OPEN SOURCE
August 27, 2009 Open source Spreadsheet Gnumeric - is part of the GNOME desktop and has Windows installers available. It is intended to be a free replacement for proprietary spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel, which it broadly and openly emulates. It has the ability to import and export data in several file formats, including CSV, Microsoft Excel, HTML, LaTeX, Lotus 1-2-3, OpenDocument and Quattro Pro; its native format is the Gnumeric file format (.gnm or .gnumeric), an XML file compressed with gzip. It includes all of the spreadsheet functions of the North American edition of Microsoft Excel and many functions unique to Gnumeric. Pivot tables and conditional formatting are not yet supported but are planned for future versions. GNU Oleo OPEN SOURCE PRESENTATION ‘’an effective presentation is one in which the audience finds the information useful and interesting and where fonts, colours, images and sound are used in ways that catch their attention and help to get the information across.’’ So, in setting a presentation as an activity, what is important? There seem to be a number of bases to cover here: · Research - exploring the subject, discerning what matters and being selective, analyzing, making comparisons, telling stories, organizing things into a structure. And, of course, the content itself does matter, and having 11 year olds spend the first six lessons of senior school ICT on producing a presentation to introduce themselves to their classmates seems a wasted opportunity, when so many aspects of other subject could be explored here. · Use of the software - there are skills to be learnt here, no matter how quickly learners pick up an interface: the example of PowerPoint’s outlining tool springs to mind, and yet, this is relatively low level stuff, we’re not, after all writing code here · Design - there’s a potential conflict here with the software skills, as it’s all too easy to focus on adding complexity and distractions when, I suspect, a really effective presentation, one that stands out from the crowd, has an elegant simplicity to its design. It’s possible that folk over in the art department might be better at teaching this than the ICT staff. · The actual presenting bit - again, something which ICT teachers might not be the best folk to teach: I’m thinking cross-curricular projects with drama, English, history whatever, might have some real value here, and this is one aspect which the ESB presentation element has certainly helped my pupils towards. · Reflection - feedback from the audience, including the teacher(s), time to reflect on how the presentation went and what’s been learnt. Of course, PowerPoint, when used well, isn’t going to stand in the way of achieving these objectives. That said, my ongoing exploration of ubuntu/edubuntu has provided some interesting insights into the world of presentation software that exists beyond PowerPoint. The most obvious alternative is OpenOffice Impress, which is, I’d say, a pretty good substitute for PowerPoint. It’s a pretty good substitute for the MS product, without quite so many transition, animation and clipart effects, which given my views above, may be no bad thing. The outline tool is good, although it doesn’t have the interoperability with Writer that Word/PowerPoint have. One of the best things about Impress is its export capabilities, with native support for Flash and PDF. Impress’s PDF export capabilities are particularly good when used alongside KeyJNote as a tool for viewing presentations. In the best traditions of Open Source, we have here a small program that does a single task very well, the task in this case being showing presentation slides - lots of command line or sidecar file based options, but in essence it provides eye-candy transitions, text and mouse highlighting, and a quick overview feature to use whilst running the presentation. Really nice software, which will work with directories of image files too. The Windows and Linux versions don’t even need installing (although the Linux one needs Python to work), making them ideal for storing on a USB stick alongside the presentation slides themselves. The PDF export from Impress is also useful in conjunction with SuperShow, which will combine the slides from the pdf with audio recorded alongside and output a .swf file of the whole presentation. I have a lot of admiration for LyX’s WYSIWYM approach to document creation, although I’ve not yet managed to give up the bad habits of messing with formats acquired through using Word. Using the LaTeX Beamer class, LyX is quite capable of producing some rather elegant presentation slides, which again feed beautifully into KeyJNote. I’m not convinced that this quite has the ease of use I’m looking for for primary work, but it does keep the focus very much on the content and the structure. Elgg itself now has a presentation module, and whilst it’s not a bad way to share presentation content online, I can’t imagine many folk using it live with an audience: it’s probably best used as an e-portfolio tool, as Helen Barrett is. Something like slideshare or GoogleApps’s long expected presentation tool is, I suspect, a