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Released: Apache OpenOffice 4.1.15
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OpenOffice.org Conference (OOoCon 2008)

5th-7th November 2008
Beijing, China
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Abstracts of Conference Papers - Friday

Funding the project - the networked way

André Schnabel (project member / supervisory board member / OOo Germanophone project / OpenOffice.org DEutshcland e.V.)

Abstract: Funding the project is a topic which has been (and will be) discussed for several years. As the project is growing (in numbers and in activities) funds will get even more important. As the project itself is no legal entity, we need structures to support funds. The presentation is going to show the ways we currently have for funding the project and how we can find new ways. The presentation will be held from my perspective as a community member, as well as founding member of the German association "OOo Deutschland e. V." - presenting our work and problems and how we try to cooperate with other associations to fund the OpenOffice.org project. Aim of the presentation is to get to know the associations that exist worldwide for supporting OOo and develop ideas how to make our work more efficient.

Biography: I'm professional developer, based in Germany. I'm involved in the OOo project since 2002 taking several roles (Co-Lead of the Germanophone project, Lead of QA project, member of the Community Council). As founding member of OOo Deutschland e.V. I made several experiences about the problem but also the joy of founding the project.

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OpenOffice - what influence does it (and you) have on the future?

Haegg, Fredirk (QA Engineer / Sun Microsystems, StarOffice)

Abstract: Recent articles about "ODF as the winning format", critical voices to Microsoft's Format, schools of poor countries being able to offer Office-education to new generations because of OpenOffice.org.. We are making an important difference to the way the future will look for some people. I believe many of us doesn't realize how amazingly big this movement really is. This was what made me come up with the idea. - Short interviews of people from third-world countries. To hear what OpenOffice.org really means for them. - Presentation of news-texts, to find indicators with which help we might draw conclusions about OOo's future position, on a global-view.

Biography: 6 years at StarOffice (6 years next week)

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Why registration is important for the OOo project

Martin Damboldt (Program Manager / Sun Microsystems GmbH)

Abstract: Often registration rings a bell for people and has some kind of bad touch. The Service Tag based registration support we use in OpenOffice.org is anything else than evil. The whole OpenOffice.org Project can massively benefit from the outcomes we gather by registrations. Some key aspects and important items and features will be highlighted. Give an over view about OpenOffice.org registration. Show benefits in relation to product development, optimization, feedback channels. Demonstration of Google Maps ("Pink dot Maps")

Biography: Martin Damboldt was born 1976 in Lueneburg, Germany. He joined StarDivision in 1996. Since 2002 he is responsible Program Manager for OpenOffice.org / StarOffice.

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Project: Education

Suarez-Potts, Louis (Community Manager / Sun Microsystems, Inc.)

Abstract: How can we get OpenOffice taught in schools? I mean not only the teaching of courses for users but also and perhaps more fundamentally important, the teaching of coding OpenOffice.org. Engaging students (and also instructors and professors) in coding OpenOffice.org in the formal environment of a secondary and post-school sounds promising?after all, we all recognize the value that students currently bring to OpenOffice.org and Foss in general, and we also all probably believe that by engaging students we can help build the future we want. (It goes without saying that just about every enterprise believes the same and many have significantly funded education efforts throughout the world.) If the why seems clear enough, the how remains a lot more murky. This presentation examines what OpenOffice.org and other Foss projects have been doing and evaluates the efforts. My interest is pragmatic: which efforts have resulted in contributors (of all levels) coming to OpenOffice.org and other projects?

Biography: Louis Suárez-Potts is the longtime Community Manager and Chair of the Community Council for OpenOffice.org; he joined Sun Microsystems in 2007 and has led the OpenOffice.org community since 2000. The lead and co-lead of several projects and the primary spokesperson and representative of OpenOffice.org, Suárez-Potts also represents the project regarding OpenDocument format (ODF) matters, and is on the OASIS ODF Adoption Technical Committee and is a member of the ODF Alliance. He speaks frequently on the ODF, OpenOffice.org, education and open source, and community development throughout the world. Suárez-Potts is currently working on several articles regarding open source development and education. He lives in Toronto and received his PhD from U.C. Berkeley.

