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a release, such as a distro needs a stable base or we want to do something potentially
disruptive, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* '''cvs update''' - get the latest everything

* Read back through the ''ChangeLog'' and update the ''NEWS'' file for the release, summarizing and attributing the changes.

* edit ''configure.in'', bump the version in the '''AC_INIT''' line, incrementing the minor version eg. '''AC_INIT(ooo-build, X.Y.Z)'''

* Add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Version X.Y.Z
</pre>

* '''./autogen.sh''' - this re-builds configure with the version in place; a distro must be specified eg. '''./autogen.sh --with-distro=SUSE'''

* '''make dist''' - this builds the archive containing everything.

* '''cvs commit''' - so what's there is what's there. If there was a collision you get to loop to the first stage here, but don't re-increment the number.

* '''cvs -z3 tag OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z''' - this leaves a static tag so we can reproduce the build at any time and easily diff between releases.

* '''md5sum ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz > ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz.md5''' - so that users can do at least the basic consistency check

* '''scp ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz* ooo@go-oo.org:/var/www/packages/<MWS_DIR>/''' - uploads the tarball and the .md5 file for the right Master Work Space, eg. SRC680

* It's then customary to announce the release, see the template in ''doc/announce.txt'' - update all the ***s to the right versions, insert the contents of ''NEWS'', fire and forget.

== Branching ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a branch, such as a MWS is moved to the maintenace mode and we want open HEAD for further development, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* create the tags:
** '''cvs update''' or '''cvs update -r OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z'''- get the latest everything or a tagged sources
** '''cvs -z3 tag -b ooo-build-X-Y-Z''' - do the branch
** '''cvs tag OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR''' - this leaves a static tag so we can diff against it and see the branch specific changes
* make changes specific for the original tree (HEAD):
** '''cvs co ooo-build''' - get sources from the original tree
** if it is an important branch, such as for a minor OOo version, add a line to the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>ooo-build-X-Y-Z branch for X.Y.Z</tt>
** add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow. Of course, if you branched an older tag, you must put the comment into the right context. See below for a sample comment.
** '''cvs commit'''
* make changes specific for the branch:
** '''cvs co -r ooo-build-X-Y-Z''' - get sources from the branch
** modify the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>This is ooo-build-2-0-4 - the stable branch for the 2.0.4 release. If you want to build something cool, unstable, and risky, use HEAD.</tt>
** add the same comment to the ''ChangeLog'' as in the original tree
** '''cvs commit'''
* it's then customary to announce the release

Sample comment:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Branched for X.Y.Z:
OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR - the anchor tag,
ooo-build-2-0-4 - the branch.
</pre>

== Support for new MWS ==

== Support for final OOo version ==

== Remaining unsolved issue summary ==

A helpful summary of these is provided here in no particular order along with suggestions for improvement.
Many of these are mercifully easy to fix, and should be fixed soon.

=== source handling ===

==== src packaging ====

We have habitually split the source into several pieces to aid downloading. The process of achieving this is codified in a
simple shell-script [[http://go-oo.org/ooo-build/bin/src-pack here]]. It is of course necessary to have source archives that include the CVS directories & information, (or perhaps split that out into another package - but yet make it available) - such that developers can easily 'cvs diff -u' to extract their changes, and of course tinderbox slaves can base off these archives.

==== src download ====

ooo-build has a post-configure 'download' mechanism, whereby the relevant source archives will be automatically downloaded to your system having configured it, in response to your various options.

=== cvs slowness ===

It can take multiple hours to tag (once) the full up-stream CVS; this is not conducive to some of the more funky
'nested workspace' ideas based on the [[CWS]] tooling becoming a reality. Adding large modules to a cws currently
takes way too long. Interestingly, it's can be quicker to do a $ cvs diff, create a new cws and apply the patch
than re-sync a cws. It also helps to have the diff in hand in case the cws tools fail mid-flow, since that has been known to loose data.
A 'diff -u' by contrast, or an anonymous diff from cvs - combined with ooo-build's intelligent patch application
process often results in an extremely fast development cycle unincumbered by low performance [[Infrastructure_Problems#CVS|CVS server]].

=== compile fragility ===

To use up-stream OO.o it is not possible to use HEAD, due to multiple concurrent (slow) incomplete merges constantly in progress, instead one must use a milestone release. Unfortunately milestone releases build on a small number of tested setups - but these typically do not include out-of-the-box, stock Linux distributions
such as OpenSUSE, Fedora, Debian etc. Thus from day-1 it is necessary to patch a milestone to get it to build
at all. Issues such as different gcc versions, different platform libraries etc. tend to cause this.
However - there is no central place where such patches can be collected to avoid constant duplication of effort,
apart from ooo-build.

It is hoped a [[Tinderbox Setup | tinderbox]] server with many disparate slaves building the CWS in the 'Ready for QA' state might
help fix this problem in future.

=== interlocking changes ===

While a cws is waiting to be integrated / going through QA - it is entirely possible that another feature
requires the functionality it provides; furthermore there is no easy way to include multiple features that we
judge to be ready, yet would not pass up-stream QA (on multiple platforms etc.) into our builds. Thus ooo-build
becomes a place to test multiple new features concurrently. It is hoped that the new experimental CWS
regimen may help fix this problem & accelerate up-streaming of patches.

=== non-responsiveness / lack of leadership ===

Many ooo-build patches are ready for up-streaming but there is no / little response from up-stream. Worse there is the perception that taking leadership and actually doing something about merging fixes would be firmly opposed. Finally - even when maintainers are active, responsive & friendly - there is no agreed mechanism for blanket
approving fixes - or sub-types of trivial fixes, which thus tend to fester in IssueZilla.

At the time of writing ooo-build's patches are available here: http://go-oo.org/ooo-build/patches/src680/apply.

FIXME - add some humerous details here / bug links etc.

=== symbol font ===

ooo-build contains a substantially improved OpenSymbol font: opens___.ttf improved mostly but cut/pasting existing glyphs to new positions to match the mapping table in vcl. This results in a massively improved PPT/Word bullet experience with little effort. It is not acceptable up-stream for reasons unexplained.

=== font substitution ===

Many vendors ship AGFA's propriatory metric-compatible fonts with OO.o - it is thus necessary to run several seds on the VCL.xcu [ further bloating this already gigantic messy beast ]. We also remove some of the more foolish & enthusiastic font-usage of eg. the metrically-extremely-strange bitstream font eg. <code>bin/font-munge.pl</code>

s/(Bitstream Vera Sans;.*)Albany;/Albany;$1/;
# add AMT fonts
s/Albany;/Albany AMT;Albany;/g;
s/albany;/albanyamt;albany;/g;

=== parallel build support ===

There are a chunk of ice-cream / massively parallel fixes in ooo-build, it's not clear who owns reviewing / accepting these up-stream.

=== no 'UI' team ===

The up-stream UI team have come up with master-pieces of UI design such as the Yes/No dialog on

"Would you like to not continue saving in the original OpenOffice.org 2.0 format or perhaps switch to another format"

that takes 10 seconds to parse each time ( presumably since it's a recent feature - with a specification too ).

The rest of us mere-mortals know that the OO.o is shockingly broken - and hence are eager to fix it
without being blocked & frustrated for weeks by those responsible for the current mess.

A number of the changes / patches in apply/ are blocked on 'user experience' feedback.

=== different defaults ===

It is self evident to ooo-build users that a slew of dialogs on 1st run is a painful mess; eg. if there are settings to migrate, don't shout about it - do it silently. Furthermore - the registration dialog looks tacky,
we disable both. We also alter a number of other defaults. cf. the last point - I'm optimistic that these will
~never get up-stream agreement.

=== bleeding-edgeness ===

There is a 'cool factor' to building the very latest things yourself; and helping solve problems with them.
It's nice to be able to see your changes have an effect & help others rapidly, eg. a fix being immediately
useful to other people. Of course - you can have too much of a good thing here but ...

=== Philosophical differences ===

==== compatibility ====

Up-stream believe that the most important data set to be compatible with is existing StarOffice / OO.o users.
ooo-build users believe that nearly all the world's data is stored in Microsoft Office format - hence we
sacrifice legacy support for better interop.
This is of course a continuum, up-stream are at the luney extreme of pushing back-compatibility regardless
of it's impact on interoperability, even in cases deliberately excluding useful interoperability improvements
on that basis. ooo-build appreciates backwards comaptibility, but is in favour of viewing core differences
that are non-interoperable as bugs not features.

==== process complexity ====

ooo-build users believe in programmer lead development, with strong peer review and user QA.
up-stream believe in process based development, with teams, consensus building, specification writing, test-instead-of-detailed-code-review, and all these 'Professional' pasttimes.
ooo-build users believe the OO.o we have today is broadly a product of these processes. Up-stream users
believe the previous sentence is a compliment.

==== cross-platform ====

ooo-build enables patch sub-setting, thus we include patches for features (eg. Mono integration) that are
most likely not well separated, and will break the Win32 build. Of course, for ooo-build these are not
enabled on Win32 thus causing no problem. This is an impediment to getting work up-stream. Hopefully
the 'experimental' process may help encourage good behavior here.

=== FIXME ===

Lots more to be said here ...

== Conclusion ==

If you read all that don't get depressed - these issues can all be fixed - many of them almost painlessly. We hope to shrink this page quickly.

[[Category: Development]]

Ooo-build

2006-12-15T17:23:54Z

Pmladek: /* Branching */

This collection of patches, artwork and build infrastructure exists solely as a reflection of the many problems encouraging reasonably responsive change up-stream. The process of change is painful for any organisation, the larger the more painful. However - the size of the problem is no excuse to not try; hence the evenutal aim is to remove the need for ooo-build by incrementally fixing the various problems.

== About ooo-build ==

ooo-build arose from acute frustration with the bad-old days of OOo process before the [[CWS|Child Workspace]] concept was introduced, it is
also fueled by a non-performant [[Infrastructure_Problems#CVS|CVS server]].

* [[ooo-build/bin]] - A description of the tools in bin/

== Building ==

FIXME

== Fixing ==

FIXME
=== Sample simple fixes ===

==== Win32 / configure auto-detection ====

We have a nice perl script 'oowintool' that does a rather better job of auto-detecting various system tools than up-stream, we should integrate it there - it makes the common case much easier. cf. the last point though.

==== branding / artwork / splash bits ====

Many of the ooo-build patches are simply branding changes for other distros. Getting that up-stream plus a combination of selectable 'experimental' features would prolly remove the usefulness of ooo-build substantially
for these people. Altenatively perhaps good docs and a <code>--with-splash=/tmp/foo.png --with-logo=/tmp/baa.bmp</code> might work nicely.

