31 May 2009

Courtesy of Marino Marcich, ODF Alliance

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NETHERLANDS GOVERNMENT TO HOST ODF INTEROPERABILITY WORKSHOP

The first of a series of events organized by the Dutch government program Netherlands in Open Connection (NOiV) and the OpenDoc Society on 15-16 June 2009 at the Royal Library in The Hague will bring together implementers of ODF to test and discuss implementation issues with each other. The aim is to provide a hands-on interoperability testing environment in which vendors and community members can fine-tune the interoperability capabilities of their ODF implementations and develop test cases, recommendations and best practices.

http://www.odfworkshop.nl/

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ECUADOR CHARTS PATH TO ODF ADOPTION

The latest government in South America to advance the use of ODF is Ecuador. Upon its approval by the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Normalización (INEN) as an Ecuadoran national standard, ODF was also adopted for sending and receiving documents by the national government's Secretariat for Information Technology (Subsecretaría de Informática), whose mission is to improve the government's management of IT projects and coordinate actions in this field in other public sector institutions in Ecuador . In South America, the governments of Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela have already adopted ODF, as have several regional governments, including Parana (Brazil) and Misiones (Argentina).

http://www.informatica.gov.ec/index.php/noticas/7-n... (Sp)

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UNESCO, SUN MICROSYSTEMS ANNOUNCE AGREEMENT TO PROMOTE OPEN TECHNOLOGIES, ODF

In a joint effort to improve education with universal access to information and knowledge, UNESCO and Sun Microsystems announced the creation of the Centre of Excellence for Adoption of Open Technologies and agreed to collaborate on the adoption of OpenOffice.org and ODF tools. Under the agreement, Sun will provide availability, expertise and training materials for its open source software, while UNESCO will focus on promoting adoption of open technologies, including identifying institutions that would become partners for providing support and training in the use of OpenOffice.org and ODF.

http://www.pr-inside.com/unesco-and-sun-micro...

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ODF TURKEY LAUNCHED

ODF Turkey was officially established on April 10 in Antalya during the Turkish Informatics Association's annual Government IT Managers event. Founding members include Sun Microsystems, Oracle, IBM, the Turkish Informatics Association, the Software Freedom Initiative, and the Pardus team (a national GNU/Linux distribution). The ODF Alliance has now regional chapters in Europe and Latin America and national chapters in Brazil, Hungary, India, Latvia, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/24957513/ (Tr)

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NEW OR IMPROVED ODF APPLICATIONS SUPPORT

KOffice 2.0.0, the open source office suite that uses ODF as its native format, is now available. http://www.koffice.org/wordpress/2009/05/koffice-2...

Show Document is a free file-sharing and net meeting service that supports ODF and other file formats. http://www.showdocument.com/ds/main.jsf

Officeshots.org, a free webservice that allows users to compare the output quality of office applications, is now available in closed beta. http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/120597/

Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for the Office 2007 suite, which provides support for ODF. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Famil...

RIM's Blackberry Enterprise Server v5.0 will come with support for ODF attachments. http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/server/...

ODF .NET is an ODF API for the .NET and .NET compact framework. http://www.independentsoft.de/odf/

Zamzar will now read your text in an ODF file out loud and convert that sound file into an .mp3 file format for the Internet. http://zamzar.com/

All-Format Writer is a freeware Java J2ME-based application for your mobile device that allows you to create and send out short and simple documents in ODF and other file formats. http://teavuihuang.com/allformatwriter/

Planet ODF is a new aggregator for ODF-related blog and microblog posts. http://planet.opendocumentformat.org/

TextMaker Viewer 2009 is a free download that allows you to open, view, and print ODF and other file formats without having to install a word processor. http://mobilitysite.com/2009/04/textmaker-vi...

ODF Repair 8.12.01 recovers data from an ODF file along with its components like formula, equations and other data. http://www.vadino.com/utilities/misc/odf-repair.html

ODF Internationalization Test Suite includes more than 200 tests illustrating how to convert an ODF document to a translation file (e.g., PO or XLIFF). http://www.hforge.org/odf-i18n-tests

The OpenDocument Fellowship OpenDocument Viewer Beta 2 is now available. http://opendocumentfellowship.com/odfviewer

odfpy 0.9, the latest version of the Python library to manipulate odf files, is out with support for ODF 1.1 files and the ability to load ODF 1.2 files. http://odfpy.forge.osor.eu/

Calibre 0.5.0, the newest version of the e-book collection management tool and format converter, now supports conversion from ODF. http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/download

Able2extract Professional 6.0 converts PDF files to ODF and many other formats. http://rapidlibrary.com/index.php?q=able2extr

Qt 4.5, the latest version of the cross-platform application and UI framework that allows you to write applications once and deploy them across many desktop and embedded operating systems without rewriting the source code, now writes to ODF. http://www.qtsoftware.com/downloads

TopByte Labs' PowerShrink 4.0 allows users to compress ODF documents and other file types. http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=87740

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NEW ALLIANCE MEMBERS

Please welcome the following new ODF Alliance members: Open Source Consortium (UK); RedNose (The Netherlands); OpenOfficeplaza.eu (The Netherlands); Hawk Partners PTE Ltd (Singapore); Griffin Brown Digital Publishing Ltd (UK); Itaipu Binacional (Brazil);GeoLabs SARL (France); Ã…pne kontorprogram pÃ¥ norsk (Norway); SERPRO - Serviço Federal de Processamento de Dados (Brazil); ACPROLL (Cameroon); Open Solutions Cameroun; Free Software Network Serbia; Kovovýroba – Jamibo (Czech Republic); ONG Centro de Software Libre (Chile); Manufacturing Automation & Software Solutions - MASS (India); Pakistan Computer Users Group; Meet the Boss (UK); Odin Prosjekt (Norway); and Soluciones Libres (Ecuador).

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ODF IN THE NEWS

Federal Government Launches Data.gov [Mary Hayes Weier, InformationWeek] http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/federal...

In Office SP2, Microsoft manages to reduce interoperability [Jeremy Allison, ZDNet] http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=18317

ODF, Net Apps, Netbooks Will Invigorate the OS Landscape [David Adams, OS News] http://www.osnews.com/story/21475/ODF_Net_Apps_Netbooks_Will_I...

On the Microsoft ODF support fiasco [The Dude] http://ditesh.gathani.org/blog/2009/05/...

Excel Criticized Over ODF Interoperability [Victoria Ho, ZDNet Asia] http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,390441...

Microsoft support for OpenDocument [Andrew Z, OpenOffice.org Ninja] http://www.oooninja.com/2009/05/microsoft-office-ope...

Does MS Office SP2 With ODF Support Really Work? Test Results Point to No. - Updated 3Xs [Groklaw] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2009050321...

For Microsoft, Open Is the Hardest Word [Mary Jo Foley, RedmondMag.com] http://redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?editorialsid=3095

Whatever happened to OOXML [Glyn Moody, ComputerWorld UK] ttp://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm...

Whether OOXML Wins Or Not, Older MS Docs Aren't Safe [Larry Seltze, eWeek Europe] http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/comment/whether-ooxml-wins-o...

Economists: Governments should use spending power to change PC and office software markets [OSOR.EU] http://www.osor.eu/news/economists-governments-shoul...

Open Science, Closed Source [Glyn Moody] http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009...

Teen winner of computer literacy contest [The New Straits Times] http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Wednesday/National/249549...

Vancouver endorse open standards [Robert Munro, The Inquirer] http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1137477/vancouv...