more transparent way of publishing traditional slides. The social network dimension of these web-based applications has much going for it in terms of my reflection objective above: slideshare do seem to have got this right. Indeed, just as Flickr is a great resource for teaching photography, Slideshare would be a pretty good tool for teaching about presentation design. Alas, unlike gallery2 as an alternative to Flickr, I’m not aware of any open-source version which one could run inside a walled garden… There are other interesting ways of using the web for presentations though. Eric Meyer’s S5 is particularly impressive, although I’d be hesitant before going down the route of teaching the mark-up needed to primary children. S5 integration into Moodle and Elgg would be avenues worth exploring. Another cool idea is the XUL based tool that bright-green developed for Takahashi style minimalist presentations. The research aspect that is a key part of presentation work in school as I see it is perhaps best achieved outside of the presentation software itself. Google notebook might be a starting point here, but of course, it’s not open source. For web-based research, del.icio.us has much to be said, and clever use of tagging would allow for some content organization on the fly, together with some interesting possibilities for collaborative research. There is a whole host of open source applications which replicate del.icou.us’s functionality, and in some cases API, such as scuttle. A wiki would also provide a way to collect source material together, and with a little organization, editing, and design work, could also be used for the presentation itself. An alternative approach, and one I’ve used successfully in the past, is to use mind mapping software such as freemind or semantik for this, and I think this provides a visual, accessible route in to the crucial sifting and organization dimension. There are interesting interoperabilities here: semantik (nee kdissert) is designed as an authoring / outlining tool, and will happily produce Beamer formatted LaTeX, Freemind, on the other hand, has mediawiki and del.icio.us integration, both of which are very cool, although the wiki browser doesn’t appear to be GPLed In fact, Freemind’s non-linear, strongly visual format would, if we weren’t so wedded to the linear format of the PowerPoint presentation, make it a very appealing tool for illustrating a presentation - certainly worth experimenting with, I think. Alternative approaches to presentations are undoubtedly of value. Much could be done using images alone, such as in iphoto or photostory: linux has SlideshowCreator, but the interface is a bit OTT; there may be others out there! I have a vivid recollection of Stephen Heppell presenting by just talking us through a number of pictures, documents, webpages etc that he’d gathered together in a folder on his PowerBook. There’s also something to be said for dispensing with the slideware entirely, and just talking to and interacting with the audience. If you’re like most PC users, the word processor is one of your own most mission-critical applications. On the Linux side, the OpenOffice.org Writer word processing program has garnered a lot of attention lately, partly due to the inclusion of the OpenOffice.org suite on high-profile netbooks. But literally dozens of other word processing applications are also out there for Linux, and some of these are lighter in weight, suiting them to possible use on either a netbook, an embedded device, or that old legacy PC sitting around in your storage area. Last week, in the first installment of our series of articles on word processors for Linux, we took a look at five of the best known open source offerings: OpenOffice.org; an alternative full-featured word processor dubbed AbiWord; and three offerings honed for specialized purposes: KWord, LYX, and e:doc. Now we’re moving on to five more entries in the open source Linux category. EZ Writer is the grand-daddy of them all. The other four on this week’s list–Ted, FLWriter, WordGrinder, and EZ Word–all hold relative smallness and sleekness as their main claims to fame. In contrast to so-called proprietary word processors for Linux–StarOffice and the much newer ThinkFree, for example–these open source applications are free software programs that will cost you zilch. Ted OS Platforms: Linux and other Unix OS. If you buy a new Linux netbook such as the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 or HP Mini 100 Mi Edition, it will come with OpenOffice.org Write. Meanwhile, Chinese vendor HiVision last fall released a $98 Linux netbook outfitted with AbiWord. But some users prefer lighter word processors–either to save space, to gain speedier performance, or simply because they don’t want or need a lot of fancy capabilities. While Ted is smaller than either Write or AbiWord, it’s still strong on features, ease of use, and compatibility with Microsoft Word. Developed by Mark de Does, the multingual program actually started out as a text editor–more along the lines of Microsoft WordPad than Word. In response to user feedback, de Does has then fixed bugs and added more capabilities along