Status of the Design Team Kick-Off, and a Personal Note

Status of the Design Team Kick-Off

You might remember our earlier blog postings concerning the Design Team Kick-Off, an effort to get to know each other and to build a sufficient structure that helps us to make LibreOffice a great software ...

So, we brainstormed a bit what we'll need ... not in terms of work items (improve this or that in the user interface, add missing icons etc.), but in terms of organizational stuff (how to make decisions, how to get data about our users etc.) Although it took a while (my fault due to parallel issues), we have now a comprehensive list of what's missing at the moment ... on the What We Need page.

We don't know each of the solutions yet, but sometimes it is more important to know what to work on, than to work on anything without knowing what for ... so I hope that the Design Team continues to work on that. Until know, it was great to see all the good brainstorming.

If your team has some ideas what might be needed to cooperate, then feel free to add it to the team sections on the same page. Björn and Thorsten have been so kind to look at it from a developers point-of-view: Thanks a lot guys!


Oh, and since I've noticed a few discussions in the last days concerning "user interface design", please have a look at my temporary working space in the wiki. I've listed some of the Interaction Guidelines for the platforms we support - of course, it is just about UI elements, but it should already help to keep the focus in discussions. If you like, please move the content to a page where it makes a bit more sense (e.g. Design/Guidelines). At the moment, I really miss the time ... but why?

Personal Note

As some of you already know, our son was born yesterday :-) And that's the explanation for having been less active (especially) during the last three weeks ... and the reason for being absent for some more. I'd like to enjoy this time without working on LibreOffice.

Why? The last years, I dedicated a lot of time to StarOffice / OpenOffice.org / LibreOffice ... user support, interaction design stuff, being the OOo User Experience Co-Lead, serving in the OpenOffice.org Community Council, and helping to shape the TDF (long before LibreOffice went public). I think its fair to - this time - spend a bit more time with the family.

I'll be back soon :-)

Cheers,
Christoph

Sort of "LibreOffice Portable"

I'm an ordinary member of the German non-profit organization OOoDeV that cares about free software; in our case this is LibreOffice. At the end of the year, they send some small presents to its members ... so a small package arrived at home.

What a surprise! A LibreOffice bag, a LibreOffice lanyard, and a nice Christmas card ... thanks to the creators for both the idea and the great items!!! Next stop: FOSDEM ;-)

Now, I'll pack another (bigger) bag - we will have some short vacation and I'll be back soon. Thus, please enjoy the first days within the new year ...

Happy New Year!!!

See you,

Christoph

Go-Go-Gadgeto ... Printer

Weirdness

In the last four days, I felt like playing in a bad movie. Coming back from a business trip, I was a bit exhausted. Then, several things broke - and the repairs will require quite some investments. Since today, our flat looks like being "ruined" - the guys and the stuff who work on our kitchen occupy the whole flat, although the kitchen is just a small room. Kitchen parts, no space left ... and dust everywhere. Home sweet home.

Printing for Fun

In one of my last posts, I've stated that our laser printer said (more or less) goodbye. So we ordered a new one ... easy if you "just" need some grayscale output. But, scanning documents gets more and more important to me. At work, we do have several of these scanners that are able to convert a pile of paper into a PDF. Can a person, who loves the idea of a Document Foundation, resist to buy something like that? Unfortunately (see above), not. :-)

There has been a great offer for such a device (a model my favorite printer maker) ... to make it short: It's now possible to insert a stack of paper, press two buttons, automatically process the documents via the duplex document feeder, and finally send it to a pre-defined group of people. For example, my father will get a copy of the scan via email, and the scanner will save the same document in a folder on my notebook computer (via SMB). And it's really fast - featuring a 667 MHz PowerPC processor. Waaaah!

Finally, the printer works like a charm with Linux ... Postscript compatible, PCL emulation, network administration. To me, it is just astonishing how affordable such devices became. (Especially there are no hidden costs for toner or other supply material). And if I now could understand how to use these certificates and all the security stuff ...

Mmh, it seems I sound like a small boy having a new toy. Maybe I really feel a bit like that ... :-)

Icons

However, I've spend some hours to continue the work on the LibreOffice icons. Initially, Bernhard requested some guidance within a steering Committee phone call to know whether an own set can be included. He provided an initial version of the icons which can now be refined. Based on his work, and some initial feedback by Jaron, I started to rebuild the 16px versions without affecting too much of the style (I hope). Here is the current (not yet complete) set:

Cheers,
Christoph

Printers. And if you really need them ...

Interesting how - at the moment - I really depend on the non-digital physical paper stuff. Yesterday evening, I had to print several copies of a both very important and urgent document - in sum, several hundred pages. After some of them: "Toner empty"

Haha, I'm prepared for that! So I did all the exchanging and cleaning stuff to end up with a printer that now spends the new toner to add "visual artistry" like clouds, stripes, ... everything you really don't need if you want to get perfect printouts :-)

So, I spend the whole evening until 2:30 am, and re-started this morning without that much improvement until now ... It seems that LibreOffice work has to wait until this printer finally managed that print job. Once it works, it runs very well ...

Cheers,
Christoph