French, German, Dutch and Italian Hackathons Fuel UK ODF Plugfest

Gijs HilleniusHackathons in Toulouse (France), Munich (Germany), Woerden (the Netherlands) and Bologna (Italy) involving software developers and public administrations, are providing input for the ODF Plugfest that will take place in London on December 8th and 9th. The first four meetings involve developers working on the Open Document Format ODF and the LibreOffice suite of office productivity tools. The ODF Plugfest brings together multiple implementers and stakeholders of this document standard. The plugfest is aimed at increasing interoperability, tests implementations and discuss new features.

The administration of the city of Munich hosted a Hackfest and Debian Bug Squashing’ party on Friday. The hackathon started in Friday morning and continued until Sunday afternoon. The city says such meetings contribute useful new features and code improvements. Last year, some 40 software developers attended the codefest.

Munich’s meeting follows on the heels of a code development party in the city of Toulouse. Here, developers interacted with school teachers and talked with LibreOffice users on accessibility, according to a blog post by one of the attendees. On Sunday morning, a handful of Dutch software developers met in Woerden, the Netherlands. The group conducted software tests and worked on localization and translation.

Quality assurance

Next Saturday, LibreOffice developers and users will be meeting in Bologna, Italy. It is the first meeting of the LibreItalia association advocating the use of LibreOffice. One of the topics on the agenda is increasing the use of LibreOffice in public administration and in education.

Attendees of all four workshops are involved in the 10th ODF Plugfest in Londen. This two-day event is hosted the government of the United Kingdom and organised by the OpenDoc Society promoting the use of the ODF open document format.

“It is great to see that interoperability and quality assurance are shared by all in the LibreOffice community”, says OpenDoc Society’s vice-chairperson Michiel Leenaars. “Thanks to efforts like these and through the Open Document Format standard, the office world is finally maturing.” He says the plugfest in London provides an opportunity to solve issues that go beyond a single software solution. “We welcome the submission of issues and useful testing scenarios to the plugfest so they can be discussed with all vendors and developers of office productivity solutions.”

More information:

• ODF Plugfest in London
• LibreOffice hackathon in Toulouse
• LibreOffice hackathon in Munich
• LibreOfice hackathon in Woerden
• LibreOffice meeting in Bologna