the way. Ted comes with a built-in spell checker, but this function won’t annoy you by spelling as you type. Other current features include text alignment, multiple fonts, and support for headers, footers, and tables. You can also find and replace text, spice up your document with paragraph borders and shading, and insert pictures, hyperlinks, and bookmarks, for instance. While Ted doesn’t run on Windows, it’s expressly designed to achieve as much compatibility with Windows as possible. You can save documents in the Windows .RTF format for later use on Windows systems. Ted can also be configured to read formatted e-mail sent from a Windows machine to Linux or Unix. Along with source code licensed under the General Public License (GPL), binary files packaged in RPM and tar.gz files are also available for Ted. The binaries are statically linked with the Motif libraries, meaning that you don’t need to install these proprietary libraries in order to run the word processing program. FLWriter OS Platforms: Linux and other Unix OS. In the name FLWriter, the letter “F” stands for “Fast,” whereas “L” is for “Light.” Regardless of the initial intent, however, this small what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) word processor hasn’t seen any further development–or very much use–in several years. It’s now being usurped by rivals. In an indication of FLWriter’s decline, the Damned Small Linux (DSL) project dropped the program from its distribution in favor of the fuller-featured Ted way back in 2006. The last version of FLWriter was only released in XD640, a now practically defunct project to build a desktop environment at 640-by-480 resolution for legacy PCs. FLWriter uses UTF-8 XHTML as its native file format. That format, however, has since been merged into the FTLK library, so that a separate library is no longer necessary if you still wish to try out the program. WordGrinder OS Platforms: Linux, other Unix OS, Windows, and OS X. Now in beta, WordGrinder has recently enjoyed some copious open source development from members of the Puppy Linux community, for example. WordGrinder is emphatically not a WYSIWYG word processor, according to its creator, David Given. “It is not point and click. It is not desktop publisher. It is not a text editor. It [does] not do fonts and it barely does styles. It’s designed for writing text. It gets out of your way and let you type,” Given writes in the online documentation. Consisting of only 6,300 lines of code, the tiny program DOES offer Unicode character support; an intuitive menu system; fast-access keyboard shortcuts configurable from within WordGrinder; a certain amount of character and style support; HTML import and export; and LATEX and Troff export. Pathetic Writer OS Platforms: Linux and other flavors of Unix. Pathetic Writer is part of the long-time Siag Office suite, together with the Siag spreadsheet, Egon animation program, Xfiler file manager; Sed Plus text editor; and Gvu, a PostScript document viewer. On its own, Pathetic Writer is a simple but rather complete word processor, supporting functions such as styles, selectable fonts, simple formatting, and column and row sorting. Its Toolbar offers icons for things like opening a file and saving a document, yet many other functions are still command-driven. However, this X-based word processor offers big benefits in terms of customizability (if you know what you’re doing with that, at least.) People conversant with programming lantuages such as Scheme, Ruby, Python, Guild, or Tcl can easily built extensions that let them make Pathetic Writer do exactly what they’d like it to do. Pathetic Writer supports RTF for file exchange with Microsoft Word. Moreover, external converters such as Carolan McNamara’s WV can be used for reading documents from a wide range of outside programs, While PW is copyrighted by its creator, Ulrick Eriksson, it’s available for use by anyone free of charge. EZ Word OS Platforms: Linux and additional Unix variants. EZ Word is less likely than a lot of other word processors to get installed on any type of PC these days. But it’s good to know about, anyhow, from a historical standpoint. Originally devised as part of the Andrew User Interface System (AUIS), a user-interface research project conducted by IBM with Carnegie Mellon University, EZ Word was the very first graphical word processor to become available for Linux. Despite its name, though, EZ Word was never easy for most folks to use. If you didn’t climb EZ Word’s learning curve more than a decade ago, you probably won’t want to start now. Although still available under a BSD free sofware license, the program hasn’t been updated since the release of version 8.0 in 1997, and bugs still linger. Open Source Database Apache Derby, an Apache DB subproject, is an open source relational database implemented entirely in Java and available under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Some key advantages include:
It’s accuracy has helped it to establish a niche among people using it for statistical analysis and other scientific tasks. For improving the accuracy of Gnumeric, the developers are cooperating with the R Project.