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FLOSS around the world: similarities & differences

Ghosh, Rishab (Senior Researcher, Head Collaborative Creativity Group / United Nations University UNU-MERIT)

Abstract: Free/Libre/Open Source Software developer communities are growing around the world. Most code is still written in Western Europe and North America, but a large and increasing amount of developers are contributing from Asia - especially China, India and Japan; Latin America and even Africa. The FLOSSWorld conducted the first large, multi-lingual survey of developers, businesses, universities and governments covering 8 countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa, along with a detailed comparison of regional and national collaborative development platforms, mailing lists, projects and communities. It turns out that FLOSS developers are very similar wherever in the world they live.

Biography: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh first developed and sold free software in 1994. He switched from writing in C and assembly to English, and has been writing about the economics of free software and collaborative production since 1994. He is Founding International and Managing Editor of First Monday, the most widely read peer-reviewed on-line journal of the Internet, and Senior Researcher and Head of the Collaborative Creativity Group at MERIT, at the United Nations University in Maastricht, the Netherlands. In 1997, he co-authored tools to measure contributions by free software developers by analysing source code, pioneering now widely used research techniques. In 2000 he coordinated the European Union -funded FLOSS project, the most comprehensive early study of free/libre/open source users and developers. He is involved in government policy initiatives on free software and open standards, and conducts research funded by the European Union and the US National Science Foundation. In January 2007, the European Commission published a major study led by him on the impact of open source on the economy, competitiveness and innovation. Since 2005 Rishab has been board member of the Open Source Initiative.

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Writer 3.0 - What's new, what's going on

Wittmann, Oliver-Rainer (developer / Sun Microsystems GmbH)

Abstract: The presentation will give an overview about the made changes and enhancements in Writer for OpenOffice.org 3.0. Highlights are: - Multiple Page View - Cross-references to the headings and numbered paragraphs - New list level attributes - Better user interface and better support for notes by M. Odendahl - Microsoft Word 2007 file format import - Enhancement of indexes by G. Castagno - Text grid enhancement for CJK by Novell - Grammar checking framework Also included in the presentation are changes and enhancements, which are currently in progress. Highlights are: - Support for meta data according ODF 1.2 - Support for multiple different views for a certain text document - Introduction of outline level attribute The presentation will demonstrate the community work of the Sun Writer team. The presentation will also show the influence of ODF on the feature/enhancement work in OOo.

Biography: - Software engineer with Diploma in computer science, University of Hamburg, 1999 - Since July 2002 working at OOo Writer as a Sun employee

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Making the New Notes - Community, Cooperation, Concepts

Max Odendahl, Christoph Noack, Christian Jansen (OOo Developer, OOo UX Co-Lead, UX Engineer / Christian: Sun Microsystems GmbH)

Abstract: The activity to improve the often requested Notes functionality in Writer was somehow special: including major community involvement. The software development was done by a student initially sponsored in the Google Summer of Code and the User Experience (UX) was mainly represented by a volunteer; both being supported by Sun employees. *** This case study wants to shed some light on the development of the Notes and how to overcome the main challenge - pure remote collaboration. With tools like wiki or mail we structured ideas, collected requirements, developed design proposals and discussed issues. *** So, how far did we get? What have we learned during our cooperation? What worked well what not? We want to share with the community the experience we gathered. And we want to show what interesting ideas are still there to further improve the Notes after OpenOffice.org 3.0 being released.

Biography: Besides studying computer engineering in Germany, Max Odendahl started working for OOo development in Summer 07 with GSoC and has stayed ever since and developed the new Notes2. *** After supporting OOo for years, Christoph Noack joined the Notes2 activity being the UX representative. The rest of his spare time is spent as Co-Lead of the UX project. His normal job is also in the field of Human Machine Interaction, but this case he works for the automotive industry. *** Christian Jansen is an User Experience Engineer at Sun Microsystems. During the last 9 years, he played a major role in designing the user interfaces of OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Lightning and Web Based Applications. He holds a degree in Communication Design from the 'Hamburger Akademie für Kommunikationsdesign und Art Direction'.

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Layout: towards a pretty UI

Michael Meeks (lowly developer / Novell, Inc.)

Abstract: OpenOffice has a vast amount of user-interface code, all of it targeting the (increasingly) venerable though dependable VCL toolkit. Come and see how the new layout work, built on the existing UNO toolkit/ makes moving away from VCL for much of the application possible. See sparkling demos, find out how to help out migrating old dialogues; catch up with the progress so far, and find out how to create new and beautiful dialogues.

