http://www.jejik.com/feeds/tagged "officeshots"/atom.xmlLone Wolves (tagged "officeshots")Web, game and open source developmentCopyright 2010, Stichting Lone Wolveshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/2010-03-29T09:10:00ZPHP+SmartyStichting Lone Wolveswebmaster@jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.com/articles/2010/03/officeshots_at_the_2010_document_freedom_dayOfficeshots at the 2010 Document Freedom Day2010-03-29T09:10:00Z2010-03-29T09:10:00ZSander Marechals.marechal@jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.com
<p>Just a quick update: I will be giving a presentation about all the new features in <a href="http://www.officeshots.org">Officeshots</a> at <a href="http://www.documentfreedomday.nl/2010/index.html">the 2010 Document Freedom Day</a> in Baarn in The Netherlands. I will be updating the audience about the progress made since my <a href="http://vimeo.com/4117315">presentation last year at the DFD</a>. I am not sure exactly what time I will speak, but it will be taped for those who cannot be there.</p>
http://www.jejik.com/articles/2010/03/how_to_correctly_create_odf_documents_using_zipHow to correctly create ODF documents using zip2010-03-13T23:51:00Z2010-03-13T23:51:00ZSander Marechals.marechal@jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.com
<p>One of the great advantages of the OpenDocument format is that it is simply a zip file. You can unzip it with any archiver and take a look at the contents, which is a set of XML documents and associated data. Many people are using this feature do create some nifty toolchains. Unzip, make some changes, zip it again and you have a new ODF document. Well… almost.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.1/OS/OpenDocument-v1.1-html/OpenDocument-v1.1.html#17.4.MIME%20Type%20Stream|outline">OpenDocument Format specification</a>, section 17.4 has one little extra restriction when it comes to zip containers: The file called “mimetype” must be at the beginning of the zip file, it must be uncompressed and it must be stored without any additional file attributes. Unfortunately many developers seem to forget this. It is the number one cause of failed documents at <a href="http://www.officeshots.org">Officeshots.org</a>. If the mimetype file is not correctly zipped then it is not possible to programmatically detect the mimetype of the ODF file. And if the mimetype check fails, Officeshots (and possibly other applications) will refuse the document. This problem is compounded because virtually no ODF validator checks the zip container. They only check the contents.</p>
<p>In this article I will show you how you can properly zip your ODF files, but before I do that I will show you the problem in detail.</p>
<h4>Detecting mimetypes</h4>
<p>Linux and other Unix-like opratingsystems do not rely on file extensions to determine the type of a file. Relying on file extensions can be a serious sercurity problem, as you can see in the Windows world. It's simply too easy to change the extension and pretend that a file is of a different type than it really is. Instead, the Unix world looks at the contents of the file itself. This happens with a library called “magic”.</p>
<p>The magic library consists of a large set of rules, which it uses to figure out what type of file it is looking at. For example, it can look at a certain byte offset and see what value it contains. This is precisely the reason why the ODF specification says that you need to zip the mimetype first, without any file attributes. If you do that and open the ODF file in a hex editor, you will see something like this:</p>
<pre>Offset: Hexadecimal: ASCII:
00000000 - 50 4b 03 04 14 00 00 08 00 00 c1 b6 66 3b 5e c6 PK..............
00000010 - 32 0c 27 00 00 00 27 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 6d 69 2.'...'.......mi
00000020 - 6d 65 74 79 70 65 61 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 69 6f metypeapplicatio
00000030 - 6e 2f 76 6e 64 2e 6f 61 73 69 73 2e 6f 70 65 6e n/vnd.oasis.open
00000040 - 64 6f 63 75 6d 65 6e 74 2e 74 65 78 74 50 4b 03 document.textPK.