==== faster 1st time (packagers/developers) build ====

Dependency generation takes a huge chunk of CPU time - simply detecting a pristine build & exporting 'nodep=1' trivially saves a chunk of time - should get that up-stream.

==== easier developer experience ====

Trivial, built-in, automated use of the system malloc allocator checker (via linkoo & source ooenv), also - by default disabling the (incredibly annoying) 'recover from crash' dialog stuff via a similar trivial environment variable patch: i#54275.

== Releasing ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a release, such as a distro needs a stable base or we want to do something potentially
disruptive, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* '''cvs update''' - get the latest everything

* Read back through the ''ChangeLog'' and update the ''NEWS'' file for the release, summarizing and attributing the changes.

* edit ''configure.in'', bump the version in the '''AC_INIT''' line, incrementing the minor version eg. '''AC_INIT(ooo-build, X.Y.Z)'''

* Add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Version X.Y.Z
</pre>

* '''./autogen.sh''' - this re-builds configure with the version in place; a distro must be specified eg. '''./autogen.sh --with-distro=SUSE'''

* '''make dist''' - this builds the archive containing everything.

* '''cvs commit''' - so what's there is what's there. If there was a collision you get to loop to the first stage here, but don't re-increment the number.

* '''cvs -z3 tag OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z''' - this leaves a static tag so we can reproduce the build at any time and easily diff between releases.

* '''md5sum ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz > ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz.md5''' - so that users can do at least the basic consistency check

* '''scp ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz* ooo@go-oo.org:/var/www/packages/<MWS_DIR>/''' - uploads the tarball and the .md5 file for the right Master Work Space, eg. SRC680

* It's then customary to announce the release, see the template in ''doc/announce.txt'' - update all the ***s to the right versions, insert the contents of ''NEWS'', fire and forget.

== Branching ==

When there's a particularly good reason for a branch, such as a MWS is moved to the maintenace mode and we want open HEAD for further development, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* create the tags:
** '''cvs update''' or '''cvs update -r OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z'''- get the latest everything or a tagged sources
** '''cvs -z3 tag -b ooo-build-X-Y-Z''' - do the branch
** '''cvs tag OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR''' - this leaves a static tag so we can diff against it and see the branch specific changes
* make changes specific for the original tree (HEAD):
** '''cvs co ooo-build''' - get sources from the original tree
** if it is an important branch, such as for a minor OOo version, add a line to the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>ooo-build-X-Y-Z branch for X.Y.Z</tt>
** add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow. Of course, if you branched an older tag, you must put the comment into the right context. See below for a sample comment.
** '''cvs commit'''
* make changes specific for the branch:
** '''cvs co -r ooo-build-X-Y-Z''' - get sources from the branch
** modify the message printed at the end of ''configure.in''. It might be something like:
**:<tt>This is ooo-build-2-0-4 - the stable branch for the 2.0.4 release. If you want to build something cool, unstable, and risky, use HEAD.</tt>
** add the same comment to the ''ChangeLog'' as in the original tree
** '''cvs commit'''
* it's then customary to announce the release

Sample comment:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Branched for X.Y.Z:
OOO-BUILD-X-Y-Z-ANCHOR - the anchor tag,
ooo-build-2-0-4 - the branch.
</pre>

== Remaining unsolved issue summary ==

A helpful summary of these is provided here in no particular order along with suggestions for improvement.
Many of these are mercifully easy to fix, and should be fixed soon.

=== source handling ===

==== src packaging ====

We have habitually split the source into several pieces to aid downloading. The process of achieving this is codified in a
simple shell-script [[http://go-oo.org/ooo-build/bin/src-pack here]]. It is of course necessary to have source archives that include the CVS directories & information, (or perhaps split that out into another package - but yet make it available) - such that developers can easily 'cvs diff -u' to extract their changes, and of course tinderbox slaves can base off these archives.

==== src download ====

ooo-build has a post-configure 'download' mechanism, whereby the relevant source archives will be automatically downloaded to your system having configured it, in response to your various options.

=== cvs slowness ===

It can take multiple hours to tag (once) the full up-stream CVS; this is not conducive to some of the more funky
'nested workspace' ideas based on the [[CWS]] tooling becoming a reality. Adding large modules to a cws currently
takes way too long. Interestingly, it's can be quicker to do a $ cvs diff, create a new cws and apply the patch
than re-sync a cws. It also helps to have the diff in hand in case the cws tools fail mid-flow, since that has been known to loose data.
A 'diff -u' by contrast, or an anonymous diff from cvs - combined with ooo-build's intelligent patch application
process often results in an extremely fast development cycle unincumbered by low performance [[Infrastructure_Problems#CVS|CVS server]].

=== compile fragility ===

To use up-stream OO.o it is not possible to use HEAD, due to multiple concurrent (slow) incomplete merges constantly in progress, instead one must use a milestone release. Unfortunately milestone releases build on a small number of tested setups - but these typically do not include out-of-the-box, stock Linux distributions
such as OpenSUSE, Fedora, Debian etc. Thus from day-1 it is necessary to patch a milestone to get it to build
at all. Issues such as different gcc versions, different platform libraries etc. tend to cause this.
However - there is no central place where such patches can be collected to avoid constant duplication of effort,
apart from ooo-build.

It is hoped a [[Tinderbox Setup | tinderbox]] server with many disparate slaves building the CWS in the 'Ready for QA' state might
help fix this problem in future.

=== interlocking changes ===

While a cws is waiting to be integrated / going through QA - it is entirely possible that another feature
requires the functionality it provides; furthermore there is no easy way to include multiple features that we
judge to be ready, yet would not pass up-stream QA (on multiple platforms etc.) into our builds. Thus ooo-build
becomes a place to test multiple new features concurrently. It is hoped that the new experimental CWS
regimen may help fix this problem & accelerate up-streaming of patches.

=== non-responsiveness / lack of leadership ===

Many ooo-build patches are ready for up-streaming but there is no / little response from up-stream. Worse there is the perception that taking leadership and actually doing something about merging fixes would be firmly opposed. Finally - even when maintainers are active, responsive & friendly - there is no agreed mechanism for blanket
approving fixes - or sub-types of trivial fixes, which thus tend to fester in IssueZilla.

At the time of writing ooo-build's patches are available here: http://go-oo.org/ooo-build/patches/src680/apply.

FIXME - add some humerous details here / bug links etc.

=== symbol font ===

ooo-build contains a substantially improved OpenSymbol font: opens___.ttf improved mostly but cut/pasting existing glyphs to new positions to match the mapping table in vcl. This results in a massively improved PPT/Word bullet experience with little effort. It is not acceptable up-stream for reasons unexplained.

=== font substitution ===

Many vendors ship AGFA's propriatory metric-compatible fonts with OO.o - it is thus necessary to run several seds on the VCL.xcu [ further bloating this already gigantic messy beast ]. We also remove some of the more foolish & enthusiastic font-usage of eg. the metrically-extremely-strange bitstream font eg. <code>bin/font-munge.pl</code>

s/(Bitstream Vera Sans;.*)Albany;/Albany;$1/;
# add AMT fonts
s/Albany;/Albany AMT;Albany;/g;
s/albany;/albanyamt;albany;/g;

=== parallel build support ===

There are a chunk of ice-cream / massively parallel fixes in ooo-build, it's not clear who owns reviewing / accepting these up-stream.

=== no 'UI' team ===

The up-stream UI team have come up with master-pieces of UI design such as the Yes/No dialog on

"Would you like to not continue saving in the original OpenOffice.org 2.0 format or perhaps switch to another format"

that takes 10 seconds to parse each time ( presumably since it's a recent feature - with a specification too ).

The rest of us mere-mortals know that the OO.o is shockingly broken - and hence are eager to fix it
without being blocked & frustrated for weeks by those responsible for the current mess.

A number of the changes / patches in apply/ are blocked on 'user experience' feedback.

=== different defaults ===

It is self evident to ooo-build users that a slew of dialogs on 1st run is a painful mess; eg. if there are settings to migrate, don't shout about it - do it silently. Furthermore - the registration dialog looks tacky,
we disable both. We also alter a number of other defaults. cf. the last point - I'm optimistic that these will
~never get up-stream agreement.

=== bleeding-edgeness ===

There is a 'cool factor' to building the very latest things yourself; and helping solve problems with them.
It's nice to be able to see your changes have an effect & help others rapidly, eg. a fix being immediately
useful to other people. Of course - you can have too much of a good thing here but ...

=== Philosophical differences ===

==== compatibility ====

Up-stream believe that the most important data set to be compatible with is existing StarOffice / OO.o users.
ooo-build users believe that nearly all the world's data is stored in Microsoft Office format - hence we
sacrifice legacy support for better interop.
This is of course a continuum, up-stream are at the luney extreme of pushing back-compatibility regardless
of it's impact on interoperability, even in cases deliberately excluding useful interoperability improvements
on that basis. ooo-build appreciates backwards comaptibility, but is in favour of viewing core differences
that are non-interoperable as bugs not features.

==== process complexity ====

ooo-build users believe in programmer lead development, with strong peer review and user QA.
up-stream believe in process based development, with teams, consensus building, specification writing, test-instead-of-detailed-code-review, and all these 'Professional' pasttimes.
ooo-build users believe the OO.o we have today is broadly a product of these processes. Up-stream users
believe the previous sentence is a compliment.

==== cross-platform ====

ooo-build enables patch sub-setting, thus we include patches for features (eg. Mono integration) that are
most likely not well separated, and will break the Win32 build. Of course, for ooo-build these are not
enabled on Win32 thus causing no problem. This is an impediment to getting work up-stream. Hopefully
the 'experimental' process may help encourage good behavior here.

=== FIXME ===

Lots more to be said here ...

== Conclusion ==

If you read all that don't get depressed - these issues can all be fixed - many of them almost painlessly. We hope to shrink this page quickly.

[[Category: Development]]

Ooo-build

2006-12-14T18:47:34Z

Pmladek: /* Branching */

Ooo-build

2006-12-14T18:09:29Z

Pmladek:

Ooo-build/releasing

2006-12-14T17:48:08Z

Pmladek: /* ooo-build releasing */

When there's a particularly good reason for a release, such as a distro needs a stable base or we want to do something potentially
disruptive, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* '''cvs update''' - get the latest everything

* Read back through the ''ChangeLog'' and update the ''NEWS'' file for the release, summarizing and attributing the changes.