- is a lightweight free software spreadsheet software package. Oleo was originally designed as a text-based spreadsheet (using the curses library).
It is much older than the GNU Gnumeric spreadsheet (a part of the GNOME desktop system) and has fewer capabilities. It is also not as active as a project, not having had a release since 2001.
KSpread
KSpread is part of KOffice, an integrated office suite for the KDE Desktop Environment.
Among KSpread features are multiple sheets per document, assorted formatting possibilities, support for more than 100 built-in functions, templates, chart, spell-check, hyperlinks, data sorting and scripting with Python, Ruby and Javascript.
It’s native format is XML, compressed with ZIP. However, KSpread has the ability to import in several spreadsheet formats, including Microsoft Excel, Applix Spreadsheet, Quattro Pro, CSV and OpenOffice.org Calc.
OpenOffice.org Calc
- is a component of the OpenOffice.org software package. It is similar to Microsoft Excel, with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc is capable of opening and saving spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel file format. It provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing based on the layout of the user’s data. Calc is also capable of writing spreadsheets directly as PDF files.
The default file format for OpenOffice.org 2.0 Calc can be set to either Microsoft Excel or the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF). Calc also supports a wide range of other file formats, for both opening and saving files.
As with the entire OpenOffice.org suite, Calc can be used across a variety of platforms, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, Calc is free software.
SIAG
SIAG (Scheme in a grid) is a spreadsheet using a SIOD engine or base. The grid, siag is fast and very configurable. Suitable for small unix distributions, it was selected by DSL to provide a spreadsheet inside their fifty megabyte system footprint. Consequently, siag can be used on older PCs with their limited memory and disk space.
Language modules for C, SIOD, Guile, Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc. permit extensive control over input and output data. Any unix shell can further script siag grids to display cells in algorithmic form.
Simple Spreadsheet
Simple Spreadsheet is a web-based spreadsheet program written in JavaScript, HTML, CSS and PHP. It features formulas, charts, formats, cell/row merging, cell locking, keyboard navigation, etc. Simple Spreadsheet is released under the GNU General Public License, and is thus free software.
Custom macros can be written in Javascript. Javascript is also used as the default (human-readable) data format. Future versions will contain collaborative features to allow many people working simultaneously together on one sheet. The charts are generated on the server-side using a PHP library called JpGraph. On the client side they are referenced with a function inside a formula.
Simple Spreadsheet can be used with all common browsers like Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, and Internet Explorer. Safari may be used, but was not yet tested.
wikiCalc
wikiCalc is a web application, created by Dan Bricklin, that allows for the creation and editing of spreadsheets through a wiki-style user-editable interface. It is currently released as version 1.0 for use on Windows, Mac, Linux/Unix, and other platforms that can run the Perl language.
The product was envisioned in 2005 by Bricklin, who 27 years earlier created VisiCalc, the first commercial spreadsheet program for the personal computer. Version Alpha 0.1 was released for alpha testing in November 2005. Version 1.0 was released on January 25, 2007. wikiCalc is written in the Perl programming language.
.
* Derby has a small footprint — about 2 megabytes for the base engine and embedded JDBC driver.