...</pre>
<p>This is very easy to match for the magic library. Here is an explanation of the rules that magic uses to test if the file is an ODF file:</p>
<ol>
<li>Look at the beginning of the file. It should start with the letters PK and then bytes 03 and 04. This means it is a zip file.</li>
<li>Look at offset 30 ("1e" in hex). It should be the string "mimetype".</li>
<li>Look at offset 38 ("26" in hex), directly after the word "mimetype". It should be one of the ODF mimetypes.</li>
</ol>
<p>You can guess what happens when you don't zip the mimetype file first: The string "mimetype" won't be at the right offset. And if you accidentally zip it with extra file attributes, then the contents of the mimetype file will not start directly after it. There will be several bytes in between. This causes the magic library to detect it as a standard zip file, not as an ODF file. Here is how such a badly zipped ODF could look like. This file was zipped normally, without paying special attention to the mimetype file:</p>
<pre>Offset: Hexadecimal: ASCII:
00000000 - 50 4b 03 04 0a 00 00 00 00 00 25 01 6e 3c 00 00 PK..............
00000010 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 15 00 43 6f ..............Co
00000020 - 6e 66 69 67 75 72 61 74 69 6f 6e 73 32 2f 55 54 nfigurations2/UT
00000030 - 09 00 03 16 1b 9c 4b 47 1e 9c 4b 55 78 04 00 e8 ......KG..KUx...
00000040 - 03 e8 03 50 4b 03 04 0a 00 00 00 00 00 25 01 6e ...PK........%.n
...</pre>
<p>As you can see, it does not match the rules that the magic library has. Instead of checking your ODF file with a hex editor, you can also simply use the "file" command. For example:</p>
<pre>$ file --mime my-document.odt
my-document.odt: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text</pre>
<p>If that command results in "application/zip" or "application/octet-stream" then it means that your ODF file is probably incorrectly zipped. Note that the magic library shipped with "file" up to version 5.0.3 does not contain all mimetypes for ODF files but only for OpenDocument Text (odt) files. File 5.0.3 is the version most commenly shipped with Linux distributions today. I have since submitted a patch that includes all known ODF mimetypes. It was accepted and it should be included in file version 5.0.4 and later.</p>
<h4>How to zip an ODF file</h4>
<p>So, here is how you can zip an ODF file the right way. Suppose that I have an unzipped ODF file that looks like this:</p>
<pre>+ my-document/
+ Configurations2/
+ META-INF/
- manifest.xml
+ Thumbnails/
- thumbnail.png
- content.xml
- meta.xml
- mimetype
- settings.xml
- styles.xml</pre>
<p>Start by creating a new zip file that just contains the mimetype file:</p>
<pre>$ zip -0 -X ../my-document.odt mimetype</pre>
<p>The -0 parameter means that the file will not be compressed. The -X parameter means that no extra file attributes will be stored. Next you can add the rest of the files:</p>
<pre>$ zip -r ../my-document.odt * -x mimetype</pre>
<p>Be sure to exclude the mimetype file. Now if you look at it with a hex editor, you will see it has been zipped correctly:</p>
<pre>Offset: Hexadecimal: ASCII:
00000000 - 50 4b 03 04 14 00 00 08 00 00 c1 b6 66 3b 5e c6 PK..............
00000010 - 32 0c 27 00 00 00 27 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 6d 69 2.'...'.......mi
00000020 - 6d 65 74 79 70 65 61 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 69 6f metypeapplicatio
00000030 - 6e 2f 76 6e 64 2e 6f 61 73 69 73 2e 6f 70 65 6e n/vnd.oasis.open
00000040 - 64 6f 63 75 6d 65 6e 74 2e 74 65 78 74 50 4b 03 document.textPK.
...</pre>
<p>Happy zipping everyone!</p>
http://www.jejik.com/articles/2010/01/new_officeshots_feature_odf_anonymiserNew Officeshots feature: ODF Anonymiser2010-01-05T15:55:00Z2010-01-05T15:55:00ZSander Marechals.marechal@jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.com
<p>I have just released a new feature for <a href="http://www.officeshots.org">Officeshots</a>: The <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/pages/anonymiser">ODF anonymiser</a>.