Biography: Michael is a Christian and enthusiastic believer in Free software. He very much enjoys working for Novell where as a member of the Desktop research team he has worked on desktop infrastructure and applications, particularly OpenOffice.org, CORBA, Bonobo, Nautilus and accessibility, amongst other interesting things. He now works as an Architect, trying to understand and nudge the direction of our Linux Desktop work. Prior to this he worked for Quantel gaining expertise in real time AV editing and playback achieved with high performance focused hardware / software solutions.

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Red Office 4.5 UI Implementation

Sun, Chao (framework enginneer / Beijing Redflag 2000 Software Co., Ltd.)

Abstract: To develop a brand new highly optimized framework for the current OpenOffice system. Giving developers the maximum flexibility and the comprehensibility. One Layout Manager for all user interface elements based on UNO, Extensions and Scripting code extending and manipulating the user interface.

Biography: Master Degree of Industrial Computing Systems, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK Work Experience: 05/2007-Now

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Properties Sidebar, make editing much easier

Yang, Jinfang (Staff software engineering / IBM)

Abstract: This topic will give a description about Symphony Properties Sidebar, from what it is like and how it is implemented. In normal ways, when a user wants to do some properties changes to an object, he/she need select the object, find the menu and open the related dialogue, go through the attributes, change and apply. Why not collect users' most common used operations and make them docked at the first sight so that he/she can operate the at the most convenience? That's what Symphony Properties Sidebar aims at. It covers text properties, paragraph properties, shape properties, cell properties, graphic properties and page properties... For those items not so common used, sidebar provides "All Properties" button at the end of the panel. Click the button will bring up the whole set model dialogue Through the Properties Sidebar, users can change the object's properties by minimized clicks. It gets very positive feedback and will have much more rich content in the future. In the topic, there will be also some implementation details. It combines docking window and infobox's technology. Also it enhanced existing docking window, from visual, layout, to window management styles. The structure of the sidebar panel and the message delivering mechanism between documents and sidebar will be presented.

Biography: Working on IBM Symphony since 2004. Has has been technical lead of Symphony overall UI and user experience. Now, work as Presentation application owner.

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Learn more about office users - Feature usage study by document element statistics

Su Ying, Rui ( / IBM)

Abstract: Office Application, with document, spreadsheet, and presentation support, always provides thousands of features. This brings great challenge to office product development focus and office suite UX design. Therefore Office application manufacturers haves program, like MS CEIP to investigate on office feature., while However those programs need great quite much cost and not all the users are willing to participate. This presentation will give another approach on office feature survey from information stored office documents themselves. Comparing to other office feature survey, it's a cheaper and but also effective way. This approach intends to takes large quantity of office documents from internet as sample file sets, detaches document element usage information from them, and analyses those information to get document element statistic for office feature usage frequency, and the correlation between feature and documents sets. we have got some valuable conclusion to show in the presentation. In this presentation, a plug-in live demo based on IBM Lotus Symphony is to be shown on how the method works. In the last part of the presentation, future work on this methods will be discussed.

Biography: Su Ying is working in IBM Lotus Symphony team and in charge of Symphony spreadsheet development for over three years.

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Numbers, Numbers, Numbers, or how data helps to improve the OOo User Interface

Jansen Christian, Bartel Andreas (User Experience Engineer / Sun Microsystems, Inc.)

Abstract: In order to improve the usefulness and usability of OpenOffice.org, the User Experience Project started to put more efforts into quantitative usability engineering. So far, two project have been initiated with the aim to collect and understand usage patterns and to characterize usability bottlenecks encountered by users of OpenOffice.org. Usage tracking and the deployment of a standardized usability evaluation questionnaire are well suited instruments to understand how OpenOffice.org is actually used and what kind of usability problems occur during its usage. This presentation will introduce both methods in detail and discuss their value for the development of OpenOffice.org. A Q&A session will round up the talk.

Biography: Christian Jansen is an User Experience Engineer at Sun Microsystems. During the last 9 years, he played a major role in designing the user interfaces of OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Lightning and Web Based Applications. He holds a degree in Communication Design from the 'Hamburger Akademie für Kommunikationsdesign und Art Direction'.

