The Pathedral and the Kazoo

... and find ourselves in the year 2034.

If you now build ICU and get hit by

make[2]: Leaving directory `/builddir/build/BUILD/icu/source/test/cintltst'
-------------
| **     FAILING TEST SUMMARY FOR:              intltest  
         TestTwoDigitYear
      DateFormatTest
   format
| ** END FAILING TEST SUMMARY FOR:              intltest
---------------
ALL TESTS SUMMARY:
ok:  testdata iotest cintltst
===== ERRS:  intltest
make[1]: *** [check-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/builddir/build/BUILD/icu/source/test'

you just did a jump to the left.

http://sourceforge.net/p/icu/mailman/message/32443311/

Then do a step to the right

--- icu.orig/source/test/intltest/dtfmttst.cpp	2013-10-04 22:48:00.000000000 +0200
+++ icu/source/test/intltest/dtfmttst.cpp	2014-06-13 19:34:40.611299572 +0200
@@ -1129,7 +1129,7 @@
         return;
     }
     parse2DigitYear(fmt, "5/6/17", date(117, UCAL_JUNE, 5));
-    parse2DigitYear(fmt, "4/6/34", date(34, UCAL_JUNE, 4));
+    parse2DigitYear(fmt, "4/6/34", date(134, UCAL_JUNE, 4));
 }
 
 // -------------------------------------

With your hands on your hips
You bring your knees in tight
But it's the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane
Let's do the time warp again
Let's do the time warp again

Time Warp - Rocky Horror Picture Show

In LibreOffice 4.3 the user will be able to specify an arbitrary valid BCP 47 language tag for text attribution.

In character attribution dialogs the language list box (of the Western text font if CJK or CTL are enabled) is now a combo box with an edit field where the user can specify a valid BCP 47 language tag to define a text language attribute if the language she wants to assign is not available from the selectable list. The input is checked against a copy of the IANA language-subtag-registry (transformed to XML), provided either with the liblangtag package of your OS distribution, or the liblangtag shipped with LibreOffice on systems that do not provide one. The internal registry file distributed with LibreOffice 4.3 consists of data as of 2014-04-10.

 

For language tag details please see the For users section on the langtag.net web site.

And now jump to the release notes for more nifty features of LibreOffice 4.3 :-)

 

In LibreOffice 4.3 the user will be able to select how textual cell content shall be treated in arithmetic operations.

This setting determines how to treat text when encountered as operand in an arithmetic operation or as argument to a function that expects a number instead.

Selectable under Tools → Options → LibreOffice Calc → Formula in Detailed calculation settings → Custom → Details from Conversion from text to number are:

Generate #VALUE! error

=1+"1" or =1+"x" give #VALUE!

Treat as zero

=1+"1" or =1+"x" give 1

Convert only unambiguous

=1+"1" gives 2, but =1+"1.000" or =1+"x" give #VALUE!

Convert also locale dependent

=1+"1.000" may be 2 or 1001 ... =1+"x" gives #VALUE!

For Generate #VALUE! error and Treat as zero, setting the Treat empty string as zero option is disabled and the option is aligned to these settings, for Convert only unambiguous and Convert also locale dependent the Treat empty string as zero option can be set independently.

When reading documents created by other spreadsheet applications or older versions of LibreOffice, and to interchange documents between different locales, the Convert only unambiguous with Treat empty string as zero = True setting is recommended, though LibreOffice so far acted as Convert also locale dependent with Treat empty string as zero = False, which is the reason that option is kept as default.

The best setting to create new documents that can be interpreted by all spreadsheet applications without on-the-fly string conversion is Generate #VALUE! error. With this option enabled possible data errors can be spotted early. Not having to convert strings during calculation is also faster, of course.

 

As flying to Gran Canaria for just two days is a waste of resources I stayed a little longer after the LibreOffice Hackfest at Las Palmas and enjoyed some enhanced coastal hacking conditions and hacker spaces ...

Björn had the same ideas about the waste of resources and a joyful working environment and so we met for a hotel balcony hacking afternoon:

 

Life is about the good things.

 

Another retrospective..

On April 24 and 25 we had a LibreOffice Hackfest at Las Palmas, Gran Canaria at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) in it's IT faculty building. Due to the geographical distance for some community members understandably a little bit less frequented than other hackfests in the past, but nevertheless of course great fun for the participants. And an even bigger opportunity to introduce LibreOffice and Free Software development to the local IT students, as the dean of the IT faculty Fran Santana was very enthusiastic about this event and helpfully provided rooms, equipment and personnel and invited interested students to attend our talks.

On Thursday we had introductory talks with about 20-30 listeners. Not that many, but given that it was a week of exams not a bad number either, whoever took an exam on that day wasn't attending and whoever did not take an exam probably was reading for an examination instead ... in fact it was very quiet in the building.
All talks were streamed live and recorded and are available on YouTube as a 1h30 video. Thanks to Jorge Castellano of ULPGC.

I noticed some shyness in the audience.. how can we, as a large project, bridge the gap and attract young fellow hackers who aren't that experienced and maybe didn't get in contact with a Free Software project yet? Anyhow, four students showed up during the days, all were interested in how to contribute something in Python. Apparently Python is quite popular.. so there's room for writing API unit tests, contribute to server infrastructure and some.

There's a list of achievements in the wiki, but no less important is the community building process. I'd like to see more local events to spread the word and attract interested developers, especially C++ hackers of course who'd like to work on application code. The next LibreOffice Hackfest will be at Paris, on June 27-28.

A special Thank You goes to Alberto Ruiz from Red Hat, who himself studied at the very same university, and Fran Santana, the dean of the IT faculty at ULPGC, who both collaborated closely to make all this happen. Fran's dedication and commitment in hosting this hackfest made it a great success. And of course a Thank You to the city of Las Palmas for choosing and using LibreOffice, which triggered the initial idea of having a hackfest at Las Palmas and lead to a great stay. We should do this again :-)