Software Free

If you haven’t heard, after today (June 30, 2008) you won’t be able to buy Windows XP anymore. Sure there’ll be some stealthy exceptions and ways to “get” Windows XP… but make no mistake, it’s the end of the road for this 6-year old! Vista is the next in line, right? It doesn’t have to be…

On Linux Journal.

I've been blogging about sorting for a while:

• Easy sorting
• Standard, more powerful sorting
• Sorting by a custom sort order

There's just one more thing to mention: creating your own custom sort order.

Existing sort orders are things like Monday Tuesday Wednesday (the right order, which is not alphabetical). But let's say you've got things you want in a certain logical but non-alphabetical order that aren't already set up in OpenOffice.org: titles of books or people, procedures done in a certain order, or your own abbreviations for the days of the week. You can create sort orders for those very easily so you can sort by them.

It's a video of a presentation from one of google's Tech Talks. Check it out.

It's a video of a presentation from one of google's Tech Talks. Check it out.

Erwin Tenhumberg has been one of the closest observers of OpenOffice.org's growing strength. So his announcement that he is moving from Sun - a company that, for all its faults, really seems to get open source - to SAP, a company, for all its strengths, seems utterly witless in this area, surprised me.

I suppose it would be too much to hope that SAP has finally got a clue....

Microsoft returns intimidating error messages to those intending to open ODF; Notepad works where OpenOffice.org fails in Vista

Back in the good old days of 1.x, you could draw a line, then draw an object, and make the object move along whatever line that was. It was great.

Then the lovely redesign of Impress came, and that user-defined motion path feature got lost along the way.  It was a sad time.

However, now in 2.3 it's back! It works slightly differently, but it's great. In addition, you can edit the existing motion paths like the stars, etc. Here's how it works.

Draw an object, then under Custom
Animation???s Motion Paths tab, select any one of the first three
effects.

Beta version of PDF import extension for OpenOffice.org is now available online. Fully functional version, special features like importing layout of LaTeX PDF or import of complex vector graphics, will appear later. However even the preliminary version of this extension allows to open and edit PDF documents up to version 1.4. Files with restricted permissions are not yet supported.

I've written a big  "what, why, and how" article on styles for TechTarget.com.
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1230137,00.html

It starts with just how useful styles are in daily life and why they make life great, then goes into just how to apply, create, and update them.

Do you remember that total Jerk Dennis Byron? The chap who thought that Digistan was some sort of terrorist organisation? Well here’s a rather nicely ironic way to shove his ignorant and frankly stupid views in that familiar place where “the sun doesn’t shine”.

I've written a fairly comprehensive article for techtarget on lists.

See also this post on how to do numbering with fields. Fields are a more reliable but more complex approach.

This new extension brings PDF import to OpenOffice.org 3.0. Also the extension introduces dual-format PDF-ODF files combining portable presentation and editing capabilities in a single file. Will hybrid PDFs be the next threat to OOXML?

On Open Enterprise blogs.

One thing I've never understood is why more low-cost PC manufacturers don't routinely include free software with their offerings. After all, it's the perfect way to provide all the capabilities most users need without increasing the price, or, indeed, taking away the possibility of adding certain other non-free software later.

Perhaps it's simply that PCs haven't been cheap enough for it to matter so much given Microsoft's deep discounts for hardware companies. That's another great thing about the ultraportables: they really do take down prices to new levels.

Against that background, maybe this interesting news will finally signal the opening of the floodgates: a German review of the new Asus Eee PC 900, running Windows XP, that comes not only with the utterly useless Microsoft Works package, but also StarOffice, Sun's supported version of OpenOffice.org. (Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)