Moved my blog

Recently I decided to update my blog to something that will be less awkward than NanoBlogger I have been using until now. I mean, writing the entries in vim is great, running the nb script is easy, but the turnover to preview it, fix, run the script again etc. is just annoying.

Now I moved my old blog to holesovsky.blogspot.com, which will be much easier for me to handle. With some Perl scripting, I even converted all the old entries here, so that the old blog can really RIP.

Small note to the conversion

When you are using the blogger.com's Import XML feature, and it looks like the import is taking too long (minutes or so), the answer is simple: Your XML was not accepted by blogger.com. I have seen reports of people waiting several hours to import the blog.

Don't wait in such cases - it was just that an error occurred, and the UI has not reported that. Just try to find out what is in the XML that could have caused the import to get stuck - usual suspects are &'s instead of " or OTOH things like &Acaron;, or other less common escapes.

Recent documents in LibreOffice

This is again one of those little improvements that make LibreOffice much more usable, and that I so much love hacking on. I implemented a dropdown for the Open toolbar button that brings an easy access to the Recent Documents, and sent that the UX mailing list for feedback. I got some really useful hints. Even better - I gave Samuel code pointers to play with this a bit, and he came up with a beautiful patch that implements his ideas. And here is the result:

Samuel - thank you for this! :-) For anybody who would like to bring this functionality to the Start Center too (the screen you see when you start LibreOffice), here is an Easy Hack that will result in reusing the code for the Start Center too; and also will delete lots of duplicate code.

LibreOffice 4.0: Use Firefox Personas in your favorite office suite

At the very last minute, my patches to support Firefox Personas in LibreOffice were accepted as a late feature for 4.0, hooray! :-) What does it mean?

Personas are easy-to-use themes that let you personalize the look of your Firefox says the Personas page. In fact, it is a great collection of many nice pictures you can apply in your Firefox with one click.

Olivier had the great idea to reuse them in LibreOffice too. I provided him with few code pointers to implement the feature, but then I decided this is actually so fun project that I wanted to do it myself (sorry, Olivier!) - and started that at the Munich HackFest. Long story short, here is the result:

Unfortunately we cannot choose Personas in LibreOffice with just one click as in Firefox, but it is as easy as it can be - just download LibreOffice 4.0 RC1 (or later) when available, choose Tools -> Options... -> Personalization -> Select Persona, and the rest is trivial, the dialog will lead you through the necessary steps. Enjoy!

LibreOffice HackFest in Munich: Apply Style Combobox

The first day of the LibreOffice HackFest in Munich is nearly over, and I am happy to say that I've already achieved what I wanted to hack on:

This is how the "Apply Style" combo box looks like from now on - in LibreOffice 4.0, we will show previews of the styles directly in there, helping the users to choose the right style conveniently.

I can imagine some follow-up work, like being able to edit the style directly from the menu entry, instead of having to choose "More...", and editing from there; if you are interested to hack on this, I'll be glad to show you where :-) - just mail me.

LibreOffice Tutorial Videos

A user just asked on IRC how to print a serie of descriptions of photos, when he has a list in a spreadsheet. I answered that Mail Merge is what he is searching for - but he did not know what Mail Merge was. I found a very helpful video showing the mail merge in LibreOffice, so I want to share it with you :-)

[There is also a shortcut to Mail Merge when you understand the concept, try Tools -> Mail Merge Wizard..., of course.]

There are more LibreOffice videos out there, backed up by this nicely structured webpage. Might be worth watching the other videos too :-)

Improved Rulers

Recently I was able to spend a bit of time on the UI hacking again; and this time it was the "Rulers" in Writer. Thanks to Mirek M. (BTW, have you seen his Call for GSoC projects designs, and Call for Templates blog entries?) who provided me with a helpful mockup, I was able able to implement the new look quickly and effectively, mostly by removing code :-)

I hope I will be able to do more such changes before the 3.6 feature freeze; I'll keep you informed. And if anybody of you is interested in UI-related hacking, just mail me or ping me on the IRC (kendy on irc.freenode.net), and I'll provide you with code pointers to other interesting areas :-)

LibreOffice v češtině

Chcete si stáhnout LibreOffice? Doporučím vám tedy stránky LibreOffice v češtině, abyste se k instalátoru nemuseli dostávat přes anglické stránky :-)

LibreOffice 3.4 má uživatelské rozhraní kompletně přeložené do češtiny, nápovědu z 90%. 3.5, příští verze, je na tom trochu hůře - uživatelské rozhraní 97%, nápověda 89%. Pokud chcete tato čísla zlepšit, není nic jednoduššího - zaregistrujte se na LibreOffice Pootle serveru, pošlete mi své uživatelské jméno na kendy @ suse cz a já vám zařídím potřebná oprávnění.

LibreOffice 3.5 toho má hodně co nabídnout, byla by škoda nemít všechno přeloženo!