The ODF Anonymiser tries to make your document completely anonymous
while maintaining it's overall structure. All metadata is removed or
cleaned. All text in the document is replaces with gibberish text that
has approximately the same word length and word distribution. All images
are replaced with placeholder images. All unknown content is removed.</p>
<p>The result of the anonymiser is a document that has the same general
structure but with made-up contents. If your original document does not
work in a certain application, the anonymised version of the document
should fail in the same manner. By using the anonymiser you can test
your private documents without exposing the contents to our rendering
clients.</p>
<p>To use the Anonymiser, simply check the appropriate checkbox on the
Officeshots front page.</p>
<p>The ODF Anonymiser is written and maintained by the people who created
the <a href="http://www.hforge.org/itools">iTools Python libraries</a>. The Anonymiser is part of that library
(called ODF Greek). If you want to use the anonymiser yourself, just install iTools and use the <tt>iodf-greek.py</tt> script. Many thanks for their contribution.</p>
http://www.jejik.com/articles/2009/12/new_officeshots_feature_odf_validatorsNew Officeshots feature: ODF validators2009-12-17T14:10:00Z2009-12-17T14:10:00ZSander Marechals.marechal@jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.com
<p>I am happy to announce an exciting new feature for <a href="http://www.officeshots.org">Officeshots</a>: Integrated ODF validators.</p>
<p>Every ODF document that is uploaded is run through several different ODF validators. If the converted documents are also ODF documents (when you are testing ODF round trips) then those results are also passed through these ODF validators.</p>
<p>The results of the validators are made available on the request overview, the individual result pages and inside the galleries. Galleries now not only show all attached documents but also all results and a summary of the validator results. This way it becomes really easy to see which documents failed.</p>
<p>The following ODF validators have been integrated:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.cyclone3.org/documentation/addons/extensions/ODFvalidator/">The Cyclone3 ODF validator</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.probatron.org:8080/officeotron/officeotron.html">Office-o-tron</a> by Alex Brown</li>
<li><a href="http://odftoolkit.org/ODFValidator">The ODFToolkit validator</a> by Sun
</ul>
<p>Below you can see an example result of a document that has been round-tripped, showing a summary of the validation results. The one thing that show immediately is that the various validators do not always agree with each other. Documents that are valid according to one validator may be invalid according to another. Some documents (such as the result from the old AbiWord versions) can even cause some validators to choke and die with errors.</p>
<img src="http://www.jejik.com/images/officeshots/officeshots-validators-600.jpg" /><br />
<small>(<a href="http://www.jejik.com/images/officeshots/officeshots-validators.jpg">large version</a>)</small>
<p>From that page on you can click through to the individual validator outputs so you can see the complete error message.</p>
<p>Have fun!</p>
http://www.jejik.com/articles/2009/07/help_translate_officeshots_in_your_languageHelp translate Officeshots in your language2009-07-16T18:50:00Z2009-07-16T18:50:00ZSander Marechals.marechal@jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.com
<p>I have finished setting up the internationalisation and localisation frameworks for Officeshots. If you want, you can now help to translate Officeshots to your own language. Translating Officeshots can be done through <a href="http://lang.officeshots.org">our Pootle installation</a>.</p>
<p>At the moment there are almost no languages configured yet in Pootle. The reason is that the CakePHP framework on which Officeshots runs has a different locale structure than what Pootle expects. This means I need to add every language by hand.</p>
<p>If you want to start working on a new language, please post to <a href="http://lists.opendocsociety.org/mailman/listinfo/officeshots">the Officeshots mailinglist</a> and I will add the language to Pootle and to Officeshots. Also, translations made in Pootle are not automatically pushed to Subversion or to the running Officeshots instances (because of possible merge conflicts). If you need a quick sync or push of language files, please drop a line here on the mailinglist as well.</p>