* Derby is based on the Java, JDBC, and SQL standards.
* Derby provides an embedded JDBC driver that lets you embed Derby in any Java-based solution.
* Derby also supports the more familiar client/server mode with the Derby Network Client JDBC driver and Derby Network Server.
* Derby is easy to install, deploy, and use.
| Berkeley DB JE is a high performance, transactional storage engine written entirely in Java. Like the highly successful Berkeley DB product, Berkeley DB JE executes in the address space of the application, without the overhead of client/server communication. It stores data in the application’s native format, so no runtime data translation is required. Berkeley DB JE supports full ACID transactions and recovery. It provides an easy-to-use interface, allowing programmers to store and retrieve information quickly, simply and reliably. Berkeley DB JE was designed from the ground up in Java. It takes full advantage of the Java environment. The Berkeley DB JE API provides a Java Collections-style interface, as well as a programmatic interface similar to the Berkeley DB API. The architecture of Berkeley DB JE supports high performance and concurrency for both read-intensive and write-intensive workloads. Berkeley DB JE is different from all other Java databases available today. Berkeley DB JE is not a relational engine built in Java. It is a Berkeley DB-style embedded store, with an interface designed for programmers, not DBAs. Berkeley DB JE’s architecture employs a log-based, no-overwrite storage system, enabling high concurrency and speed while providing ACID transactions and record-level locking. Berkeley DB JE efficiently caches most commonly used data in memory, without exceeding application-specified limits. In this way Berkeley DB JE works with an application to use available JVM resources while providing access to very large data sets. |
Go To Berkeley DB Java Edition
| hsqldb is a relational database engine written in Java, with a JDBC driver, supporting a rich subset of ANSI-92 SQL (BNF tree format). It offers a small (less than 160k), fast database engine which offers both in memory and disk based tables. Embedded and server modes are available. Additionally, it includes tools such as a minimal web server, in-memory query and management tools (can be run as applets) and a number of demonstration examples. |
| Axion is a small, fast, open source relational database system (RDBMS) supporting SQL and JDBC written in and for the Java programming language. |
| db4o (database for objects) is the open source object database for Java. Features include: fast native Java object persistence, ACID transactions, query-by-example, S.O.D.A. object query API, automatic class schema recognition, small footprint. |
| The Ozone Database Project is a open initiative for the creation of an open source, Java based, object-oriented database management system. Ozone includes a fully W3C compliant DOM implementation that allows you to store XML data. You can use any XML tool to provide and access these data. Support classes for Apache Xerces-J and Xalan-J are included. |
| NeoDatis ODB is a new generation Object Oriented Database. ODB is a real transparent persistence layer that allows anyone to persist native objects with a single line of code. ODB can be used as an embedded database engine that can be seamlessly integrated to any product as an embedded database or in client/server mode. |
| Mckoi SQL Database is optimized to run as a client/server database server for multiple clients, however it can also be embedded in an application as a stand-alone database. It is highly multi-threaded and features an extendable object-oriented engine. |
| H2 is a SQL database engine written in Java. JDBC and ODBC drivers, embedded and client/server mode. Clustering is supported. In-memory and disk based tables. A web console application is included. |
| Perst is an object-oriented embedded database for Java and .NET applications that need to deal with persistent data. It is easy to use and provides high performance. Although Perst is very simple, it provides fault-tolerant support (ACID transactions) and concurrent access to the database. The main advantage of Perst is its tight integration with programming languages. |
| Ashpool is a lightweight XML Database written in Java(tm). It’s goal is to use standard SQL92 syntax to query, add, update, and delete XML documents via a JDBC driver. The XML documents must hold to a table like structure. The reason for the table structure restriction is that SQL was designed to query table data not hierarchical data. |
