The LibreOffice extensions and templates site runs on the Content Management System Plone 5 with some add-ons. I added together with our service provider some fixes and improvements to this add-ons during the last weeks. I made new releases of this Plone add-ons and uploaded them to the Python Cheeseshop:
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/tdf.templateuploadcenter/0.12
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/tdf.extensionuploadcenter/0.15
Blog
LibreOffice Extensions and Templates Site: Fix For Listing Releases
The listing of LibreOffice extension and templates releases and linked releases had an issue. The newest final release was not shown to the user. This issue was caused from the custom URL for the releases. The new releases and linked releases get an URL that placed them at the top of a list, which lead in the reverse order to getting them to the bottom of the list.
I fixed this issue with a new sorting key. The releases are listed in reverse order by the date they were created. The current final release is choosen by its release date in reverse order.
I contributed this fix to the TDF Github repository and delivered it to the LibreOffice extensions and templates website today.
Gerechtigkeit im digitalen Bürgerdialog
An vielen Orten wird seit einiger Zeit der Dialog mit dem Bürger auch auf digitalem Kanal für wichtig gehalten und es wird über Open Government und (digitale) Partizipation gesprochen. Es werden Daten aus der öffentlichen Verwaltung bzw. aus dem Besitz der öffentlichen Verwaltung unter einer speziellen Lizenz (Datenlizenz Deutschland 2.0) zur freien Nutzung zur Verfügung gestellt.
Schaut man allerdings auf einige der zur Verfügung gestellten Datensätze, dann werden diese nicht in einem offenen standardisierten Datenformat angeboten, sondern nur in einem proprietären binären oder in einem nicht von der ISO zertifizierten Format, wie beispielsweise in den Formaten xls, xlsx oder doc.
Bei solchen Dateiformaten ist nicht sicher gestellt, dass sie mit lizenzkostenfreier Software vollständig korrekt dargestellt werden können, wenn dies auch häufig gelingt. Durch das Verwenden dieser nicht offenen und / oder nicht zertifizierten Datenformate wird also potentiell ein Teil der Bevölkerung an der Partizipation gehindert, nämlich die weniger bemittelten Bürger, die sich nicht in regelmäßigen Abständen einen neuen leistungsfähigeren PC sowie kostenintensiv lizensierte Betriebssysteme und Bürosoftware leisten können. Auch diese Bürger müssen sich einbezogen (inkludiert) erleben, als gleichwertiger Teil der Bürgerschaft.
Nur mit dem Setzen auf offene und standardisierte Datenformate für Office-Dateien, wie das ODT-Format, ist es auch einkommensschwächeren Bürgern gut möglich, sich die im Rahmen von Open Government bereit gestellten Datensätze und Dokumente anzuschauen und im Bürgerdialog mit der öffentlichen Verwaltung und den Institutionen komplett dabei zu sein. Es ist daher eine Frage der sozialen und bürgerschaftlichen Gerechtigkeit, im Rahmen von Open Data wie auch sonst in der Kommunikation zwischen Bürgern und Verwaltung im digitalen Zeitalter allein auf offene standardisierte Formate zu setzen.
Editing GPS-Tracks
If I track my trainings with my GPS clock, I get sometimes a too long track, e.g. because I forget to stop the recording or the clock concatenate two training sessions. Thus I need to edit the tracks that I get from the clock.
There is a free software program available to do this work: GpsPrune. But this program is not able to import and work with the file format ‚*.tcx‘. It needs tracks in the file format ‚*.gpx‘.
But there exists a solution for this issue, the free software program ‚gpsbabel‘. Because I already got the track file from the clock, I need to convert the tcx-track with the option -i gtrnctr (= ‚Garmin Training Center (.tcx)‘):
gpsbabel – i gtrnctr -f inputfile.tcx -o gpx -F outputfile.gpx
Creating LibreOffice Extensions
I’m currently working on some content for a howto or handbook about making LibreOffice extensions. I want to cover the usual boilerplate and write about examples of different sorts of extensions. There is already some content available distributed all over the internet. Thus it is not often not always easy to find, because it lives in seperate areas. Furthermore the existing content is regularly only available in English, a language that a lot of people in my and other countries doesn’t read and speak fluently (although things getting better this days). On these grounds I decided to write my document in German language. It’s work in progress and the ’source code‘ is public on my Github account:
https://github.com/andreasma/extensionbook
Training GPS-Sessions Tourbook On Linux
I use a free GPL software to get my training and hiking tracks from my old Aldi-/Crane-GPS-Clock via USB. This software is named crane_gps_watch and is provided via a repository on github.com. I could fetch the data via command line. This are text files with the file extension tcx.
