Mi blog lah!

Planet EL/LAK (πλανήτης) is a blog aggregator of Greek-speaking users that work on free and open-source software. Though the users speak Greek, it is OK to write in English as well.

We started in 2004 at http://xnum.sourceforge.net/PlanetHellas/ and quickly realised we had to move somewhere else. We enjoyed hosting at hellug.gr and in February 2007 we moved to the current location, planet.ellak.gr.

In the free and open-source communities, the purpose of a planet is to provide a common location where one can read what the people behind the community are doing, thinking, and so on.

In planet.ellak.gr we use the venus variation of the Planet software. Quite shortly, venus will become the official Planet software.

The planet’s feed is being managed by Feedburner. When you access http://planet.ellak.gr/rss20.xml, you get a normalised feed from Feedburner.

The last three blogs added are

1. Blog of Δημήτρης Τυπάλδος
2. New blog of Athanasios Lefteris
3. MyDrupal.gr Greek Drupal Community, (welcome to planet!)

We use Google Coop as a means to search the websites and blogs that are shown here. At the top-right of the planet you can see the special search box. If you read something interesting on the planet at some point in time, you can search it through this search box.

Our latest stats for August show that 50% of our visitors use free and open-source software.

Mozilla Firefox has a 80% lead and is the most popular browser. IE is down at 11% and the rest is distributed to many open-source browsers and also accesses from mobile devices.

The vast majority of the visitors (84%) come directly here (either bookmark, or just typing planet.ellak.gr or they just disabled referrers). 8% comes from search engines and the last 8% come from friendly websites (top referrers include www.ellak.gr and BizWriter (Greek). Top keywords are greek, ubuntu and cyprus.

We maintain this planet in an open fashion; see the Planet-ELLAK Google Group, for past discussions, and information on getting your blog/community listed on planet.ellak.gr.

Tags: blog, general, planetellak by Simos
1 Comment »

• Vote “No, with comments,” which is the JTC1-prescribed way of indicating “conditional approval” (JTC1 Directives (DOC, pops), Section 9.8)
• Recommend that OOXML be resubmitted as normal working item in JTC1/SC34:
  • Split into a multi part standard: WordProcessingML, SpreadsheetML, DrawingML, Office Open Math Markup, VML, etc.
  • Have each part progress independently, at its own speed, within normal ISO processing stages
  • Encourage participation from OASIS to identify opportunities for harmonization with existing ISO 26300 “ODF”
• OOXML, as the default format in MS Office, is important. But as a standard it is full of inconsistencies, omissions, inaccuracies and errors. No standard is perfect, but OOXML, in its current state, does even not meet the minimum requirements.

source: Rob Weir’s presentation slides, last slide (pdf)

OOXML is being rushed to become an ISO standard using the fast-track process. This is not good. As end-users we want real commodity document formats that are easy to implement and do not tie us to a specific office suite. Sadly, the purpose of rushing to standardise OOXML is simply to avoid letting it become a commodity document format. By letting OOXML become an ISO standard as it is now, a few companies get to gain a lot, but we are going to lose.

Spread the word.

I copy below the voting country list.

According to Rob Weir, all countries can cast a vote on this; sorry for this misinformation.

The voting countries (Participating countries) are (the list is being updated, please see Participating countries for new list)

Brazil (ABNT) Bulgaria (BDS) China (SAC) Colombia (ICONTEC) Cyprus (CYS) Czech Republic (CNI) Côte-d’Ivoire (CODINORM) Denmark (DS) Finland (SFS) France (AFNOR) Germany (DIN) India (BIS) Italy (UNI) Japan (JISC) Kazakhstan (KAZMEMST) Kenya (KEBS) Korea, Republic of (KATS) Netherlands (NEN) Norway (SN) Sweden (SIS) Switzerland (SNV) Thailand (TISI) Trinidad and Tobago (TTBS) Turkey (TSE) USA (ANSI) United Kingdom (BSI)

In addition, the following countries have observer status (Observer countries), (the list is being updated, please see Observer countries for new list)

Australia (SA) Chile (INN) Greece (ELOT) Hong Kong, China (ITCHKSAR) Hungary (MSZT) Ireland (NSAI) Israel (SII) Lithuania (LST) Mexico (DGN) Romania (ASRO) Spain (AENOR) Sri Lanka (SLSI) Ukraine (DSSU)

The observer countries, though the cannot vote, they can submit comments.