| One$DB is a version of Daffodil DB , a J2EE-certified, JDBC 3.0 and SQL-99 compliant Java database. It is available in both Network and Embedded editions and has been designed to handle complex computing environments that demand a robust, scalable and feature-rich RDBMS that can operate across platforms. |
| Neo4j is a graph database. It is an embedded, disk-based, fully transactional Java persistence engine that stores data structured in graphs rather than in tables. A graph (mathematical lingo for a network) is a flexible data structure that allows a more agile and rapid style of development. |
| SmallSQL is a 100% pure Java DBMS, a relational database for Java desktop applications. It has a JDBC 3.0 interface and offering many ANSI SQL 92 and ANSI SQL 99 features. It is very small and fast because it does not have a network interface. |
| Jalisto is a lightweight transactional database written entirely in Java. Jalisto comes in two versions: Jalisto SE (Standard Edition) and Jalisto ME (Micro Edition). Jalisto SE is an ideal solution for embedded and stand-alone systems. Jalisto ME, which will be available in Q4, targets mobile environments including cell phones, PDAs, and is compatible with the Java 2 Platform Micro Edition (J2ME). |
| QED, the Quadcap Embeddable Database. QED is a fast, small, pure Java, relational database, implementing the SQL 92 standard, with transactions and resilient failure recovery. QED has a novel open source license permitting free use of QED by all and free redistribution in other open source projects. |
Go To Quadcap Embeddable Database
| A very lightweight 100% Java text SQL engine that includes a JDBC driver |
| JDBC Driver for the spreadsheets Excel, StarOffice and OpenOffice. Turn a directory with spreadsheets into a database. xls filenames become database schema’s, sheets become tables. Use a rich subset of SQL to create sheets and query sheets. Join sheets, query database data and store it into excel or fill database tables with spreadsheets. |
| MyOODB (My Object-Oriented Database) is an integrated database and Web environment that provides true distributed objects, implicit/explicit multi-concurrent nested transactions, seamless Web tunneling, and database self-healing. MyOODB is one part of a two part SDK solution. Together with MyOOWEB, MyOOSDK provides a development environment for people who desire small, fast, but powerful applications. |
| A 100% pure Java, lightweight, single file embeddable database. Functionally similar to a cross between SQLite and BerkeleyDB. Developed for use with PDA and Mobile applications. |
| JODB (Java Objects Database) is an open source object-oriented database. The database uses a cache based on Soft References to avoid using too much memory when the application requires it. The queries are optimized to use the minimal possible object instantiations during the search to avoid excessive garbage collection. |
| AcornDB is a high performance, small footprint, transactional object oriented database written entirely in Java. It stores data in the application’s native format, so no runtime data translation is required. AcornDB supports full ACID transactions and recovery. It provides an easy-to-use interface like query-by-example, object query API, automatic class schema recognition allowing programmers to store and retrieve information quickly, simply and reliably. AcornDB enabling high concurrency and speed while providing ACID transactions. AcornDB efficiently caches the data in memory, without exceeding application-specified limits. In this way works with an application to use available JVM resources while providing access to very large data sets. |
| The yaRDBMS (yet another relational database management system) is a Java based, transactional highly concurrent relational database management system with advanced query optimization, indexing features and crash recovery. |
| jiql is a Java database for Cloud computing. The database is accessed via a jdbc client. The data is actually stored in a cloud-based data store, such as Google’s BigTable. The fact is Google App Engine at present only supports python. Java programmers need not be excluded, as jiql provides a way to at least utilize Google’s BigTable. By uploading the jiql python controller (jiql.py) to Google App Engine (GAE), the jiql.py acts as a gateway between the jiql database engine and Google’s BigTable (GBT). So a Java application, using standard JDBC calls to the jiql JDBC client, is able to store critical data in GBT. As the DataStore sits in the cloud, you essentially have a solution for distributed database access. Thus, although you may not be able to host a JAVA program on GAE, you can still use the Data Store, which is probably the most important aspect of cloud-computing - that is scalability and high availability. |
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