* edit ''configure.in'', bump the version in the '''AC_INIT''' line, incrementing the minor version eg. '''AC_INIT(ooo-build, X.Y.Z)'''

* Add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Version X.Y.Z
</pre>

* '''./autogen.sh''' - this re-builds configure with the version in place; a distro must be specified eg. '''./autogen.sh --with-distro=SUSE'''

* '''make dist''' - this builds the archive containing everything.

* '''cvs commit''' - so what's there is what's there. If there was a collision you get to loop to the first stage here, but don't re-increment the number.

* '''cvs -z3 tag OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z''' - this leaves a static tag so we can reproduce the build at any time and easily diff between releases.

* '''md5sum ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz > ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz.md5''' - so that users can do at least the basic consistency check

* '''scp ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz* ooo@go-oo.org:/var/www/packages/<MWS_DIR>/''' - uploads the tarball and the .md5 file for the right Master Work Space, eg. SRC680

* It's then customary to announce the release, see the template in ''doc/announce.txt'' - update all the ***s to the right versions, insert the contents of ''NEWS'', fire and forget.

Ooo-build/releasing

2006-12-14T17:47:00Z

Pmladek:

= ooo-build releasing =

When there's a particularly good reason for a release, such as a distro needs a stable base or we want to do something potentially
disruptive, one of the core ooo-build hackers will follow something like this process:

* '''cvs update''' - get the latest everything

* Read back through the ''ChangeLog'' and update the ''NEWS'' file for the release, summarizing and attributing the changes.

* edit ''configure.in'', bump the version in the '''AC_INIT''' line, incrementing the minor version eg. '''AC_INIT(ooo-build, X.Y.Z)'''

* Add a line to any handy ''ChangeLogs'', so we can easily see where this happened in the flow:

<pre>
2019-13-33 Ned Squeers <ned@sqeers.com>

* Version X.Y.Z
</pre>

* '''./autogen.sh''' - this re-builds configure with the version in place; a distro must be specified eg. '''./autogen.sh --with-distro=SUSE'''

* '''make dist''' - this builds the archive containing everything.

* '''cvs commit''' - so what's there is what's there. If there was a collision you get to loop to the first stage here, but don't re-increment the number.

* '''cvs -z3 tag OOO_BUILD_X_Y_Z''' - this leaves a static tag so we can reproduce the build at any time and easily diff between releases.

* '''md5sum ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz > ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz.md5''' - so that users can do at least the basic consistency check

* '''scp ooo-build-X.Y.Z.tar.gz* ooo@go-oo.org:/var/www/packages/<MWS_DIR>/''' - uploads the tarball and the .md5 file for the right Master Work Space, eg. SRC680

* It's then customary to announce the release, see the template in ''doc/announce.txt'' - update all the ***s to the right versions, insert the contents of ''NEWS'', fire and forget.

Feature - Templates

2006-11-07T11:43:50Z

Pmladek: /* Already existing projects [FIXME]: */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

{| class="wikitable" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0"
! style="background:#efefef;" | Role
! style="background:#efefef;" | Name
! style="background:#efefef;" | E-mail
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Project Lead
| Jan Holešovsky /Kendy (to be confirmed) || mailto:kendy@suse.cz
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Specification Owner
| Mathias Bauer /MBA (proposed volunteer) || mailto:mathias.bauer@sun.com
|-
! style="text-align: left;" rowspan="2" | User Experience
| Garrett Lesage || mailto:GLesage@novell.com
|-
|[[User:Mmp| Matthias Müller-Prove /MMP]] || mailto:mprove@sun.com
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Development
| Jan Holešovsky /Kendy || mailto:kendy@suse.cz
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Quality Assurance
| Thorsten Martens /TM || mailto:thorsten.martens@sun.com
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Documentation
| Uwe Fischer /UFI || mailto:uwe.fischer@sun.com
|-
! style="text-align: left;" rowspan="2" | Engineering Support
| Mathias Bauer || mailto:mathias.bauer@sun.com
|-
| Petr Mládek || mailto:pmladek@suse.cz
|}

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the given type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not
* Add possibility to change the language of templates. The users might can install templates more than one language (or defaultly use multi language installation (works on windows but currently is not supported)) but they cannot reach templates in other language just if they change the language of UI... I am dreaming about a drop-down box where the users can select one language from available languages (for example: installation with templates/personal/lang/de templates/personal/lang/hu and templates/personal/lang/en-US dirs shows German, Hungarian and English [US] possibilities). [Kami]

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

=== Motivation ===

The current solutions does not support well the above mentioned features, especially the categories without hardcoded names. The templates cannot be easily shared with other office suites.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Requirements:

* hierarchical categories
* support both common and localized templates
* category names not hardcoded in resources!

Structure of categories:

* shared directory structure
* language as the last part of the path
** eg. "template/category/en_US/template-name.otp" (or "template/category/template-name.otp" for the ones without text/localized inside the file) instead of "template/en_US/category/template-name.otp"
** localization of the categories
*** .directory on unx
*** also on Win32? or another mechanism?
*** definitely not resources! - must be controllable from the outside

System location:

* <OOo-installation>/share/template
* "My Templates" in <user-dir>/usr/template
* a common place for easier installation of additional templates
** ideally shared by other apps as well (koffice, etc.)
** /usr/share/template? /usr/share/templates? something other?
* when there's a common dirname (eg. <OOo-installation>/share/template/letters,
and /usr/share/template/letters) - share the content? Or not?

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

* http://www.howtoforge.com/using_and_customizing_openoffice_templates - nice tutorial for using and customizing templates in OpenOffice.org. It is oriented on label templates. It should be linked from the site

== Color/Font Styles ==

=== Motivation ===

Writer and Impress allows to read the document style from another document/template. They allows to change the background from a gallery. There could be also predefined styles for colors or fonts.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Let's solve it later.

* where to store the styles
** create an extra template category "styles" including special templates providing only style
** put such information into a xml files, such as presets/config/palette_en-US.soc
* user interface
** as it is done now in the "Load style" dialog
** add extra tab into Format -> Page
*** combo boxes for the various elements (color, font, style, ...)
*** let the user select from predefined names (Default, Sun, Novell, ...)
*** the names could be names of the special templates and the information could be read from the templates, ...

== Wizards ==

=== Motivation ===

If we have a nice gallery of templates and document styles, a wizard for Writer would be useful. The Impress should be reviwed as well.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Let's solve it later.

Impress:

* show more previes at once, such as in the new "From Template" dialog
* ?

Writer:

* allow to modify the document style in the second phase
* ?

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

O3-build

2006-10-11T10:12:42Z

Pmladek: /* open problems */

== O3 Build ==

O3 Build CD should enable new developers of OpenOffice.org to start with Development for OpenOffice.org without the need to take care of every prerequiste the OpenOffice.org build system needs.
It also comes with a glibc 2.24 installed which allows the created executables to run on almost every Linux system.

Objective: mount cd to /o3

modify and execute for Linux /o3/lx_ia32/setgulls (add the path to OOo source tree)

and enjoy !!

=== download ===

http://ooo.services.openoffice.org/pub/OpenOffice.org/cws/upload/o3/

new in 20061006:

* added OpenOffice.org 2.0.4rc4 install in /o3/lx_ia32/Office
* added SDK in /o3/lx_ia32/Office_SDK
* added libz.so
* added cvs-1.12
* added gdb 6.5

new in 20061008:
* added missing Linux kernel includes
* added pam header files
* added cups header files

* added gcc (2.95.3)
* added vim 7.0
* added emacs 21.4

new in 20061011

* added patched gcc-3.4.1 used by Hamburg RE

=== open problems ===

* Xinerama check fails, libXinerama is static library, configure script is missing -lX11 library
* nas: imake is calling plain gcc not $CC (solved by adding gcc (2.95.3)
* /o3/lx_ia32/lib must not be in LD_LIBRARY_PATH
* -L/o3/lx_ia32/lib must not be in LDFLAGS where checkdll is used
* epm build fails if fltk-config is installed on system

=== open todos ===

* add source tar ball
* add index.html and documentation

* add Win32 Version

O3-build

2006-10-11T09:08:40Z

Pmladek: /* open problems */

== O3 Build ==

O3 Build CD should enable new developers of OpenOffice.org to start with Development for OpenOffice.org without the need to take care of every prerequiste the OpenOffice.org build system needs.
It also comes with a glibc 2.24 installed which allows the created executables to run on almost every Linux system.

Objective: mount cd to /o3

modify and execute for Linux /o3/lx_ia32/setgulls (add the path to OOo source tree)

and enjoy !!

=== download ===

http://ooo.services.openoffice.org/pub/OpenOffice.org/cws/upload/o3/

new in 20061006:

* added OpenOffice.org 2.0.4rc4 install in /o3/lx_ia32/Office
* added SDK in /o3/lx_ia32/Office_SDK
* added libz.so
* added cvs-1.12
* added gdb 6.5

new in 20061008:
* added missing Linux kernel includes
* added pam header files
* added cups header files

* added gcc (2.95.3)
* added vim 7.0
* added emacs 21.4

=== open problems ===

* Xinerama check fails, libXinerama is static library, configure script is missing -lX11 library
* nas: imake is calling plain gcc not $CC (solved by adding gcc (2.95.3)
* /o3/lx_ia32/lib must not be in LD_LIBRARY_PATH
* -L/o3/lx_ia32/lib must not be in LDFLAGS where checkdll is used

=== open todos ===

* add source tar ball
* add index.html and documentation

* add Win32 Version

O3-build

2006-10-10T19:05:53Z

Pmladek: /* open problems */

== O3 Build ==

O3 Build CD should enable new developers of OpenOffice.org to start with Development for OpenOffice.org without the need to take care of every prerequiste the OpenOffice.org build system needs.
It also comes with a glibc 2.24 installed which allows the created executables to run on almost every Linux system.

Objective: mount cd to /o3

modify and execute for Linux /o3/lx_ia32/setgulls (add the path to OOo source tree)

and enjoy !!