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Accessibility in Symphony

Xing Li (Staff Software Engineer / IBM)

Abstract: IBM Lotus Symphony is a suite of open-standards-based office productivity tools based on Open Office. IAccessible2 is a new accessibility API which complements Microsoft's earlier work on MSAA and fills critical accessibility API gaps in the MSAA offering. IAccessible2 was created out of necessity to produce a usable and accessible ODF based office suite. It is an engineered accessibility interface and helps provide an Assistive Technology (AT) access to many significantly advanced functions in rich document applications. The additional functionality includes support for rich text, tables, spreadsheets, Web 2.0 applications, and other large mainstream applications. IAccessible2 is firstly implemented in IBM Lotus Symphony and has already got support from the leading AT vendors in their screen reader software. The presentation includes: Symphony brief introduction and major accessibility improvements IAccessible2 API introduction IAccessible2 architecture implementation in Symphony Future consideration on IA2 and OpenOffice.org This session will also include a demo to illustrate the support from Jaws on IA2 implementation in Symphony. The demo will be focused on those IA2 highlighted supports compared with MS Office, such as numbering & bullet, document attributes, table support, dialogue control relations, accessible enhancements in ODF 1.1, etc.

Biography: Symphony chief programmer of IBM China development Lab

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Improving and Maintaining Performance of OO in Long-term Development

Li Heng (Project Lead Of Performance Project / Beijing RedFlag Chinese 2000 Software Co.,LTD.)

Abstract: So far, the location of OO hotspots is dynamic,but the usual focus, "String", "Lock", etc. It is very different in different release versions. That means if all improvements of performance may cancel out each other when we use different methods or follow different directions. OO is a huge software system, so we can not make it faster and faster only by tuning. Somewhere, we need refactor the code in a large scope. For refactoring and improvement follow the same direction or method we need measure the performance of OO in the same conditions, and comparing with same benchmark. This session will show some tools (valgrind, virtualmachine ,etc.) that can measure performance of OO in the same conditions, and list some benchmark can compare and find some problems.

Biography: Biography: 1.Director of System Research & Development Dept. and Interoperability Technology Dept. of RedFlag Chinese 2000. 2.Senior Software Architect for RedFlag Chinese 2000. 3.Worked on RedOffice/RedOffice SDK for RedFlag Chinese 2000 for 7 years.

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OOo & ODF Accessibility today

Timmermann, Malte (Technical Architect OpenOffice.org, Member OOo Security Team / Sun Microsystems / OOo Architecture Designs and Implementations in multiple projects)

Abstract: Accessibility is a very important thing, and the demand becomes higher and higher. We started our Accessibility efforts with OOo 1.1 by supporting the Java Accessibility API. Many things had changed since then. We now have native support for GNOME Accessibility, and also make good progress on Mac Accessibility with our native Mac port. The next step is to improve Windows Accessibility by replacing the old Java based accessibility with the new IAccessible2 API. Accessibility is also important for document formats, so we made many improvements in ODF 1.1, and are just evaluating the ODF 1.2 specification for Accessibility issues. The presentation will give you a good overview about all these Accessibility related technologies, and what programmers and document authors have to take care for.

Biography: Working on StarOffice and OpenOffice.org since 1991 in many different areas. Initiator and member of the OOo Security Team, member of the OASIS ODF TC. Details see http://blogs.sun.com/malte/entry/who_is_malte

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IBM Lotus Symphony Technical Overview

Ma Yong Lin (Advisory Software Engineer/ESC Member invited on regular basis / IBM)

Abstract: Based on OpenOffice.org technology and leverages the IBM Lotus Expeditor, IBM Lotus Symphony offers more than a simple office application suite. Symphony also provides very rich APIs for customers to build composite applications which can integrate Symphony. This presentation gives an overview of the architecture of Symphony and also show various enhancement made based on customer requirements in such areas as office suite and reusable components. This presentation also serve as an introduction to some of the other topics that will be presented in this conference.

Biography: I Worked on Symphony project since 2002. Ever lead the development work of many areas, like Infobox, Provisioning, Stability, Performance and Symphony on Mac. Currently, I am an achitect of Symphony.

