Document Freedom Day

Document Freedom Day will be in a week.  What is DFD?

According to documentfreedom.org , it is:

"the international day of Open Standards and happens every year on the last Wednesday of March. It is a day to come together and raise attention towards the ever growing importance of Open Standards for all aspects of our digital communication and information accessibility."

I remember that once, I celebrated it sending to all my colleagues a "freedom test".  It was just a regular mail with a short explanation and an .odt file.  If they could not open it, they could realize that they were not free.  My small campaign had a modest rate of success, at least to make people question their choices.

I wonder if I should do something similar this year... 

I Spotted ODF in the Wild this Week... Twice!

This week has been full of surprises.  The new semester has started and with that, much of what used to be paperwork is becoming digital files.  When I entered the platform to obtain the lists of my students in the courses I'm currently teaching, I realized that it now had two options to download such lists: "as a pdf file" or "as a spreadsheet."

Since I didn't want to have anything to do with .xslx, I went for the pdf.

But later, when I told Mechatotoro about it, he entered the platform and gave "spreadsheet" a try.

"I love these people!," I heard him say.

Instead of a .xslx file, the guys who added the feature did honor the university's migration to free software and made .ods available for download!

And just a few minutes ago, my editor sent me an e-mail.  Actually, the mail was directed to all the authors who work with her, and she wanted us to check the list of the available books and their corresponding prices to rule out any mistake.

I must say that I almost fell off my chair when I saw the attached document: another .ods file!

Yes!  I literally heard a choir of angels singing.  I am still hearing them!  ^__^  

How did I Spend Software Freedom Day?

The answer to that question is one word:

FREE!!

Free from viruses
Free from surveillance
Free from malware
Free from local-file gobblers
Free from keyloggers
Free from atrocious license prices
Free from pirated software
Free from crackers
Free from restrictive, non-inclusive document formats
Free from backdoors

LibreOffice 4.4 Is out! GREAT!!!

Yes, as soon as I read here that The Document Foundation had made a new release of LibreOffice available, I rushed to download it to give it a try.

You can find out what's new, from the technical viewpoint, about this suite here .  Let's see...it comes with a nice sidebar...it has better OOXML support (I don't care about that as I use ODF), and it even added textboxes.  Well, texboxes are something I never needed and I actually find them annoying, but others may think they're handy... Still, I am more interested in knowing if this new release could meet my needs.

Japanese input support! Wow! I thought I'd never see it again on this old system!

I installed LibreOffice 4.4 on my old Mepis 8 desktop system.  I had given away my hope of using Japanese input on LibreOffice because the suite did not support my old input method editor.  In fact, I had to keep an old copy of OpenOffice (3.1.1) around for the times I needed to type in Japanese.  I was greatly surprised when I could indeed type hiragana, katakana and kanji on LibreOffice!

What was next?  Customization might be another aspect to check...
I don't remember this feature on LO 4.3...  Now you have a handy theme selector to change the appearance of the office suite!  I entered "cat" and hit the "search" button...and sure enough, I got several matching themes.  That was easy!  At the end, I chose a theme I happen to like quite a lot!  :P

I still need to test Impress, Calc, and the other applications.  But I have to install first LibreOffice 4.4 on my laptop.  After all, that is the device in which I use Impress.

But while I do that, why not giving a little donation to The Document Foundation?

After all, LibreOffice is keeping me free from preying office subscription fees and from locking my data into the silly OOXML format.  I must add that it has saved me from the horrendous, unproductive ribbon madness! 

I hope all those who like LibreOffice made a donation, big or small, to this great project.

Quite a Surprise!

We had a School Assembly today.  Usually, the speakers use a netbook or laptop loaded with Windows 7 (which has caused already several embarrassments and delays) and use MS Office PowerPoint during their presentations.

However, today was a bit different.  When the speaker double clicked his document to open it, I saw an old friend:

That was a delight!  The computer used LibreOffice's Impress to do the job!

Little by little, our university's migration to Free Software is advancing.

Happy Document Freedom Day!

In a world that increasingly becomes conscious of how important open standards are for ensuring information accessibility, we must celebrate the Document Freedom Day.

How?  Raising awareness is a good start.

If a system is unable to open something that by definition is open, then we should ask ourselves what is going on with that system.   Why wouldn't it let us open an OPEN standard?

Send an ODT file to your friends today to celebrate!