=== download ===

http://ooo.services.openoffice.org/pub/OpenOffice.org/cws/upload/o3/

new in 20061006:

* added OpenOffice.org 2.0.4rc4 install in /o3/lx_ia32/Office
* added SDK in /o3/lx_ia32/Office_SDK
* added libz.so
* added cvs-1.12
* added gdb 6.5

new in 20061008:
* added missing Linux kernel includes
* added pam header files
* added cups header files

* added gcc (2.95.3)
* added vim 7.0
* added emacs 21.4

=== open problems ===

* Xinerama check fails, libXinerama is static library, configure script is missing -lX11 library
* nas: imake is calling plain gcc not $CC (solved by adding gcc (2.95.3)
* /o3/lx_ia32/lib must not be in LD_LIBRARY_PATH
* sal/util: symbol _errno, version GLIBC_2.0 not defined in file libc.so.6 (on SLED10)

=== open todos ===

* add source tar ball
* add index.html and documentation

* add Win32 Version

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T19:25:02Z

Pmladek: /* iTeam Members */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

{| class="wikitable" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0"
! style="background:#efefef;" | Role
! style="background:#efefef;" | Name
! style="background:#efefef;" | E-mail
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Project Lead
| Kendy? ||
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Specification Owner
| Mathias? ||
|-
! style="text-align: left;" rowspan="2" | User Experience
| Garrett Lesage || GLesage@novell.com
|-
| Matthias Müller-Prove || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Development
| Jan Holešovsky || kendy@suse.cz
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Quality Assurance
| Thorsten Martens || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Documentation
| Uwe Fischer || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" rowspan="2" | Support
| Mathias Bauer || Mathias.Bauer@sun.com
|-
| Petr Mládek || pmladek@suse.cz
|}

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

=== Motivation ===

The current solutions does not support well the above mentioned features, especially the categories without hardcoded names. The templates cannot be easily shared with other office suites.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Requirements:

* hierarchical categories
* support both common and localized templates
* category names not hardcoded in resources!

Structure of categories:

* shared directory structure
* language as the last part of the path
** eg. "template/category/en_US/template-name.otp" (or "template/category/template-name.otp" for the ones without text/localized inside the file) instead of "template/en_US/category/template-name.otp"
** localization of the categories
*** .directory on unx
*** also on Win32? or another mechanism?
*** definitely not resources! - must be controllable from the outside

System location:

* <OOo-installation>/share/template
* "My Templates" in <user-dir>/usr/template
* a common place for easier installation of additional templates
** ideally shared by other apps as well (koffice, etc.)
** /usr/share/template? /usr/share/templates? something other?
* when there's a common dirname (eg. <OOo-installation>/share/template/letters,
and /usr/share/template/letters) - share the content? Or not?

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== Color/Font Styles ==

=== Motivation ===

Writer and Impress allows to read the document style from another document/template. They allows to change the background from a gallery. There could be also predefined styles for colors or fonts.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Let's solve it later.

* where to store the styles
** create an extra template category "styles" including special templates providing only style
** put such information into a xml files, such as presets/config/palette_en-US.soc
* user interface
** as it is done now in the "Load style" dialog
** add extra tab into Format -> Page
*** combo boxes for the various elements (color, font, style, ...)
*** let the user select from predefined names (Default, Sun, Novell, ...)
*** the names could be names of the special templates and the information could be read from the templates, ...

== Wizards ==

=== Motivation ===

If we have a nice gallery of templates and document styles, a wizard for Writer would be useful. The Impress should be reviwed as well.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Let's solve it later.

Impress:

* show more previes at once, such as in the new "From Template" dialog
* ?

Writer:

* allow to modify the document style in the second phase
* ?

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T19:04:54Z

Pmladek:

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

{| class="wikitable" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0"
! style="background:#efefef;" | Role
! style="background:#efefef;" | Name
! style="background:#efefef;" | E-mail
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Project Lead
| Kendy? || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Specification Owner
| Mathias Bauer || Mathias.Bauer@sun.com
|-
! style="text-align: left;" rowspan="2" | User Experience
| Garrett Lesage || GLesage@novell.com
|-
| Matthias Müller-Prove || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Development
| Jan Holešovsky || kendy@suse.cz
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Quality Assurance
| Thorsten Martens || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Documentation
| Uwe Fischer || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" rowspan="2" | Support
| Mathias Bauer || Mathias.Bauer@sun.com
|-
| Petr Mládek || pmladek@suse.cz
|}

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

=== Motivation ===

The current solutions does not support well the above mentioned features, especially the categories without hardcoded names. The templates cannot be easily shared with other office suites.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Requirements:

* hierarchical categories
* support both common and localized templates
* category names not hardcoded in resources!

Structure of categories:

* shared directory structure
* language as the last part of the path
** eg. "template/category/en_US/template-name.otp" (or "template/category/template-name.otp" for the ones without text/localized inside the file) instead of "template/en_US/category/template-name.otp"
** localization of the categories
*** .directory on unx
*** also on Win32? or another mechanism?
*** definitely not resources! - must be controllable from the outside

System location:

* <OOo-installation>/share/template
* "My Templates" in <user-dir>/usr/template
* a common place for easier installation of additional templates
** ideally shared by other apps as well (koffice, etc.)
** /usr/share/template? /usr/share/templates? something other?
* when there's a common dirname (eg. <OOo-installation>/share/template/letters,
and /usr/share/template/letters) - share the content? Or not?

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== Color/Font Styles ==

=== Motivation ===

Writer and Impress allows to read the document style from another document/template. They allows to change the background from a gallery. There could be also predefined styles for colors or fonts.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Let's solve it later.

* where to store the styles
** create an extra template category "styles" including special templates providing only style
** put such information into a xml files, such as presets/config/palette_en-US.soc
* user interface
** as it is done now in the "Load style" dialog
** add extra tab into Format -> Page
*** combo boxes for the various elements (color, font, style, ...)
*** let the user select from predefined names (Default, Sun, Novell, ...)
*** the names could be names of the special templates and the information could be read from the templates, ...

== Wizards ==

=== Motivation ===

If we have a nice gallery of templates and document styles, a wizard for Writer would be useful. The Impress should be reviwed as well.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Let's solve it later.

Impress:

* show more previes at once, such as in the new "From Template" dialog
* ?

Writer:

* allow to modify the document style in the second phase
* ?

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T19:03:03Z

Pmladek: /* iTeam Members */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

{| class="wikitable" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0"
! style="background:#efefef;" | Role
! style="background:#efefef;" | Name
! style="background:#efefef;" | E-mail
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Project Lead
| Kendy? || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Specification Owner
| Mathias Bauer || Mathias.Bauer@sun.com
|-
! style="text-align: left;" rowspan="2" | User Experience
| Garrett Lesage || GLesage@novell.com
|-
| Matthias Müller-Prove || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Development
| Jan Holešovsky || kendy@suse.cz
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Quality Assurance
| Thorsten Martens || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" | Documentation
| Uwe Fischer || ?
|-
! style="text-align: left;" rowspan="2" | Support
| Mathias Bauer || Mathias.Bauer@sun.com
|-
| Petr Mládek || pmladek@suse.cz
|}

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

=== Motivation ===

The current solutions does not support well the above mentioned features, especially the categories without hardcoded names. The templates cannot be easily shared with other office suites.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Requirements:

* hierarchical categories
* support both common and localized templates
* category names not hardcoded in resources!

Structure of categories:

* shared directory structure
* language as the last part of the path
** eg. "template/category/en_US/template-name.otp" (or "template/category/template-name.otp" for the ones without text/localized inside the file) instead of "template/en_US/category/template-name.otp"
** localization of the categories
*** .directory on unx
*** also on Win32? or another mechanism?
*** definitely not resources! - must be controllable from the outside

System location:

* <OOo-installation>/share/template
* "My Templates" in <user-dir>/usr/template
* a common place for easier installation of additional templates
** ideally shared by other apps as well (koffice, etc.)
** /usr/share/template? /usr/share/templates? something other?
* when there's a common dirname (eg. <OOo-installation>/share/template/letters,
and /usr/share/template/letters) - share the content? Or not?

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== Color/Font Styles ==

Writer and Impress allows to read the document style from another document/template. They allows to change the background from a gallery. There could be also predefined styles for colors or fonts.

== Proposed Solution ==

Let's solve it later.

* where to store the styles
** create an extra template category "styles" including special templates providing only style
** put such information into a xml files, such as presets/config/palette_en-US.soc
* user interface
** as it is done now in the "Load style" dialog
** add extra tab into Format -> Page
*** combo boxes for the various elements (color, font, style, ...)
*** let the user select from predefined names (Default, Sun, Novell, ...)
*** the names could be names of the special templates and the information could be read from the templates, ...

== Wizards ==

=== Motivation ===

If we have a nice gallery of templates and document styles, a wizard for Writer would be useful. The Impress should be reviwed as well.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Let's solve it later.

Impress:

* show more previes at once, such as in the new "From Template" dialog
* ?

Writer:

* allow to modify the document style in the second phase
* ?

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T18:11:11Z

Pmladek: /* Proposed Solution */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

=== Motivation ===

The current solutions does not support well the above mentioned features, especially the categories without hardcoded names. The templates cannot be easily shared with other office suites.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Requirements:

* hierarchical categories
* support both common and localized templates
* category names not hardcoded in resources!

Structure of categories:

* shared directory structure
* language as the last part of the path
** eg. "template/category/en_US/template-name.otp" (or "template/category/template-name.otp" for the ones without text/localized inside the file) instead of "template/en_US/category/template-name.otp"
** localization of the categories
*** .directory on unx
*** also on Win32? or another mechanism?
*** definitely not resources! - must be controllable from the outside

System location:

* <OOo-installation>/share/template
* "My Templates" in <user-dir>/usr/template
* a common place for easier installation of additional templates
** ideally shared by other apps as well (koffice, etc.)
** /usr/share/template? /usr/share/templates? something other?
* when there's a common dirname (eg. <OOo-installation>/share/template/letters,
and /usr/share/template/letters) - share the content? Or not?

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== Color/Font Styles ==

Writer and Impress allows to read the document style from another document/template. They allows to change the background from a gallery. There could be also predefined styles for colors or fonts.

== Proposed Solution ==

Let's solve it later.

* where to store the styles
** create an extra template category "styles" including special templates providing only style
** put such information into a xml files, such as presets/config/palette_en-US.soc
* user interface
** as it is done now in the "Load style" dialog
** add extra tab into Format -> Page
*** combo boxes for the various elements (color, font, style, ...)
*** let the user select from predefined names (Default, Sun, Novell, ...)
*** the names could be names of the special templates and the information could be read from the templates, ...

== Wizards ==

=== Motivation ===

If we have a nice gallery of templates and document styles, a wizard for Writer would be useful. The Impress should be reviwed as well.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Let's solve it later.

Impress:

* show more previes at once, such as in the new "From Template" dialog
* ?

Writer:

* allow to modify the document style in the second phase
* ?