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Icon-Language, from vision to icon-typing

Gros, Jochen (Emeritus Prof. Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach / )

Abstract: Since early days of Mac and PC, there are predictions of "a new language of icons, that may succeed, where Esperanto has failed". Meanwhile I developed the visual grammar and around 1000 icon-glyphics (pixel and spline based). NOW I'd like to show icon-typing in OpenOffice via "Autocorrect": 1. Type "love+", "hug+", or "party+" and get little pictures (like emoticons). 2. Type "art", "architecture" or "office" and get the words together with pictures (as illustrations). 3. Type a short message in any spoken language and get the same picture language. FUTURE options and problems. 1. OpenOffice allows animated GIFs per "Autocorrect", but the icon-vocabularies are not easy to transfer as a package. 2. Icon-Typing is already programmed inside a font (like Arial), but therefore OpenOffice should enable OpenType features, like Apple Pages. 3. Lots of different projects could make use of icon-language in a text-processing program, starting with language-learning for kids.

Biography: Born 1944. From 1974-2004 Professor for Design-Theory at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (University of Fine Arts) Offenbach, Germany. Fascinated by Egypt hieroglyphics and Chinese Characters and designing icon-language since more than a decade.

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Running OpenOffice.org on Mobile Internet Devices

Cheng, Xiuzhi (Director of Open Source Technology Department / Beijing Redflag 2000 Software Co., Ltd)

Abstract: MID (Mobile Internet Devices) are becoming increasingly popular. This case study shows how to redesign OOo to meet the special requirements of an MID such as UI and operating procedures etc. Additionally, an MID-based OOo implement ion will be introduced and an outlook on further work will be given.

Biography: Born in 1973 from RedFlag2000 Beijing,China. Works on OpenOffice.org and RedOffice for seven years. Now is responsible for the RedFlag2000 OpenSource team. Major on Software Architecture,Document Format.

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Enabling ODF for Social Collaboration with Composite Application and Mashups

Kumar, Santosh (Advisory Software Engineer / IBM)

Abstract: This paper will present how ODF documents can be used in Composite Application and Mashups to create social collaborative applications. It will demonstrate OpenOffice derivative Lotus Symphony spreadsheet as composite application to dynamically generate spreadsheets from Notes/domino database in Lotus Notes 8. The composite application integrated ?on glass? enables ODF spreadsheets to have tabular data, associate styles, create graphical reports charts from Domino database in a single integrated view. The session will show usage of UNO, API?s to add features like drilling down to specific document, presence awareness and ability to chat enabling collaborative functionality in ODF documents. The second part of presentation will outline use case scenario of enabling ODF spreadsheets as Data Mashup to bring contextually related data from feeds and services. These feeds and services in an aggregated way to deliver new understanding of data in web enabled online spreadsheets. It will showcase ODFDOM API layer extensibility to create primitive Dojo based online Spreadsheet which then can be integrated with social services like profile, location and visualization service. It will demonstrate publishing RSS/Atom feeds from ODF spreadsheets to be consumed in Mashup tools enabling creation of mashups with ODF data. Reference: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/CompApps?entry=symphony_spreadsheet_editor_to_display

Biography: Santosh Kumar is currently Advisory Software Engineer at IBM India Software Labs. In his current job role, he is lead developer in Domino Designer in Eclipse. He has been part of team in IBM shipping eclipse based products such as Lotus Component Designer and Data Access tool for IBM Workplace. He has been developing contributed POC?s involving ODF and spreading the knowledge on ODF and its programmability features. Santosh holds a bachelor degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from COEP, Pune, India.

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The New Drawing Core - State-of-the-Art Vector Graphic With OOo

Dürr, Herbert and Behrens, Thorsten ( / )

Abstract: Started more than two years ago, the reworked drawing core is now ready and all of OOo's applications have been ported to make use of it. This talk will showcase the improvements directly visible to the user, as well as highlight the opportunities the new architecture will bring the developers - followed by a walk-through of the most important code components.

Biography: Herbert is a Unix hacker of old, working on OOo's graphics cores from the day it was open-sourced. He knows everything about fonts. Thorsten has spent his hacking time on building a new graphical output layer, and also implemented the post-2.0 Impress slideshow.

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Digital Signatures – A Global Challenge

Joachim Lingner (Software Engineer / Sun Microsystems GmbH)

Abstract: The field of digital signatures is still in development. Algorithms change, because of the constant need for stronger encryption, and new concepts have been developed, for example for long-term archiving. Accordingly, legal regulations have developed or changed as well. Taking this into account, one needs to investigate if OOo's signature implementation still fits the requirements. Because of the diversity of regulations in different countries it would be useful to have “pluggable” signature algorithms in form of extensions. To achieve a seamless and homogeneous integration in OOo, one needs defined ways of getting access to dialogues, the status bar, menu items, selecting the algorithms, etc. The presentation will propose ideas for an appropriate framework.