<p>Happy translating!</p>
http://www.jejik.com/articles/2009/07/scanning_files_with_clamav_from_cakephpScanning files with ClamAV from CakePHP2009-07-06T23:03:00Z2009-07-06T23:03:00ZSander Marechals.marechal@jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.com
<p>One of the requirements for the upcoming public release of <a href="http://www.officeshots.org">Officeshots.org</a> is that all uploaded files are run through a virus scanner before they are made available. Picking a virus scanner for this job was easy. <a href="http://clamav.net/">ClamAV</a> is open source, well supported, actively maintained and comes pre-packaged for Debian Lenny which we use for the Officeshots servers. Finding a PHP library to interact with ClamAV proved harder though. The <a href="http://www.clamav.net/download/third-party-tools/3rdparty-library">3rd party library page for ClamAV</a> points to two different libraries that provide PHP bindings for ClamAV but both appear to be dead and expunged from the internet. So, I created my own using the <a href="http://www.clamav.net/doc/latest/html/node26.html">clamd TCP API</a>, and because Officeshots is built using <a href="http://cakephp.org/">CakePHP</a> I implemented it as a Cake plugin.</p>
<p>You can <a href="http://www.jejik.com/files/clamd/clamd-0.1.tar.gz">download the clamd-0.1.tar.gz plugin</a> or check out the source from my Subversion repository with the following command:</p>
<pre>~$ svn checkout https://svn.jejik.com/cakephp/plugins/clamd/trunk clamd</pre>
<p>Or you can <a href="http://svn.jejik.com/viewvc.cgi/cakephp/plugins/clamd/trunk/">browse the repository online</a>. In the rest of this article I will show you how you can use this plugin.</p>
<h4>Install ClamAV (on Debian)</h4>
<p>Start off by installing ClamAV. On Debian and derivative distributions this is very simple.</p>
<pre>~# aptitude install clamav clamav-freshclam</pre>
<p>Make sure that the ClamAV daemon is running and that freshclam regularly updates the virus definition database. On Debian Lenny this will be done automatically. Please refer to the <a href="http://www.clamav.net/doc/latest/html/node9.html">ClamAV installation guide</a> for installation on other Linux distributions or on Windows machines. After you have installed the ClamAV daemon you can test it with the clamdscan command.</p>
<pre>~$ clamdscan somefile.odt
/home/you/somefile.odt: OK
----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------
Infected files: 0
Time: 0.011 sec (0 m 0 s)</pre>
<h4>Install the Clamd CakePHP plugin</h4>
<p>This is really easy. Extract the package and move the <tt>clamd</tt> directory to your <tt>plugins</tt> directory in your CakePHP application.</p>
<pre>~$ tar -zxvf clamd-0.1.tar.gz
~$ mv clamd your-cakephp/app/plugins/</pre>
<h4>Configuration</h4>
<p>Start by including the Clamd plugin.</p>
<pre>App::import('Core', 'clamd.Clamd');</pre>
<p>When you create the Clamd object you can pass the configuration to
the constructor. The configuration consists of options that will be
passed to <a href="http://www.php.net/fsockopen">fsockopen()</a>. For example:</p>
<pre>$Clamd = new Clamd(
'host' => '127.0.0.1',
'port' => 3310,
'timeout' => 60
);</pre>
<p>You can also connect to a local Unix socket. Here is how you connect to the default socket on Debian Lenny:</p>
<pre>$Clamd = new Clamd(
'host' => 'unix:///var/run/clamav/clamd.ctl',
'port' => 0
);</pre>
<h4>Usage</h4>
<p>To test the Clamd connection you can use the ping() method.</p>
<pre>echo $Clamd->ping() ? 'Success!' : $Clamd->lastError();</pre>
<p>You can use the scan method to scan a single file. The result will be
one on the Clamd constants <tt>Clamd::OK</tt>, <tt>Clamd::FOUND</tt> or <tt>Clamd::ERROR</tt>.</p>
<pre>if ($Clamd->scan('/path/to/file', $message) === Clamd::FOUND) {
echo "The file is infected with '$message'!\n";
}</pre>
<p>You can also recursively scan an entire directory. You will get back
an array containing the results of the scan. Note that this array only
contains files that returned <tt>Clamd::FOUND</tt> or <tt>Clamd::ERROR</tt>. Scanned
files which are clean will not be returned. A result looks like this:</p>
<pre>array(3) {
['file'] => '/full/path/to/file'
['status'] => self::FOUND | self::ERROR
['message'] => virus name | error message
}</pre>
<p>Also, by default Clamd stops scanning as soon as the first infection
is found. Pass TRUE as the second parameter to scan all files.