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T18:10:40Z

Pmladek: /* Wizards */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

=== Motivation ===

The current solutions does not support well the above mentioned features, especially the categories without hardcoded names. The templates cannot be easily shared with other office suites.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Requirements:

* hierarchical categories
* support both common and localized templates
* category names not hardcoded in resources!

Structure of categories:

* shared directory structure
* language as the last part of the path
** eg. "template/category/en_US/template-name.otp" (or "template/category/template-name.otp" for the ones without text/localized inside the file) instead of "template/en_US/category/template-name.otp"
** localization of the categories
*** .directory on unx
*** also on Win32? or another mechanism?
*** definitely not resources! - must be controllable from the outside

System location:

* <OOo-installation>/share/template
* "My Templates" in <user-dir>/usr/template
* a common place for easier installation of additional templates
** ideally shared by other apps as well (koffice, etc.)
** /usr/share/template? /usr/share/templates? something other?
* when there's a common dirname (eg. <OOo-installation>/share/template/letters,
and /usr/share/template/letters) - share the content? Or not?

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== Color/Font Styles ==

Writer and Impress allows to read the document style from another document/template. They allows to change the background from a gallery. There could be also predefined styles for colors or fonts.

== Proposed Solution ==

* lets solve it later

* where to store the styles
** create an extra template category "styles" including special templates providing only style
** put such information into a xml files, such as presets/config/palette_en-US.soc
* user interface
** as it is done now in the "Load style" dialog
** add extra tab into Format -> Page
*** combo boxes for the various elements (color, font, style, ...)
*** let the user select from predefined names (Default, Sun, Novell, ...)
*** the names could be names of the special templates and the information could be read from the templates, ...

== Wizards ==

=== Motivation ===

If we have a nice gallery of templates and document styles, a wizard for Writer would be useful. The Impress should be reviwed as well.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Let's solve it later.

Impress:

* show more previes at once, such as in the new "From Template" dialog
* ?

Writer:

* allow to modify the document style in the second phase
* ?

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T17:58:48Z

Pmladek: /* Color/Font Styles */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

=== Motivation ===

The current solutions does not support well the above mentioned features, especially the categories without hardcoded names. The templates cannot be easily shared with other office suites.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Requirements:

* hierarchical categories
* support both common and localized templates
* category names not hardcoded in resources!

Structure of categories:

* shared directory structure
* language as the last part of the path
** eg. "template/category/en_US/template-name.otp" (or "template/category/template-name.otp" for the ones without text/localized inside the file) instead of "template/en_US/category/template-name.otp"
** localization of the categories
*** .directory on unx
*** also on Win32? or another mechanism?
*** definitely not resources! - must be controllable from the outside

System location:

* <OOo-installation>/share/template
* "My Templates" in <user-dir>/usr/template
* a common place for easier installation of additional templates
** ideally shared by other apps as well (koffice, etc.)
** /usr/share/template? /usr/share/templates? something other?
* when there's a common dirname (eg. <OOo-installation>/share/template/letters,
and /usr/share/template/letters) - share the content? Or not?

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== Color/Font Styles ==

Writer and Impress allows to read the document style from another document/template. They allows to change the background from a gallery. There could be also predefined styles for colors or fonts.

== Proposed Solution ==

* lets solve it later

* where to store the styles
** create an extra template category "styles" including special templates providing only style
** put such information into a xml files, such as presets/config/palette_en-US.soc
* user interface
** as it is done now in the "Load style" dialog
** add extra tab into Format -> Page
*** combo boxes for the various elements (color, font, style, ...)
*** let the user select from predefined names (Default, Sun, Novell, ...)
*** the names could be names of the special templates and the information could be read from the templates, ...

== Wizards ==

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T17:47:21Z

Pmladek:

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

=== Motivation ===

The current solutions does not support well the above mentioned features, especially the categories without hardcoded names. The templates cannot be easily shared with other office suites.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Requirements:

* hierarchical categories
* support both common and localized templates
* category names not hardcoded in resources!

Structure of categories:

* shared directory structure
* language as the last part of the path
** eg. "template/category/en_US/template-name.otp" (or "template/category/template-name.otp" for the ones without text/localized inside the file) instead of "template/en_US/category/template-name.otp"
** localization of the categories
*** .directory on unx
*** also on Win32? or another mechanism?
*** definitely not resources! - must be controllable from the outside

System location:

* <OOo-installation>/share/template
* "My Templates" in <user-dir>/usr/template
* a common place for easier installation of additional templates
** ideally shared by other apps as well (koffice, etc.)
** /usr/share/template? /usr/share/templates? something other?
* when there's a common dirname (eg. <OOo-installation>/share/template/letters,
and /usr/share/template/letters) - share the content? Or not?

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== Color/Font Styles ==

== Wizards ==

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T17:45:55Z

Pmladek:

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

=== Motivation ===

The current solutions does not support well the above mentioned features, especially the categories without hardcoded names. The templates cannot be easily shared with other office suites.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Requirements:

* hierarchical categories
* support both common and localized templates
* category names not hardcoded in resources!

Structure of categories:

* shared directory structure
* language as the last part of the path
** eg. "template/category/en_US/template-name.otp" (or "template/category/template-name.otp" for the ones without text/localized inside the file) instead of "template/en_US/category/template-name.otp"
** localization of the categories
*** .directory on unx
*** also on Win32? or another mechanism?
*** definitely not resources! - must be controllable from the outside

System location:

* <OOo-installation>/share/template
* "My Templates" in <user-dir>/usr/template
* a common place for easier installation of additional templates
** ideally shared by other apps as well (koffice, etc.)
** /usr/share/template? /usr/share/templates? something other?
* when there's a common dirname (eg. <OOo-installation>/share/template/letters,
and /usr/share/template/letters) - share the content? Or not?

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== Wizards ==

== Color/Font Styles ==

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T17:39:59Z

Pmladek: /* Templates on Disk */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

=== Motivation ===

The current solutions does not support well the above mentioned features, especially the categories without hardcoded names. The templates cannot be easily shared with other office suites.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Requirements:

* hierarchical categories
* support both common and localized templates
* category names not hardcoded in resources!

Structure of categories:

* shared directory structure
* language as the last part of the path
** eg. "template/category/en_US/template-name.otp" (or "template/category/template-name.otp" for the ones without text/localized inside the file) instead of "template/en_US/category/template-name.otp"
** localization of the categories
*** .directory on unx
*** also on Win32? or another mechanism?
*** definitely not resources! - must be controllable from the outside

System location:

* <OOo-installation>/share/template
* "My Templates" in <user-dir>/usr/template
* a common place for easier installation of additional templates
** ideally shared by other apps as well (koffice, etc.)
** /usr/share/template? /usr/share/templates? something other?
* when there's a common dirname (eg. <OOo-installation>/share/template/letters,
and /usr/share/template/letters) - share the content? Or not?

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T16:34:53Z

Pmladek: /* Localization of Templates */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

=== Motivation ===

Templates often include many graphics and only few localized strings. There is no easy way to localize templates using .po files.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

FIXME: Nothing useful found

=== Proposed Solution ===

* support for "one template for all localizations"?
* useful for simple ones, but not for more complicated ones; For example, a Czech official letter has a different form than an English one
* can macros help here?
* create tools that allow to localize using .po files

== Templates on Disk ==

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T16:26:35Z

Pmladek: /* Template Categories */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

=== Motivation ===

OOo currently provides only about 8 categories out of box (hardcoded names in resources). Only 4 are visible by default because the other are empty. We are going to get the existing templates together and prepare a nice gallery, so more categories will be necessary.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* hierarchycal categories
** maximum level (one, two, ...)?
* must not be hardcoded in resources!
* support for 3rd party packages with templates
* default categories
** ?

== Localization of Templates ==

Scenario 1.: A template includes many graphics and only few localized strings

Scenario 2.: A vendor wants to localize tempaltes using .po files

The following features would help:

# Allow to install language independent templates.
# Allow to auto-translate the XML for their templates on load. This is used in MS Office and it could save a lot of space. Any better approach is welcome. There must stay the possibility to keep lang dependant layout. For example, various countries use different layout for letters. We should also pay attention to RTL vs. LTR.
# Create easy tool that allow to update localizations using .po files.

TODO: Investigate how it is done in MS Office

Hmm, I am somewhat unable to find anything useful about localizing templates online in MS Office. A short note about something simmilar can be found at [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4f9sc85k.aspx], see the section "Localizing Document Text".

It seems that MS Office includes some few general templates by default. Many others can be download from a [http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/default.aspx localized site]. If you repace "en-gb" with "de-de" in the URL, you get the [http://office.microsoft.com/de-de/templates/default.aspx german localization]. It seems that there are extra templates for each localization. They are NOT multilingual and are NOT localized on load.

It is pity. IMHO, the multilingual templates would be good only for distributors that would like to distribute the templates on CD/DVD (disk space). It will not be so great for web access. If all the localized strings are in one file, the download would be greather. If the localized strings are in extra files, it would need to define dependencies between the files, ... and it would make the manipulation with templates more complicated.

On the other hand, We could add the support for templates with localizations in the external file. The tempalate with the single localization can be done on load or already on download ;-)

In each case, we should create tools that would extract/merge the strings, so they can be localized using .po files.

== Templates on Disk ==

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T16:14:24Z

Pmladek: /* Template Organizer */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

The current template organizer combines too much functionality in one. It is a confusing nightmare. It manages categories, files and styles inside the files at the same time! The available commands in [Commands] change contextually!

=== Proposed solution ===

We must split the functionality into more dialogs

* "File -> Templates -> Organize..."
** just organize the templates
** presents with a single tree view with all the templates
** tooltip on the template name shows the preview
** [New Category]
** [Rename], [Delete] - template or category
** [Insert] - the current "Import template..."
** offer rename when a template with the same name already exists
** [Save As...] - the current "Export template..."
** [Close], [Help]
** moving in the hierarchy
** [Set as Default]/[Reset Default]?
*** would be too many buttons
*** a separate File -> Templates -> Defaults...?
*** or Tools -> Options... -> something?

* File -> Templates -> Styles...
** we can start with the current "Load Styles" dialog that is accessible from the top right menu in the "Styles and Formating" toolbar and improve its design
** list box/tree view
** previews like in the open from template dialog?
** the question if we could somewhat visualize the load styles components
** [Close], [Help] - keep
** buttons [File...], [Address Book...], [Printer settings...] from the original dialog
*** let's just bin these, they are accessible from the menu

The recent proposal by Kendy

[[Image:organize-templates-rework.png]]

== Template Categories ==

Scenario: A vendor wants to distribute a couple of temlates nicely sorted that can be added to OOo easily

OOo should support hierarchical categories with more than one level. The default hierachy should be defined by upstream. The categories should be extensible by 3rd party packages. Such extra categories could have localized names.