Tags: planetellak by Simos
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Update 3rd May 2008: If you have Ubuntu 8.04 (probably applies to other recent Linux distributions as well), you simply need to add GTK_IM_MODULE=xim to /etc/environment. Start a Terminal (Applications/Accessories/Terminal) and type the commands (the first command makes a backup copy of the configuration file, and the second opens the configuration file with administrative priviliges, so that you can edit and save):

$ gksudo cp /etc/environment /etc/environment.ORIGINAL
$ gksudo gedit /etc/environment

then append

GTK_IM_MODULE=xim

save, and restart your computer. It should work now. Try to test with the standard Text editor, found in Accessories.

In Ubuntu 8.10 (autumn 2008), it should work out of the box, just by enabling the Greek Polytonic layout.

Update 20th June 2008: If still some accents/breathings/aspirations do not work, then this is probably related to your system locale (whether it is Greek or not). It works better when it is Greek. If you are affected and you do not use the Greek locale, there is one more thing to do.

$ gksudo cp /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose.ORIGINAL
$ gksudo cp /usr/share/X11/locale/el_GR.UTF-8/Compose /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose


The first command makes a backup copy of your original en_US Compose file (assuming you run an English locale; if in doubt, read /usr/share/X11/locale/locale.dir). The second command copies the Greek compose file over the English one. You then logout and login again.

End of updates

To write Greek Polytonic in Linux, a special file is used, which is called the compose file. There is a bit of complication here in the sense that the compose file depends on the current system locale.

To find out which compose file is active on your system, have a look at

/usr/share/X11/locale/compose.dir

Let’s assume your system locale is en_US.UTF-8 (Start Applications/Accessories/Terminal and type locale).

In the compose.dir file it says

en_US.UTF-8/Compose: en_US.UTF-8

Note that the locale is the second field. If you have a different system locale, match on the second field. Many people make a mistake here. Actually, I think be faster for the system to locate the entry if the compose.dir file was sorted by locale.

Therefore, the compose file is

/usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose

So, what’s the problem then?

Well, for the Greek locale (el_GR.UTF-8) we have a different compose file, a compose file in which Greek Polytonic actually works ;-).

Therefore, there are numerous workarounds here to get Greek Polytonic working.

For example,

• If you speak modern Greek, you can install the Greek locale.
• You can edit /usr/share/X11/locale/compose.dir so that for your locale, the compose file is the Greek one, /usr/share/X11/locale/el_GR.UTF-8/Compose.
• You can edit the Greek compose file, take the Greek Polytonic section and update the Greek Polytonic section of en_US.UTF-8/Compose.
• You can copy the Greek compose file in your home directory under the name .XCompose. I did not try this one, and also you may be affected by this bug. (not tested)

Of course the proper solution is to update en_US.UTF-8/Compose with the updated Greek Polytonic compose sequences. There is a tendency to add the compose sequences of all languages to en_US.UTF-8/Compose, and this actually is happening now. In this respect, it would make sense to rename en_US.UTF-8/Compose into something like general/Compose.

Tags: gnome, language, planetellak, polytonic, ubuntu by Simos
54 Comments »

By the end of this month, the ITC 1/SC 34 Technical Committee (ISO) will be voting on whether to accept or not OOXML as an ISO standard.

The voting countries (Participating countries) are

In addition, the following countries have observer status (Observer countries),

The observer countries, though the cannot vote, they can submit comments.

The current stage that OOXML is at, is 40.20, which means is the period that leads to the voting whether to accept or not as an ISO standard.

This proposed document format is controversial because an existing document format exists, the OpenDocument document format, ISO/IEC 26300, Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0, since 2006.

OOXML is a controversial document format. Read more on this regarding OOXML.

In addition, see the Technical White Paper on OpenDocument and OOXML by the ODF Alliance UK Action Group. Another whitepaper, ODF/OOXML technical white paper by Edward Macnaghten.

Open Malaysia is also valuable resource (includes blog contributions relating to open standards). For example, in spreadsheets in OOXML one cannot write dates before the 1st March 1900!

Finally, Achieving Openness: A Closer Look at ODF and OOXML by Sam Hiser.

Update #1: Microsoft is Outmuscling OOXML Opposition in Spain

Update #2: It is important to vote NO rather than abstain. It is sad that Spain decided to abstain rather than voting NO. UPDATE: Spain is an observer, thus cannot cast a vote. Somewhat lost en la traduccion.

Update #3: Czech comments on OOXML.

Tags: general, planetellak by Simos
4 Comments »