Example usage:</p>
<pre>$results = $Clamd->rscan('/path/to/directory', true);
foreach ($results as $result) {
if ($result['status'] === Clamd::FOUND) {
echo "File '$result[file]' is infected with '$result[message]'!\n";
}
}</pre>
<h4>The Clamd shell</h4>
<p>The Clamd plugin also contains a simple interactive Cake Shell which you can
use to test Clamd and scan files interactively. You can start the shell from your app directory with:</p>
<pre>~$ cake clamd</pre>
<p>You can use the following commands in the interactive shell:</p>
<dl>
<dt>exit|quit|q</dt>
<dd>Quit the shell</dd>
<dt>connect <host> [<port> [<timeout>]]</dt>
<dd>Connect to a ClamAV daemon</dd>
<dt>ping</dt>
<dd>Send a PING command to the clamav daemon</dd>
<dt>scan <file></dt>
<dd>Scan <file> for viruses</dd>
<dt>rscan <directory></dt>
<dd>Recursively scan <directory> for viruses. Only infected files and errors are returned.</dd>
<dt>help</dt>
<dd>Show the help</dd>
</dl>
http://www.jejik.com/articles/2009/06/fixing_opendocument_mime_magic_on_linuxFixing OpenDocument MIME magic on Linux2009-06-28T13:12:00Z2009-06-28T13:12:00ZSander Marechals.marechal@jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.com
<p>When working on the beta of <a href="http://www.officeshots.org">Officeshots.org</a> I ran into an interesting problem with file type and MIME type detection of OpenDocument files. When a user uploads an ODF file to Officeshots I want to determine the MIME type myself using the <a href="http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.fileinfo.php">PHP Fileinfo</a> extension. Windows user who do not have any ODF supporting applications installed will report ODF files as application/zip which is of no use to me. In addition, a malicious user could attempt to upload an executable file and report the MIME type as ODF file.</p>
<p>On Linux, the PHP Fileinfo extension relies on the magic file that is provided by the <a href="http://packages.debian.org/lenny/file">file</a> package. The magic file contains a series of tests that can determine the file type and MIME type of a file by its contents. I found out that the magic file is incomplete for OpenDocument files. Below I will show you what is wrong with the magic file and how you can fix it.</p>
<p>If you don’t care about the technical explanantion, you can <a href="#patch">skip to the fix</a> directly.</p>
<h4>The problem with magic</h4>
<p>First off, some tests. I ran these tests on Debian Lenny, but I have seen other distributions as well that have incomplete file magic support for OpenDocument Format. Here is what I get when I test an odt file using the file command.</p>
<pre>~$ file document.odt
document.odt: OpenDocument Text
~$ file --mime document.odt
document.odt: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text</pre>
<p>So far, so good. Both the file type description and the MIME type are right. But for any other type of OpenDocument file only the description is correct. The file type is not. Below I am testing an ods spreadsheet.</p>
<pre>~$ file spreadsheet.ods
spreadsheet.ods: OpenDocument Spreadsheet
~$ file --mime spreadsheet.ods
spreadsheet.ods: application/octet-stream</pre>
<p>The file type "OpenDocument Image Template" is even missing completely from the magic file. There is another problem with the magic file too. An OpenDocument file is basically a zip archive that contains several XML files. The <a href="http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.1/OS/OpenDocument-v1.1.pdf">OpenDocument specification (pdf)</a> does not specify what version of zip to use. The magic file only searches for zip 2.0, which is what most ODF applications use, but not all. Some applications use version 1.0 instead and according to the ODF spec that is valid. Here is what happens when you try to detect an ODF file zipped with the zip 1.0 standard.</p>
<pre>~$ file document.odt
document.odt: Zip archive data, at least v1.0 to extract
~$ file --mime document.odt
document.odt: application/zip</pre>
<h4 id="patch">Fixing magic detection</h4>
<p>I have written a patch for the magic file that fixes all of the above problems. It removes the version test for the ODF zip container, adds the correct MIME type for all the different ODF file types and adds the missing OpenDocument Image Template. This patch is written for <tt>/usr/share/file/magic</tt> on Debian Lenny. If you want to patch your own Linux distribution then you may need to adapt it. You can <a href="http://code.officeshots.org/trac/officeshots/browser/trunk/server/patches/magic.patch">view the patch in our Officeshots Trac</a> or <a href="http://code.officeshots.org/officeshots/trunk/server/patches/magic.patch">download the patch directly from Subversion</a>.