One solution would be to use the .directory desktop entry defined by [http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.9.4.html]

OOo is quite XML based. I wonder if there exist any similar standardized solution based on xml.

== Template

== Localization of Templates ==

Scenario 1.: A template includes many graphics and only few localized strings

Scenario 2.: A vendor wants to localize tempaltes using .po files

The following features would help:

# Allow to install language independent templates.
# Allow to auto-translate the XML for their templates on load. This is used in MS Office and it could save a lot of space. Any better approach is welcome. There must stay the possibility to keep lang dependant layout. For example, various countries use different layout for letters. We should also pay attention to RTL vs. LTR.
# Create easy tool that allow to update localizations using .po files.

TODO: Investigate how it is done in MS Office

Hmm, I am somewhat unable to find anything useful about localizing templates online in MS Office. A short note about something simmilar can be found at [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4f9sc85k.aspx], see the section "Localizing Document Text".

It seems that MS Office includes some few general templates by default. Many others can be download from a [http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/default.aspx localized site]. If you repace "en-gb" with "de-de" in the URL, you get the [http://office.microsoft.com/de-de/templates/default.aspx german localization]. It seems that there are extra templates for each localization. They are NOT multilingual and are NOT localized on load.

It is pity. IMHO, the multilingual templates would be good only for distributors that would like to distribute the templates on CD/DVD (disk space). It will not be so great for web access. If all the localized strings are in one file, the download would be greather. If the localized strings are in extra files, it would need to define dependencies between the files, ... and it would make the manipulation with templates more complicated.

On the other hand, We could add the support for templates with localizations in the external file. The tempalate with the single localization can be done on load or already on download ;-)

In each case, we should create tools that would extract/merge the strings, so they can be localized using .po files.

== Templates on Disk ==

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

File:Organize-templates-rework.png

2006-09-01T16:13:29Z

Pmladek: Current proposal

Current proposal

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T15:33:17Z

Pmladek: /* Proposed Solution */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References|references]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

a

=== Proposed solution ===

b

== Template Categories ==

Scenario: A vendor wants to distribute a couple of temlates nicely sorted that can be added to OOo easily

OOo should support hierarchical categories with more than one level. The default hierachy should be defined by upstream. The categories should be extensible by 3rd party packages. Such extra categories could have localized names.

One solution would be to use the .directory desktop entry defined by [http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.9.4.html]

OOo is quite XML based. I wonder if there exist any similar standardized solution based on xml.

== Template

== Localization of Templates ==

Scenario 1.: A template includes many graphics and only few localized strings

Scenario 2.: A vendor wants to localize tempaltes using .po files

The following features would help:

# Allow to install language independent templates.
# Allow to auto-translate the XML for their templates on load. This is used in MS Office and it could save a lot of space. Any better approach is welcome. There must stay the possibility to keep lang dependant layout. For example, various countries use different layout for letters. We should also pay attention to RTL vs. LTR.
# Create easy tool that allow to update localizations using .po files.

TODO: Investigate how it is done in MS Office

Hmm, I am somewhat unable to find anything useful about localizing templates online in MS Office. A short note about something simmilar can be found at [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4f9sc85k.aspx], see the section "Localizing Document Text".

It seems that MS Office includes some few general templates by default. Many others can be download from a [http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/default.aspx localized site]. If you repace "en-gb" with "de-de" in the URL, you get the [http://office.microsoft.com/de-de/templates/default.aspx german localization]. It seems that there are extra templates for each localization. They are NOT multilingual and are NOT localized on load.

It is pity. IMHO, the multilingual templates would be good only for distributors that would like to distribute the templates on CD/DVD (disk space). It will not be so great for web access. If all the localized strings are in one file, the download would be greather. If the localized strings are in extra files, it would need to define dependencies between the files, ... and it would make the manipulation with templates more complicated.

On the other hand, We could add the support for templates with localizations in the external file. The tempalate with the single localization can be done on load or already on download ;-)

In each case, we should create tools that would extract/merge the strings, so they can be localized using .po files.

== Templates on Disk ==

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T15:31:41Z

Pmladek:

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== iTeam Members ==

== Menu Access ==

=== Motivation ===

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

=== Proposed Solution ===

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Open Template Dialog ==

=== Motivation ===

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

=== Competitive Analyses ===

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

=== Proposed Solution ===

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Edit/Save Template Dialogs ==

=== Motivation ===

The current dialogs "Files -> Templates -> Edit" and "File -> Templates -> Save" are not symmetric. The first one opens a normal open file dialog that does not shows the translated templates structure. The second one allows to save the files in the current structure but is very confusing.

=== Proposed Solution ===

Possible variants:

* create new symmetric dialogs
* put the functionality into the normal open/save dialogs

See the [[#References]] for screenshots and notes about competitors.

== Template Organizer ==

=== Motivation ===

a

=== Proposed solution ===

b

== Template Categories ==

Scenario: A vendor wants to distribute a couple of temlates nicely sorted that can be added to OOo easily

OOo should support hierarchical categories with more than one level. The default hierachy should be defined by upstream. The categories should be extensible by 3rd party packages. Such extra categories could have localized names.

One solution would be to use the .directory desktop entry defined by [http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.9.4.html]

OOo is quite XML based. I wonder if there exist any similar standardized solution based on xml.

== Template

== Localization of Templates ==

Scenario 1.: A template includes many graphics and only few localized strings

Scenario 2.: A vendor wants to localize tempaltes using .po files

The following features would help:

# Allow to install language independent templates.
# Allow to auto-translate the XML for their templates on load. This is used in MS Office and it could save a lot of space. Any better approach is welcome. There must stay the possibility to keep lang dependant layout. For example, various countries use different layout for letters. We should also pay attention to RTL vs. LTR.
# Create easy tool that allow to update localizations using .po files.

TODO: Investigate how it is done in MS Office

Hmm, I am somewhat unable to find anything useful about localizing templates online in MS Office. A short note about something simmilar can be found at [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4f9sc85k.aspx], see the section "Localizing Document Text".

It seems that MS Office includes some few general templates by default. Many others can be download from a [http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/default.aspx localized site]. If you repace "en-gb" with "de-de" in the URL, you get the [http://office.microsoft.com/de-de/templates/default.aspx german localization]. It seems that there are extra templates for each localization. They are NOT multilingual and are NOT localized on load.

It is pity. IMHO, the multilingual templates would be good only for distributors that would like to distribute the templates on CD/DVD (disk space). It will not be so great for web access. If all the localized strings are in one file, the download would be greather. If the localized strings are in extra files, it would need to define dependencies between the files, ... and it would make the manipulation with templates more complicated.

On the other hand, We could add the support for templates with localizations in the external file. The tempalate with the single localization can be done on load or already on download ;-)

In each case, we should create tools that would extract/merge the strings, so they can be localized using .po files.

== Templates on Disk ==

== Official OOo Templates Web Site ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

=== Why a new project? ===

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

=== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ===

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== References ==

[http://go-oo.org/packages/templates/templates_stuff.tar.bz2 Screenshots and notes] about competitors.

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-09-01T14:36:38Z

Pmladek: /* Proposed solution */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== Easier access from menu ==

==== Motivation ====

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

==== Proposed solution ====

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** templates are saved into another location and structure but...
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Better Open Template Dialog ==

==== Motivation ====

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

==== Competitive Analyses ====

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

==== Proposed solution ====

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Better Edit/Save Template dialogs ==

Scenario: User wants to modify an existing template or create a new one

The current dialogs File/New/Templates and Documents and File/Templates are a bit confusing. The main problems are already described at http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=20676

== Categories ==

Scenario: A vendor wants to distribute a couple of temlates nicely sorted that can be added to OOo easily

OOo should support hierarchical categories with more than one level. The default hierachy should be defined by upstream. The categories should be extensible by 3rd party packages. Such extra categories could have localized names.

One solution would be to use the .directory desktop entry defined by [http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.9.4.html]

OOo is quite XML based. I wonder if there exist any similar standardized solution based on xml.

== Localization of templates ==

Scenario 1.: A template includes many graphics and only few localized strings

Scenario 2.: A vendor wants to localize tempaltes using .po files

The following features would help:

# Allow to install language independent templates.
# Allow to auto-translate the XML for their templates on load. This is used in MS Office and it could save a lot of space. Any better approach is welcome. There must stay the possibility to keep lang dependant layout. For example, various countries use different layout for letters. We should also pay attention to RTL vs. LTR.
# Create easy tool that allow to update localizations using .po files.

TODO: Investigate how it is done in MS Office

Hmm, I am somewhat unable to find anything useful about localizing templates online in MS Office. A short note about something simmilar can be found at [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4f9sc85k.aspx], see the section "Localizing Document Text".

It seems that MS Office includes some few general templates by default. Many others can be download from a [http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/default.aspx localized site]. If you repace "en-gb" with "de-de" in the URL, you get the [http://office.microsoft.com/de-de/templates/default.aspx german localization]. It seems that there are extra templates for each localization. They are NOT multilingual and are NOT localized on load.

It is pity. IMHO, the multilingual templates would be good only for distributors that would like to distribute the templates on CD/DVD (disk space). It will not be so great for web access. If all the localized strings are in one file, the download would be greather. If the localized strings are in extra files, it would need to define dependencies between the files, ... and it would make the manipulation with templates more complicated.

On the other hand, We could add the support for templates with localizations in the external file. The tempalate with the single localization can be done on load or already on download ;-)

In each case, we should create tools that would extract/merge the strings, so they can be localized using .po files.

== Site with OOo templates ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

==== Why a new project? ====

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

==== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ====

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-08-31T15:49:46Z

Pmladek: /* Better Open Template Dialog */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== Easier access from menu ==

==== Motivation ====

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

==== Proposed solution ====

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Better Open Template Dialog ==

==== Motivation ====

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates.

==== Competitive Analyses ====

"File -> New" dialog in iWorks:

[[Image:1_file_new_dialog.png]]

==== Proposed solution ====

We can improve the current dialog "Templates and Documents". It includes some questionable entries:
* the tab "New Document" duplicates the menu entries File/New/*. Note that the dialog is started from this menu.
* the tab "My documents" duplicates functionality of File/Open
* the tab "Samples" shows no file by default. I wonder if there are any samples at all. What is the exact difference between a template and a sample?

