I took my Prolog-driven server temporarily off-line because it was causing a memory leak. I’m really busy with work right now, and don’t have time to fix it, so it’s momentarily shelved…
Prolog-driven server now off-line
Posted by Dave
on December 6, 2011
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LibreOffice reaches 1st anniversary of existence
Posted by Dave
on September 28, 2011
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Happy Birthday, LibreOffice!
Today is LibreOffice’s birthday, Yes, it’s exactly one year ago today that the project first broke away from Oracle’s leadership.
When the community around OpenOffice.org forked into an independent, community-driven project, I was excited and wanted to see it be a success. The best way to ensure that was to actively get involved.
For many people, the most important pieces of software that you use after your operating system are your word processor, spreadsheet program, etc. LibreOffice gives you a free, high-quality office suite that runs on most operating systems, and can read and write the file formats of many free and commercial programs. And the fact that it’s a community project means you can have a hand in directing its future. You want something changed or need a new feature? Get involved and make it happen.
The LibreOffice project is indeed a live, thriving and active project. But if you care about the existence of free, open-source software in the future, you need to consider giving a little time and work to help maintain it and develop it further. There is a vast number of open-source projects out there, of which LibreOffice is just one - albeit a major one.
Choose one that’s close to your interests, and join the project. There are lots of ways to contribute work, apart from coding. You can help work on documentation, you can take part in giving technical support and advice to other users, and do lots of other things. If you have a skill, there’s often a way it can be useful in a FOSS project.
Free software that is independent of outside control doesn’t grow on trees, it is built and preserved by ordinary people. It contributes to the protection of your civic rights and freedom of speech, and gives free high-quality tools to anyone and everyone that needs them. Make sure it continues to exist in the future. Join a Free Open-Source Software project today.
LibreOffice and Alfresco
Posted by Dave
on August 16, 2011
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Alfresco Share screenshot
I’ve been doing some work for the LibreOffice project. I’m hosting the LibreOffice Alfresco platform, and have been working on developing the platform itself, and on the Drupal-powered public browser portal for the platform, at media.libreoffice.org.
Alfresco is a great tool for collaborating on documentation, and for catering to many other content management needs, too, but sophisticated software can be complex to initially configure and customize.
Both sites take up all the spare time I have to devote to non-professional project work and Web development, so I don’t currently have much time to spend on my Prolog-driven Web server, which is likely to remain in mothballs until October or November of this year, when the winter comes around and I will probably have a less-busy schedule.
For the moment, Brains, the Prolog-driven server, is accessible via password only, as it’s too much of a security risk to leave a work-in-progress open to probing by hackers.
If there’s someone out there who’s interested in taking part in the Prolog coding, mail me and maybe we can work on the project together.
The Libreoffice challenge
Posted by Dave
on February 21, 2011
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Click above to go to the LibreOffice Challenge site and donate!
I’ve been involved in the LibreOffice project over the past months, and it’s been taking up quite a bit of my available time.
Originally, I was interested in doing work for the documentation project, but I ended up putting in a great deal of time developing content for the LibreOffice.org website.
Now I’m putting in more time for the documentation project, especially focused on organization and infrastructure.
Previously, the documentation team hadn’t really yet formed since the LibreOffice fork away from the Oracle-run OpenOffice.org project.
There weren’t many contributors, and there was no formal workflow for documentation production.
We’ve been working on that, and I’ve set up an Alfresco content management system, and collaboration platform at alfresco.libreoffice.org, which we are now using for working on a documentation base of user guides and manuals covering all the applications of the LibreOffice personal productivity suite.
Alfresco is a very powerful and sophisticated package, but it takes quite a lot of configuration to make it into exactly the tool you need for the work to be done.
So that’s what I’ve been busy with.
Now, The Document Foundation has taken another step forward in its development.
The Steering Committee has launched an appeal for funds to set up a not-for-profit organization – A German “Stiftung” – to give the project a proper legal standing.
The project needs to collect 50,000 euros for this, and has launched a challenge.
Progress so far has been really encouraging. Although there were some who weren’t optimistic about the chances of success, the challenge has only been running a few days and – at the time of writing this post – had already collected two thirds of the needed amount.
A special information website was put together at http://challenge.documentfoundation.org/. Head on over there and don’t be shy to contribute a little money!
Prolog server now on-line
Posted by Dave
on May 1, 2010
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Hi, I’m blogging here about Prolog stuff on http://prolog.intelligent-translation.com/ – a Web server powered by SWI Prolog.
As of today, the server is on-line, but lacks any programming at all. It’s just a stub. As time goes by, I’ll be working on programming it. My aim is to put a Prolog interpreter online, where you can edit and run Prolog code in a sandbox. But my ideas may adapt as I work on the project.
This is not a small undertaking, so we’re talking about quite a few months of development.
I’m very interested to hear from anyone who’s a Prolog fan like me. Please do leave a comment or mail me.
In particular, if there’s anyone out there who has used Borland Turbo Prolog and who has the code of the Turbo Prolog Toolbox, I’d be very interested to get a copy.
The Turbo Prolog Toolbox incorporated the framework of a Prolog interpreter, and I used to own a copy of it… but we’re talking about IBM PC days in the late eighties, and I don’t have the original diskettes anymore.
By the way, Borland Turbo Prolog was subsequently acquired by PDC, and is now available as PDC Prolog for Windows.
OK, so there we are, first post.