Biography: Joachim Lingner is a software developer and has been working for Sun Microsystems since 1999. His work focuses on the area of “programmability”, which includes language bindings and extension infrastructure.

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Get OOXML Done Within One Week

wang Alex (chairman and CEO of Sursen, chair of OASIS UOML-X TC, / )

Abstract: After OOXML becomes ISO standard, more and more OpenOffice users will have the requirement to edit the OOXML document they received from others. How long should they wait for this feature? 5 years? 2 years? No, only one week! I am not mad, that's true! When using OpenOffice to edit OOXML document, preserve the whole layout of OOXML document is more than enough for us to settle it without touching the format of OOXML. Furthermore, UOML, the document layout interoperation standard, together with its related tools, has been ready to provide the required functions. therefore, we can easily handle OOXML in a week.

Biography: Donglin Wang (Alex Wang), Professor, 37 years old, chairman and CEO of Sursen, chair of OASIS UOML-X TC, chair of China Docbase standard committee, and he is also awarded the top ten excellent entrepreneur, the top ten leading persons in China¡¯s software industry. Graduated from computer science of Nankai University when he was 19 years old, he began to engage in the research of leading IT technology. In 1995, Alex developed SEP technology independently, only two years later than PDF; meanwhile, Suren Company is founded to push SEP to market. Built from nothing at the beginning, Sursen then boost its success of leading technology in e-Gov and digital library business, extending it into more market widely. As Chief Architect of UOML, Alex knows how to share knowledge out of the limitation of different kinds of format.

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The new ODF 1.2 Metadata Framework and its Support in OpenOffice.org 3

Schubert, Svante (Software Engineer / Sun Microsystems Inc.)

Abstract: * The OASIS OpenDocument Format 1.2 will introduce a new RDF based metadata framework, which leverages all the work done for the Semantic Web onto ODF applications and documents. This presentation will give an easy overview about the importance and elegance of the new metadata framework, the OOo 3 API support and the incredible possibilities of future projects (OOo extensions) using on this functionality. For more information please take a look at the GullFOSS blog for further details. [1] http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/new_extensible_metadata_support_with

Biography: Svante Schubert works for Sun Microsystems and has been full-time developer for OpenOffice.org since its foundation. On OpenOffice.org he is co-lead of the 'ODF Toolkit projekt', responsible for the new ODFDOM library and co-lead of the 'XML project', with emphasis on XML based filters and the new metadata model of the OpenDocument Format 1.2.

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ODFDOM - the new opensourced multi-tiered API for the ISO OpenDocument Format

Svante Schubert (Software Engineer / Sun Microsystems Inc.)

Abstract: ODFDOM is the name of the new free OpenDocument framework sponsored by Sun Microsystems Inc. The Java 5 reference implementation of ODFDOM is available under LGPL3 since May 2008. It is the successor of AODL and Odf4j, designed together with their architects to provide the ODF developer community an easy lightwork programming API, meant to be portable to any object-oriented language. One of the greatest achievement of ODFDOM is that information from the OpenDocument RelaxNG schema is directly generated into the source code, bringing robustness to the ODF developer without any schema knowledge required. The upcoming presentation will give an overview over the layered concept and design ideas, and in addition deliver insights about the roadmap and upcoming features (e.g. RDF support). Please visit the ODFDOM wiki (i.e. http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/ODFDOM) for further details.

Biography: Svante Schubert works for Sun Microsystems and has been full-time developer for OpenOffice.org since its foundation. On OpenOffice.org he is co-lead of the 'ODF Toolkit projekt', responsible for the new ODFDOM library and co-lead of the 'XML project', with emphasis on XML based filters and the new metadata model of the OpenDocument Format 1.2.

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ODF Accessibility: Perspectives on Past & Future

Donald Harbison (Program Director / IBM Software)

Abstract: Members of the OASIS ODF TC, OASIS ODF Adoption TC and IBM Lotus Symphony development team, will host a discussion of ODF accessibility from several perspectives, including the view from a government ICT leaders seeking accessibility solutions for document authoring software; an historical perspective reviewing the key events that led to the creation of the Accessibility Subcommittee at OASIS ODF TC; and the major milestones achieved. The panellists will discuss how the accessibility requirements were identified and solved, with a focus on demonstrating new APIs and support for ATVs (Accessibility Technology Vendors). Dr. Asakawa will discuss and demonstrate new tools that aid in checking and fixing documents, rendering them more accessible for persons with disabilities.