The new dialog must be clean & easy, yet powerful. It must provide:
* categories - list box/tree view
* names/previews - like iWorks?
** the preview image should be saved to the templates by default; We should be able to create in the fly for the older documents. Note that the functionality is somehow already implemented in Impress. You can see it on the right side (Task Pane) when you select the tab "Master Pages".
* [Create], [Cancel], [Help] buttons
* [Open file...] button? - probably yes, we want to be able to start this dialog directly from the desktop
* [Manage templates] button? - no, can be done from the menu
* search/filter!
* tooltip on the preview shows info like creator, date, etc.
** more can be in the right-click menu
* templates from web (official or user defined site)?
** would have the same categories (box/tree)
** could be merged into the existing tree (would need check box to disable the web access)
** could be in an extra tab
** lets solve it later but be prepared, the web is not available now but...
* [Advanced Search] button?
** can be used to search by extra informations (author, comments) but also by extra information from the web site (ratings).
* anything other? - hopefully not

The recent proposal by Kendy:

[[Image:from-template-rework.png]]

== Better Edit/Save Template dialogs ==

Scenario: User wants to modify an existing template or create a new one

The current dialogs File/New/Templates and Documents and File/Templates are a bit confusing. The main problems are already described at http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=20676

== Categories ==

Scenario: A vendor wants to distribute a couple of temlates nicely sorted that can be added to OOo easily

OOo should support hierarchical categories with more than one level. The default hierachy should be defined by upstream. The categories should be extensible by 3rd party packages. Such extra categories could have localized names.

One solution would be to use the .directory desktop entry defined by [http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.9.4.html]

OOo is quite XML based. I wonder if there exist any similar standardized solution based on xml.

== Localization of templates ==

Scenario 1.: A template includes many graphics and only few localized strings

Scenario 2.: A vendor wants to localize tempaltes using .po files

The following features would help:

# Allow to install language independent templates.
# Allow to auto-translate the XML for their templates on load. This is used in MS Office and it could save a lot of space. Any better approach is welcome. There must stay the possibility to keep lang dependant layout. For example, various countries use different layout for letters. We should also pay attention to RTL vs. LTR.
# Create easy tool that allow to update localizations using .po files.

TODO: Investigate how it is done in MS Office

Hmm, I am somewhat unable to find anything useful about localizing templates online in MS Office. A short note about something simmilar can be found at [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4f9sc85k.aspx], see the section "Localizing Document Text".

It seems that MS Office includes some few general templates by default. Many others can be download from a [http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/default.aspx localized site]. If you repace "en-gb" with "de-de" in the URL, you get the [http://office.microsoft.com/de-de/templates/default.aspx german localization]. It seems that there are extra templates for each localization. They are NOT multilingual and are NOT localized on load.

It is pity. IMHO, the multilingual templates would be good only for distributors that would like to distribute the templates on CD/DVD (disk space). It will not be so great for web access. If all the localized strings are in one file, the download would be greather. If the localized strings are in extra files, it would need to define dependencies between the files, ... and it would make the manipulation with templates more complicated.

On the other hand, We could add the support for templates with localizations in the external file. The tempalate with the single localization can be done on load or already on download ;-)

In each case, we should create tools that would extract/merge the strings, so they can be localized using .po files.

== Site with OOo templates ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

==== Why a new project? ====

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

==== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ====

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

[[Category:Features]]

File:From-template-rework.png

2006-08-31T15:38:32Z

Pmladek: Proposed dialog by Kendy

Proposed dialog by Kendy

File:1 file new dialog.png

2006-08-31T15:16:45Z

Pmladek: File -> New dialog in iWorks

File -> New dialog in iWorks

Feature - Templates

2006-08-31T15:04:23Z

Pmladek: /* Easier access from menu */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== Easier access from menu ==

==== Motivation ====

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

==== Proposed solution ====

* "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
** change to "File -> From Template..."
* "File -> Templates"
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** "Edit.../Save..."
*** don't we want to do this from normal "Open.../Save As..."?
*** let's solve this later
** "Address Book Source..."
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** "Organize..."
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Better Open Template Dialog ==

Scenario: Creating a document should start with selecting a picture of the type of document you are going to write

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates. documentation.openoffice.org contains a starting position, but some selection of best of breed needs to be done as well as seperation by language and theme, cleanup in terms of setting titles and licences and generation of previews. AppleTemplateDialog.png

It could include a button "search for more on the web" that will allow to take templates from external sites, see above.

== Better Edit/Save Template dialogs ==

Scenario: User wants to modify an existing template or create a new one

The current dialogs File/New/Templates and Documents and File/Templates are a bit confusing. The main problems are already described at http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=20676

== Categories ==

Scenario: A vendor wants to distribute a couple of temlates nicely sorted that can be added to OOo easily

OOo should support hierarchical categories with more than one level. The default hierachy should be defined by upstream. The categories should be extensible by 3rd party packages. Such extra categories could have localized names.

One solution would be to use the .directory desktop entry defined by [http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.9.4.html]

OOo is quite XML based. I wonder if there exist any similar standardized solution based on xml.

== Localization of templates ==

Scenario 1.: A template includes many graphics and only few localized strings

Scenario 2.: A vendor wants to localize tempaltes using .po files

The following features would help:

# Allow to install language independent templates.
# Allow to auto-translate the XML for their templates on load. This is used in MS Office and it could save a lot of space. Any better approach is welcome. There must stay the possibility to keep lang dependant layout. For example, various countries use different layout for letters. We should also pay attention to RTL vs. LTR.
# Create easy tool that allow to update localizations using .po files.

TODO: Investigate how it is done in MS Office

Hmm, I am somewhat unable to find anything useful about localizing templates online in MS Office. A short note about something simmilar can be found at [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4f9sc85k.aspx], see the section "Localizing Document Text".

It seems that MS Office includes some few general templates by default. Many others can be download from a [http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/default.aspx localized site]. If you repace "en-gb" with "de-de" in the URL, you get the [http://office.microsoft.com/de-de/templates/default.aspx german localization]. It seems that there are extra templates for each localization. They are NOT multilingual and are NOT localized on load.

It is pity. IMHO, the multilingual templates would be good only for distributors that would like to distribute the templates on CD/DVD (disk space). It will not be so great for web access. If all the localized strings are in one file, the download would be greather. If the localized strings are in extra files, it would need to define dependencies between the files, ... and it would make the manipulation with templates more complicated.

On the other hand, We could add the support for templates with localizations in the external file. The tempalate with the single localization can be done on load or already on download ;-)

In each case, we should create tools that would extract/merge the strings, so they can be localized using .po files.

== Site with OOo templates ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

==== Why a new project? ====

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

==== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ====

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

[[Category:Features]]

Feature - Templates

2006-08-31T14:57:58Z

Pmladek:

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== Easier access from menu ==

==== Motivation ====

The current menu entry "File/New/Templates and Documents" is a bit confusing because the other entries below "File/New" starts new blank documents of the gicen type. The menu "File/Templates" is too hiden and includes the strange "Address Book" entry.

==== Proposed solution ====

* "File -> From Template..." instead of "File -> New -> Templates and Documents"
* File -> Templates
** move to the same part of the menu as Wizards
** Edit.../Save...
*** don't we want to do this from normal Open.../Save As...?
*** let's solve this later
** Address Book Source...
*** move to "Tools -> Options"?
** Organize...
*** Eh? - see below

[[Image:file-menu-rework.png]]

== Better Open Template Dialog ==

Scenario: Creating a document should start with selecting a picture of the type of document you are going to write

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates. documentation.openoffice.org contains a starting position, but some selection of best of breed needs to be done as well as seperation by language and theme, cleanup in terms of setting titles and licences and generation of previews. AppleTemplateDialog.png

It could include a button "search for more on the web" that will allow to take templates from external sites, see above.

== Better Edit/Save Template dialogs ==

Scenario: User wants to modify an existing template or create a new one

The current dialogs File/New/Templates and Documents and File/Templates are a bit confusing. The main problems are already described at http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=20676

== Categories ==

Scenario: A vendor wants to distribute a couple of temlates nicely sorted that can be added to OOo easily

OOo should support hierarchical categories with more than one level. The default hierachy should be defined by upstream. The categories should be extensible by 3rd party packages. Such extra categories could have localized names.

One solution would be to use the .directory desktop entry defined by [http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.9.4.html]

OOo is quite XML based. I wonder if there exist any similar standardized solution based on xml.

== Localization of templates ==

Scenario 1.: A template includes many graphics and only few localized strings

Scenario 2.: A vendor wants to localize tempaltes using .po files

The following features would help:

# Allow to install language independent templates.
# Allow to auto-translate the XML for their templates on load. This is used in MS Office and it could save a lot of space. Any better approach is welcome. There must stay the possibility to keep lang dependant layout. For example, various countries use different layout for letters. We should also pay attention to RTL vs. LTR.
# Create easy tool that allow to update localizations using .po files.

TODO: Investigate how it is done in MS Office

Hmm, I am somewhat unable to find anything useful about localizing templates online in MS Office. A short note about something simmilar can be found at [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4f9sc85k.aspx], see the section "Localizing Document Text".

It seems that MS Office includes some few general templates by default. Many others can be download from a [http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/default.aspx localized site]. If you repace "en-gb" with "de-de" in the URL, you get the [http://office.microsoft.com/de-de/templates/default.aspx german localization]. It seems that there are extra templates for each localization. They are NOT multilingual and are NOT localized on load.

It is pity. IMHO, the multilingual templates would be good only for distributors that would like to distribute the templates on CD/DVD (disk space). It will not be so great for web access. If all the localized strings are in one file, the download would be greather. If the localized strings are in extra files, it would need to define dependencies between the files, ... and it would make the manipulation with templates more complicated.

On the other hand, We could add the support for templates with localizations in the external file. The tempalate with the single localization can be done on load or already on download ;-)

In each case, we should create tools that would extract/merge the strings, so they can be localized using .po files.