I found another free software where I could import this files, get a visual presentation of my tracks and could add some more details to them, e.g. about weather conditions like wind velocity and direction, cloudy sky or rain. This software is named ‚MyTourbook‘ and you could get it from its homepage http://mytourbook.sourceforge.net/mytourbook/ .
Getting Tour Tracks From A Crane-GPS-Clock On Linux
I bought an Aldi/Crane GPS clock some time ago. The clock was delivered with a software that runs only on older versions of Windows (up to Vista), but not on Linux.
The clock is already doing its job, logging my tracks with GPS connection. Thus I didn’t want to put it to the trash can, but instead use it further. I searched the internet and found a free software project that created a software to get a connection with the clock and read its data via usb cable. This project is hosted at:
https://github.com/mru00/crane_gps_watch
I checked out the source code and followed the instructions, that includes the usual steps: ./configure, make, make install.
I could connect the GPS clock with my Linux-PC and read the data from the clock inside a shell via:
crane_gps_watch_client
or
/usr/local/bin/crane_gps_watch_client
I used the options ‚–split‘ to create seperate files for every track and ‚–clear‘ to delete the data on the clock.
The file export format is ‚*.tcx‘.
First Steps With LibreOffice Online – Running It For The First Time
I finally compiled LibreOffice online and reached my first milestone. Once this was done I had to create a new subdirectory on my machine:
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/var/cache/loolwsd
Because I had to run the LibreOffice online with the rights of the user I had to change the ownership of that directory:
sudo chown `whoami` /usr/local/var/cache/loolwsd
Then I could start the online office with:
make run
Once the server of the online office is up I get the information in my shell about the URL of the office with the direct link to the usual hello world document and of the admin Console. The latter one is https://admin:admin@localhost:9980/loleaflet/dist/admin/admin.html
The first one depends on the special configuration and file structure of your machine. It starts with:
https://localhost:9980/loleaflet/64dd841/loleaflet.html?file_path=file://(…)
I pointed my browser to this URL and get to the hello world document. But first I had to deal with the security configuration of my browser (Firefox), which complains about an unknown certificate.
And I could also get to the admin console with the URL that was displayed to me in the shell.
First Steps With LibreOffice Online – Compilation
I compiled LibreOffice from source code several times and want to give also LibreOffice online a try. Thus I checked out the source code from the git repository first with:
git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/online
I looked into the README file inside the new local git repository and got the information that I should look into the readme files inside the ‚wsd‘ and the ‚loleaflet‘ subdirectories. I started with the readme inside the wsd subdirectory.
This gave me the next step. Because I currently use the Linux distribution openSuSE Leap 42.2 I had to add another repository with zypper to the list with:
zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/libraries:/c_c++/openSUSE_Leap_42.2/devel:libraries:c_c++.repo
Next I installed some dependencies with:
zypper in poco-devel libcap-progs
Then I run inside the main directory the following commands (in this order):
– libtoolize
– aclocal
– automake –add-missing
– autoreconf
– autoheader
And then follows the run of configure. In my case I used:
./configure –enable-silent-rules –with-lokit-path=~/libreoffice/gerritgit/libreofficeonline/online/bundled/include –with-lo-path=~/libreoffice/gerritgit/libo/instdir –enable-debug
But that doesn’t work, because the path to the directories of the LibreOfficeKit header files and the LibreOffice installation are to long. I gave it another try, copied the headers and the installation to another directory with a shorter path and it works.
I could then compile LibreOffice online with make and the process runs as described in the README inside the subdirectory ‚wsd‘.
New Release For The LibreOffice Templates Site AddOn
I released an update of a further Plone addon today, that I worked on together with our service provider within some weeks. The addon drives the templates part of the LibreOffice extensions and templates website. The update creates some improvements for the website and updates the the localisation template and the German localisation with the last string changes. I edited and updated the German localisation file with poedit, a great open source tool.
You could get the new releae of the Plone addon from the ‚cheeseshop‘ (https://pypi.python.org/pypi) with the direct link:
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/tdf.templateuploadcenter/0.11