Biography: Donald Harbison directs IBM's activities in support of OpenDocument Format. He is also the current Chair of the OASIS ODF Adoption TC.

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Introduction of SMIL and Implementation in IBM Lotus Symphony

Guo, Yan Peng ( / IBM/Lotus Symphony)

Abstract: SMIL(Synchronized Multi-media Integration Language) is a standard language that is recommended by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) and also it is integrated into ODF. SMIL defines an XML-based language that allows authors to write interactive multimedia presentations. Using SMIL, an author can describe the temporal behaviour of a multimedia presentation with plentiful of animations, associate hyperlinks with media objects and describe the layout of the presentation on a screen. ODF uses SMIL to present the animation elements for slide show of presentation. This presentation will focus on SMIL animation, introduce the key elements and attributes of SMIL, what they represent, how they work, and the 5 layer structure that recommended by OASIS for defining animation sequence. This presentation will also describe how to implement an SMIL engine by using Lotus Symphony as one example.

Biography:

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Transforming an OWL Ontology to an OpenOffice Document Template

Toussi, Massoud (Student / Lim&Bio, Université Paris 13)

Abstract: Writing a scientific paper is not a trivial task. Word processors help facilitating this task in many ways, especially in formatting the text layout and spell checking. However, most of word processor lack specific tools for helping authors organize their ideas, i.e. handle semantically their articles. Although in some specific domains, for exampling screen play writing, applications other than word processor have been developed to do this, unfortunately in academic writing there is still work be be done. Some minor tools, such as those helping authors with the management of bibliographic references were lacking in word processors even until recently, and authors had purchase separately. One of the most interesting aspects of OpenOffice suite for academics is of course its powerful bibliography management database. But still, it is difficult to say we can handle with ease our ideas in this suite. Another capability of OpenOffice is its extended use of XML files in Open Document Format (ODF). This is an interesting aspect which allows the management of the content of a document independently from its layout and style. The author has developed an ontology of a scientific article OWL language. Based on this ontology, named Paper Element Nodes (PEN), a scientific paper has a type, a style, a content, a version and a cover letter. A scientific paper type can be any of editorial, research paper, review article, case report, analysis article, methodology article, and so on. Its style can include layout styles, references styles, language styles, and illustration styles. Its the content, which conveys the core meaning of the article, can also be divided into several parts which are called nodes in our model. The main nodes of the content of a scientific paper include: title page, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, tables, illustrations, legends for illustrations, etc. Each of these nodes are further divided into sub nodes. For example the title page includes the title of the article, author names and affiliations, author roles, acknowledgements, disclaimers, number of tables and illustrations, word count and the address of corresponding and reprints authors. All these nodes and their subdivisions are coded in OWL DL language in the original PEN ontology. During this session, the author demonstrates how these concepts can be directly implemented in an OpenOffice template. The final result will be a template document which is ready to be used for writing a scientific paper. This makes possible to write a scientific article with much less effort. As a medical informatics graduate, the author will demonstrate how this newly created template can be used to facilitate the writing of a scientific paper about a clinical trial study. So far, the author shows that the ODF has the capability of presenting a semantic structure of a scientific article. This is beneficial for academic writers by helping them prepare well-structured manuscripts. Another more important benefit of using this kind of ontology based template is the fact that search engines of tomorrow can be able to parse scientific articles in a semantic way. For example they will be able to search all articles using OpenOffice and ODF in their methods. A progress which will make us closer to Web 3.0 concept.

Biography: PhD Candidate in Medical Informatics MSc in Medical Informatics MD

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Improving ODF applications by sharing ODF tests

Schubert, Svante (Software Engineer / Sun Microsystems Inc.)

Abstract: * Although the OpenDocument (ODF) is being shared as file format by many applications, no common ODF test suite is available to test their ODF compliance. Even worse it seems not a single ODF test is being shared. This presentation should give insights what ODF test scenarios are shareable among ODF applications, which help to avoid reinventing the wheel, saving time and money and raising the overall quality level. Basics of ODF testing are shown, like when two ODF documents are formally equal according to the ODF spec. Furthermore the demand for basic tools is stated, where most tests will depend on. Finally providing a view what an ODF test suite shareable among ODF applications might look like.