== Site with OOo templates ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

==== Why a new project? ====

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

==== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ====

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russell (Worldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ Development site is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooop - the new OOo Premium project by Kami, license
is controversal [Kami is trying to solve the possible Licensing problems], it include many free templates from the other projects
Licensing related things:
Many templates comes from OOO's Documentation project, OOExtras, OOo's Distibution project
# Templates
## OOo Distibution's project release a Extras CD (for 2.0.1) where included templates from original StarOffice 5.2 CD that went free - the original owner of these templates (around 18 templates) is http://www.templatezone.com/. I tried to contact with them but my question is still unanswered.
# Cliparts
## Cisco's Network Topology Icons - Cisco has allowed me to pack their icons with OpenOffice.org. They asked me to warn use to not to modify these standardised iconset. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac47/2.html The license is easy and clear: "Cisco icons are globally recognized and accepted as the standard in network icon topologies.Use them freely without alteration."
# Fonts
## Ray Larabie has allowed me to pack their fonts with OpenOffice.org. He has a different license. His homepage is here: http://www.larabiefonts.com/ - FAQ: http://www.larabiefonts.com/help.html

* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

[[Category:Features]]

File:File-menu-rework.png

2006-08-31T14:56:59Z

Pmladek: Proposed change by Jan

Proposed change by Jan

Feature - Templates

2006-07-21T15:21:17Z

Pmladek: /* Localization of templates */

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== Site with OOo temapltes ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)
* is any extra support for signed templates necessary?

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

==== Why a new project? ====

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

==== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ====

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russel (woldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ - the new OOo premium project by Kami, license
is controversal, it include many free templates from the other projects
* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== Better Open Template Dialog ==

Scenario: Creating a document should start with selecting a picture of the type of document you are going to write

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates. documentation.openoffice.org contains a starting position, but some selection of best of breed needs to be done as well as seperation by language and theme, cleanup in terms of setting titles and licences and generation of previews. AppleTemplateDialog.png

It could include a button "search for more on the web" that will allow to take templates from external sites, see above.

== Better Edit/Save Template dialogs ==

Scenario: User wants to modify an existing template or create a new one

The current dialogs File/New/Templates and Documents and File/Templates are a bit confusing. The main problems are already described at http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=20676

== Categories ==

Scenario: A vendor wants to distribute a couple of temlates nicely sorted that can be added to OOo easily

OOo should support hierarchical categories with more than one level. The default hierachy should be defined by upstream. The categories should be extensible by 3rd party packages. Such extra categories could have localized names.

One solution would be to use the .directory desktop entry defined by [http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.9.4.html]

OOo is quite XML based. I wonder if there exist any similar standardized solution based on xml.

== Localization of templates ==

Scenario 1.: A template includes many graphics and only few localized strings

Scenario 2.: A vendor wants to localize tempaltes using .po files

The following features would help:

# Allow to install language independent templates.
# Allow to auto-translate the XML for their templates on load. This is used in MS Office and it could save a lot of space. Any better approach is welcome. There must stay the possibility to keep lang dependant layout. For example, various countries use different layout for letters. We should also pay attention to RTL vs. LTR.
# Create easy tool that allow to update localizations using .po files.

TODO: Investigate how it is done in MS Office

Hmm, I am somewhat unable to find anything useful about localizing templates online in MS Office. A short note about something simmilar can be found at [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4f9sc85k.aspx], see the section "Localizing Document Text".

It seems that MS Office includes some few general templates by default. Many others can be download from a [http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/default.aspx localized site]. If you repace "en-gb" with "de-de" in the URL, you get the [http://office.microsoft.com/de-de/templates/default.aspx german localization]. It seems that there are extra templates for each localization. They are NOT multilingual and are NOT localized on load.

It is pity. IMHO, the multilingual templates would be good only for distributors that would like to distribute the templates on CD/DVD (disk space). It will not be so great for web access. If all the localized strings are in one file, the download would be greather. If the localized strings are in extra files, it would need to define dependencies between the files, ... and it would make the manipulation with templates more complicated.

On the other hand, We could add the support for templates with localizations in the external file. The tempalate with the single localization can be done on load or already on download ;-)

In each case, we should create tools that would extract/merge the strings, so they can be localized using .po files.

Feature - Templates

2006-07-21T14:41:28Z

Pmladek: /* Site with OOo temapltes */

Feature - Templates

2006-07-19T16:06:53Z

Pmladek:

Templates are very important for any office suite. Here are some ideas how to improve the current situation on OOo.

== Site with OOo temapltes ==

Scenario: One place where users can easily find and contribute templates

It would be great to gather all existing templates at one place and create some useful web framework around it:

* templates can be sorted into groups
* screenshots and short descriptions
* users can comment the templates and vote
* it should be possible to hide poor templates (based on the voting results)
* users can download only a selected template or all temlates at once
* force contributors to define license, title, author, really use the template format, ...
* the structure is well defined, so such (even 3rd party) sites can be online searched by OOo itself
* also the meta information (license, vote results, ...) should be store a well defined way, so they can be used by the online search from OOo (to filter poor templates, ...)

See http://www.kde-files.org/ as an interesting example.

==== Why a new project? ====

# The existing projects are nearly dead or they are not woldwide known, ...
# They do not allow to import the templates easily into OOo

==== Already existing projects [FIXME]: ====

* http://documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/template/index.html - dead, unclear license, only few templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooextras - nearly dead, LGPL, about 200 templates
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooolabels - new project by Russel (woldlabel.com), GPL, planed more than 500
templates mostly labels. He has some more plans.
* http://www.kde-files.org/ - one year old project, free, about 50 templates for OOo, 10 new in 2006
* http://ftp.fsf.hu/OpenOffice.org_hu/devel/Premium_source_splitted/ - the new OOo premium project by Kami, license
is controversal, it include many free templates from the other projects
* Caolan has a nice selection of tempaltes for Fedora

== Better Open Template Dialog ==

Scenario: Creating a document should start with selecting a picture of the type of document you are going to write

We have a create from template wizard for impress, this is a suitable route for creating a word processor document as well. The existing impress dialog is a bit klunky and doesn't by default contain many examples for openoffice.org. The Apple iWork suite has nice templates and a nice selector widget. So we need a better template dialog like the iWork one, and ideally with the ability to browse an online set of quality controlled templates. documentation.openoffice.org contains a starting position, but some selection of best of breed needs to be done as well as seperation by language and theme, cleanup in terms of setting titles and licences and generation of previews. AppleTemplateDialog.png

It could include a button "search for more on the web" that will allow to take templates from external sites, see above.

== Better Edit/Save Template dialogs ==

Scenario: User wants to modify an existing template or create a new one

The current dialogs File/New/Templates and Documents and File/Templates are a bit confusing. The main problems are already described at http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=20676

== Categories ==

Scenario: A vendor wants to distribute a couple of temlates nicely sorted that can be added to OOo easily

OOo should support hierarchical categories with more than one level. The default hierachy should be defined by upstream. The categories should be extensible by 3rd party packages. Such extra categories could have localized names.

One solution would be to use the .directory desktop entry defined by [http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-0.9.4.html]

OOo is quite XML based. I wonder if there exist any similar standardized solution based on xml.

== Localization of templates ==

Scenario 1.: A template includes many graphics and only few localized strings

Scenario 2.: A vendor wants to localize tempaltes using .po files

The following features would help:

# Allow to install language independent templates.
# Allow to auto-translate the XML for their templates on load. This is used in MS Office and it could save a lot of space. Any better approach is welcome. There must stay the possibility to keep lang dependant layout. For example, various countries use different layout for letters. We should also pay attention to RTL vs. LTR.
# Create easy tool that allow to update localizations using .po files.

TODO: Investigate how it is done in MS Office

Building with ooobuild

2006-04-18T13:30:58Z

Pmladek: /* See also */

== Vanilla Up-stream builds ==

See the [http://tools.openoffice.org#Build tools] project for build guides for various platforms.

Also for OS/X see [[MacOSXBuildInstructions]]

For GNU/Linux Sparc, with gcc4.1 & gcj, see [[GNULinuxSparcPorting]]

== ooo-build builds ==

<center>
'''If you are looking for additional building tips for Windows check [[Windows |this]] page first.'''
</center>
----
 

=== configure ===


The build process is pretty complicated; you have a choice
of commands now; although running both won't actually hurt:

./autogen.sh # only for the CVS version
./configure # the packaged version


This will guess which branch snapshot you want to build; if
you have other ideas use the --with-tag option; eg.
<code>--with-tag=src680-m65</code> for a legacy branch.


If for some reason you have a 31337 multi-threaded computer,
with great slabs of RAM; you'll want to use --with-num-cpus=8
etc. NB. it's not clever to force the build to swap like a
demented pawnbroker by using an artificially high number; C++
compilation is seriously memory hungry.


In particular, building SRC680 requires a recent jdk & a
version of apache-ant. If you use a Novell system, just do:
<code>sudo rug in apache-ant</code>, alternatively download
a package from [http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=apache-ant&submit=Search+..." rpmfind.net] or failing that see [http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi Ant download]
& set the ANT environment variable
appropriately before configuring.


=== Requirements ===
A recent version of automake, such as the 1.9 series.

If you don't have a working Java VM (i.e. any runtime), you should pass <code>--with-java=no</code> to either <code>autogen.sh</code> or <code>configure</code>.

You need the Archive/Zip module for Perl. (perl-Archive-Zip on RPM-based distributions, libarchive-zip-perl on dpkg-based distributions)

You need the development package for Python (this would be python-devel on RPM-based distributions).

You need curl and curl-devel.

You need odbc_config to be present. On SUSE systems, this is in the unixODBC-devel package.

You need libsndfile and libsndfile-devel.

If you don't have a recent enough openldap, pass <code>--disable-openldap</code> to <code>autogen.sh</code> or <code>configure</code>.

You need neon and neon-devel.

You need qt3 and qt3-devel, or if you don't have the KDE development packages, pass <code>--disable-kde</code> to <code>autogen.sh</code> or <code>configure</code>.

You need mozilla-nss-devel.

In SuSE, you need gecko-sdk.

=== download ===


By the time you've upgraded your system to the point that it
has all the packages you need to start building OO.o (mozilla etc. etc.) you're almost at the point that you
can download the bulk of the source. To do this, after a
successful configure simply type: <code>./download</code> and wait.


If for whatever reason this fails, you can verify your download
by fetching the equivalent .md5 file & comparing it to
the result of <code>md5sum <archive></code>. The source
archives are http://go-ooo.org/packages/SRC680
- put the source in ooo-build/src.


=== make ===


This is the taxing bit - type <code>make</code> and don't forget
to press enter. Quite possibly you want to log the output, so
why not <code>make 2>&1 | tee /tmp/log</code>.


Since ooo-build wraps the actual OO.o configuration &
build process, there are a number of internal config checks that
also need to pass. For a first time build it's well worth staying
near the console while everything unpacks, and the internal
configure runs; if that completes without incident - you're
usually into the heavy-duty thumb twiddling.


== See also ==

*[[Installing]]
*[[Tinderbox Setup]]
*[[BuildSpeedup]]
*[[OpenSUSE_Build_Instructions|openSUSE build instructions]]

[[Category: Development]]