<p><strong>Update 2009-06-29:</strong> I have now also created <a href="http://www.jejik.com/files/examples/file-5.0.3-opendocument.patch">a patch</a> against the original upstream <a href="http://www.darwinsys.com/file/">file-5.0.3</a>.</p>
<p>First, make a backup of your original magic file. Then apply the patch to magic.</p>
<pre>~# cd /usr/share/file
/usr/share/file# cp magic magic.orig
/usr/share/file# patch < ~/magic.patch
patching file magic</pre>
<p>After this you need to recompile the magic file. This will create magic.mgc which is the file that is actually used by the file command and the PHP Fileinfo extension.</p>
<pre>/usr/share/file# file -C magic</pre>
<p>Now your magic file will correctly identify all OpenDocument file types.</p>
<pre>~$ file --mime spreadsheet.ods
spreadsheet.ods: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet</pre>
<p>And that’s all there is to it. Have fun with ODF!.</p>
http://www.jejik.com/articles/2009/05/officeshots_org_available_in_closed_betaOfficeshots.org available in closed beta2009-05-21T09:08:00Z2009-05-21T09:08:00ZSander Marechals.marechal@jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.com
<p><a href="http://www.officeshots.org">Officeshots.org</a> has finally gone into Beta this week. It took a lot more work (and time) than expected but we made it nonetheless. At the moment the beta is a closed beta, available to current contributers and members of the OpenDoc society. But we hope to start with public, free availability within a month. Joining the OpenDoc society is free for FOSS projects, so if you are interested in the beta, please <a href="http://www.opendocsociety.org/">join them.</a></p>
<p>Below is the full press release.</p>
<h4>Officeshots.org available in closed beta</h4>
<p>"Free webservice lets user compare office applications"</p>
<p>'s Hertogenbosch/Den Haag, May 19 2009</p>
<p>The Netherlands in Open Connection and OpenDoc Society are happy to
announce the immediate availability of the beta of Officeshots.org, a
free webservice that allows users to compare the output quality of
office applications. The Officeshots project entails both an open source
service framework, and a free online service based on this framework.
The service is now in closed beta, exclusively available to members of the
international OpenDoc Society on <a href="http://www.officeshots.org">http://www.officeshots.org</a> (1). If you wish
to join the beta program you can become a member or sponsor of the OpenDoc
Society (2).</p>
<p>Officeshots.org was first announced on January 29th 2009, with the beta phase
of the Officeshots.org service scheduled to become active at the end of
February or early March. A delay in supporting rendering factories caused the
original schedule to slip but with support of NLnet, Open IT Netherlands and
Abicollab.net the project is finally ready to start the beta phase.</p>
<p>Project Lead Sander Marechal (The Lone Wolves Foundation): "At the start
of the beta phase, Officeshots.org is running a number of factories
implementing GO-OO, OpenOffice.org, Gnumeric and AbiWord. We expect to quickly
add support for a number of other factories such as Lotus Symphony, RedOffice
(Chinese), OfficeReader (an ODF viewer for Symbian smart phones) and the soon
to be released KOffice 2.0" Software vendors and user communities are
encouraged to add their office solution of choice to Officeshots.org, to make
its functionality available to a wider audience.</p>
<p>So far development work within the project has concentrated on making a
safe, distributed document rendering environment that allows buyers and
developers to test interoperability in many different applications on
many different platforms. During the closed beta the visual appearance
of the main Officeshots website will be enhanced, and a translation
framework so people can assist in translating Officeshots.org to their
native language. The beta phase is expected to last until the beginning
of June, after which the service will be available freely to anyone.</p>
<p>Officeshots will be put to the test significantly in the first ODF Plugfest
that will be held June 15/16th 2009 in The Royal Library in The Hague, where a
large number of ODF implementations (including wellknown names such as
Microsoft, Google, IBM and Sun, but also upcoming players like ZCubes and
CelFrame Office) will test their interoperability on invitation by the Dutch
cabinet in the person of Dutch Minister of Foreign Trade Frank Heemskerk (3).</p>