Biography: Svante Schubert works for Sun Microsystems and has been full-time developer for OpenOffice.org since its foundation. On OpenOffice.org he is co-lead of the 'ODF Toolkit projekt', responsible for the new ODFDOM library and co-lead of the 'XML project', with emphasis on XML based filters and the new metadata model of the OpenDocument Format 1.2.

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OpenOffice.org Extensions in Java with NetBeans in practise

Juergen Schmidt (Main Developer, API project lead, Extensions co-lead / Sun Microsystems, Inc.)

Abstract: The session will be an extended workshop/lab session where the attendees will run mainly by their own through some exercises. Initially the presenter will give an overview of the base concepts and exercises and later on the attendees will do it on their own. The presenter will show/demo the final results at the end of each exercise (predefined time slots). At the end of each exercise there will be a short challenge where the attendees have to apply what they have learned. The three winner of each challenge will get a price. The idea is to either have a lab with machines where all the software is preconfigured or to work with an OpenSolaris Live DVD/CD where all software is installed and preconfigured (TBD). The workshop/lab documentation will contain all necessary info to run through the exercises and will provide useful additional information to other resources. The complete workshop/lab material will be provide on a CD including full working solutions for all exercises. The CD can be used later on on other systems as well.

Biography: Juergen Schmidt is working for Sun Microsystems in the StarOffice group for more then 11 years. He was deeply involved in the development of the UNO component model which is the foundation for the OpenOffice.org/StarOffice API. The OpenOffice.org community is one aspect of his daily work. He is involved in the OpenOffice.org project since the beginning, he is the project lead of the OpenOffice.org API project and the co-lead of the Extensions. His main goal is to spread the knowledge around the programmability features of OpenOffice.org around the world and to show that it is more than only an office productivity suite. Juergen Schmidt speaks frequently about the programmability features of OpenOffice.org. Some examples are the OpenOffice conferences, JAX 2003 (Germany), OOP 2004 in Munich (Germany) and JavaPolis 2006 in Antwerpen (Belgium), Jazoon 2007 in Zurich (Switzerland), JavaOne 2003, 2007 and 2008 in San Francisco (USA), FOSS.in 2007 in Bangalore (India), FOSDEM 2008 in Brussels (Belgium), Sun Tech Days in Hyderabad 2008 (India), Community One 2008 in San Francisco (USA) and LinuxTag 2008 in Berlin (Germany).

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Building OpenOffice.org: tips and tricks, best practices

Glazunov Vladimir (Release Engineer / Sun microsystems)

Abstract: Building the OpenOffice is quite complicated process. There are some things that remain overlooked by developers and some practices that can simplify the developer life. In this presentation the overview of the OOo build system will be given (covering tools, configuration files build.lst etc.), some important features will be highlighted (such as distributed builds, build process monitoring et), and best practices will be described.

Biography: Born in Russia, 1971 Graduated from St.Petersburg State university, dept. applied mathematics since 2000 working by Sun microsystems as a Release Engineer

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ODFDOM Workshop - using the new opensourced multi-tiered API for ODF

Svante Schubert, Lars Behrmann, Frank Meies (Software Engineer / Sun Microsystems Inc.)

Abstract: ODFDOM is the name of the new free OpenDocument Java 5 framework sponsored by Sun Microsystems Inc. This workshop will provide interesting exercises applicable to all ODFDOM layers. The upcoming workshop will give the opportunity to get in touch with this exiting new API and to discuss any idea/problem directly with the architects. Aside of the exercises, discussion about further future goals of ODFDOM and its language independence are topic of this workshop. Please visit the ODFDOM wiki for further details about ODFDOM. [1] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/ODFDOM

Biography: Svante Schubert works for Sun Microsystems and has been full-time developer for OpenOffice.org since its foundation. On OpenOffice.org he is co-lead of the 'ODF Toolkit projekt', responsible for the new ODFDOM library and co-lead of the 'XML project', with emphasis on XML based filters and the new metadata model of the OpenDocument Format 1.2. Lars Behrmann works for Sun Microsystems since 2007. He's a member of the OpenOffice.org XML Team and on OpenOffice.org he's co-lead of the ODF Toolkit project where he's responsible for AODL, which is the .NET module of the Toolkit. Frank Meies graduated in Mathematics at Munster, Germany. Has been working on StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Writer since 2001, Co-lead OOo Writer since 2007

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