<p>If you wish to be updated with the latest developments and get the
announcement for the public release, please consider joining out
mailinglist at the following URL:</p>
<p><a href="http://lists.opendocsociety.org/mailman/listinfo/officeshots">http://lists.opendocsociety.org/mailman/listinfo/officeshots</a></p>
<ol>
<li>If you want to log in with a digital certificate you can do so at <a href="https://www.officeshots.org">https://www.officeshots.org</a>.</li>
<li>Join at <a href="http://www.opendocsociety.org">http://www.opendocsociety.org</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.odfworkshop.nl">http://www.odfworkshop.nl</a>.</li>
</ol>
http://www.jejik.com/articles/2009/01/officeshots_org_announcementOfficeshots.org announcement2009-01-31T12:38:00Z2009-01-31T12:38:00ZSander Marechals.marechal@jejik.comhttp://www.jejik.com
<p>Yesterday the <a href="http://www.opendocsociety.org/">OpenDoc Society</a>, the <a href="http://www.noiv.nl/noiv">NOiV (Netherlands in Open Connection)</a> and the <a href="http://www.nlnet.nl/">NLNet Foundation</a> announced <a href="http://www.officeshots.org">Officeshots.org</a>, a new webservice where you can upload ODF documents and compare their rendering and output in different office suite applications. We here at Lone Wolves are happy to announce that we are the lead architects of this new webservice.</p>
<p>Over the coming days I will announce a couple of things regarding Officeshots.org on this website, like how it works, where to get the code and how to contribute. The plan is to start a closed beta by the end of February and go public by the end of March, but if we want to make this deadline then we need contributers. In the upcoming days I will explain exactly what we need, but if you want to help then you can already <a href="http://lists.opendocsociety.org/mailman/listinfo/officeshots">join the officeshots.org mailinglist</a>.</p>
<p>Here is the full press release from the OpenDoc Society and NoiV:</p>
<pre>Free webservice lets user compare office applications
'Office users can finally see what others are seeing'
~ Maarssen/Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 30th 2009
The Dutch government program "Netherlands in Open Connection" and
OpenDoc Society have announced they are collaborating on an online
document factory to compare office suite applications. The free
webservice Officeshots.org should be available by the end of February
2009. Users will be able to online compare the output quality of a large
number of office suites as well as web-based productivity applications.
The collaboration was announced during a well visited ODF conference in
Maarssen, The Netherlands. The project is financially supported by a
grant from the Netherlands based not-for-profit investor NLNet Foundation.
"Thanks to the adoption of open standards like the Open Document Format,
the number of productivity applications is increasing rapidly. In a
mature market a user should be able to compare the various suppliers
transparently." says Bert Bakker, president of the OpenDoc Society.
"Officeshots.org will ensure that you do not need to blindly trust a
supplier when he claims to support a certain document format. Seeing is
believing."
"We want to make the differences between the various applications
visible and measurable, which will stimulate suppliers to make quality
improvements" said Ineke Schop, program manager at Netherlands in Open
Connection."Because a user can simply upload a document and see the
output of the various applications they get a powerful tool to make
quality differences measurable. The service also helps designers to
compare the rendering of document templates and letterheads in different
office suites. "This helps governments choose the right application and
supports the ambitions of the Dutch cabinet to standardise on ODF and
PDF for document exchange."
Under the "Netherlands in Open Connection" action plan, the Dutch
administration accepts and uses the Open Document Format as of April
last year. Other government bodies in the Netherlands do so since
January 2009. The program is a joint initiative of the Dutch government,
led by the minister for Foreign Trade Heemskerk and the State Secretary
for the Interior and Kingdom Relations Bijleveld-Schouten.
The tool will be multilingual from the start. The web service will
launch as a closed beta for members of the OpenDoc Society at the end of
February, followed by a public launch planned one month later.</pre>