…it happened.

From NoOOXML

In these last days I have been ‘unplugged’ two very interesting news jumped me from worry to happiness.

One is the ISO stopping Microsoft with the OOXML defective by design standard (via OSNews). If ISO had aproved OOXML maybe it would keep the slavery we bear in communications with administrations.

The other news come from the graphics world. It’s, of course, the new policy by ATI releasing GPU specs without restrictions. It will be an important leap for the manufactures and, of course, for the free software world. Now we are waiting for NVidia

Near two years ago I wrote a post about CAD file formats. I defended the DGN format against DWG or DXF. Then I thought the Open Design Alliance was a good idea.
But since that post to now I began to investigate in order to write a translator from DGN V8 for Blender. My first step was towards the Open Design Alliance, but there I couldn’t find free libs nor DGN V8 specs. ODA has an interesting point of beginning (if your file formats are not free you can’t own your works). But they are not interested en free (as in freedom) software.

So I aimed to Bentley’s OpenDGN Initiative. All my attempts finished in a ‘forbidden’ web page. Then I exchanged a pair of mails with the person at the charge, finally I couldn’t got the DGN V8 specs. He stopped to answer my emails. I found similar experiencies of people looking for this document.

As it seems it is impossible to find the DGN V8 specifications as I can find the DGN V7/ISFF, I conclude OpenDGN is not so open as Bentley pretends. So it is a bad idea to found any project in DGN V8 (closed specs), DWG (closed specs, heavy drm-zed format) and DXF (poor format, not standard at all).

Via Martín who writes in gpul’s blog I discovered a recent project which target is to design a really open CAD file format. It seems there are interesting discussions about it.

Maybe you think a CAD format is a too specific field to work. But you must think in the roads you drive on, the buildings you live and work, the engines that move you, the networks you connect to. Think about it, and you will see a world to free.

…your DRM (HD-DVD) sucks:
09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0

More about this:

• Kriptópolis:Digg y el nuevo número de la bestia
• Especial del Taller de Criptografía
• BBC report:DRM group vows to fight bloggers

And something about the next crack at Ars Technica…

Have you suffered the random whims of Word? Do you have a 5-years old document and you can’t read properly because the version or the word processor missed? Ok, here is an interesting document about why do you must learn to process with LaTeX your documents (especially if you write lots of mathematical formulas): Word processors: stupid and inefficient, by Allin Cotrell.
The document translated in Spanish. Via Barrapunto.

Sure many people believes that RMS is fool and FSF is losing the way in campaigns like Defective by Design. I was a little skeptic the first time I read “The right to read” near a decade ago. But today I’m a believer, I don’t need to read this very interesting Peter Gutmann’s paper on Windows Vista efforts to convert a general pourpose machine (a PC) in a f*ck*ng branch of music and cinema enterprises.

So I only wish news like the lawsuit of Autodesk against (slashdot) the Open Design Alliance, with the TrustedDWG in the background, will help to my colleagues engineers to open eyes and drop Autodesk products and closed formats in favour of open (and better) formats like DGN.

Even if Adobe opensources whole Flash, it is NOT an standard. Even if it becomes an standard, it is NOT accesible.

FLASH SUCKS!!!

I couldn’t have rest after the June tests. GPUL planned to middle July this year for first time a web technologies conference, the I Jornada sobre Tecnologías Web y Software Libre, on 12th, and the traditional cryptography workshop: III Taller de Criptografía, Seguridad y Privacidad, on 13th.

The work was hard for all organizers. We have several speakers who travelled to La Coruña, and Visperas and Benji via ekiga

The Web Conference began with Martín Álvarez Espinar, from the Spanish Office of the W3C, who explained us the structure of the W3C, their investigations and developments, and the importance of standards in the universal access to the web. In the same line, David Cabrero Souto spoke about differents aspects of accesibility in the web. The stinky example, the main web of our University :-P.

After “theory” then we have “implementation” speechs. Ph. D.Fernando Bellas Permuy showed the architecture and explained the decisions in the future academic management of USC and UDC consortium, which will be built with free software on open standards. Asís García Chao and David Barral Precedo of Trabe Soluciones gave us an introduction to AJAX. This speech filled up the classroom, AJAX is getting importance because so-called Web 2.0 (I think we should first make work Web 1.0 ok, but I love gmail and meebo too ;-)).

The culminating moment of the day was the Allan Beaufour’s speech. We were honoured by his visit, he travelled from Copenhagen only to give this speech. He talked about the past, present and future of Mozilla Firefox, then he centered in XML technologies and the implementation of the XForms standard in Firefox. I discovered an amazing technology (and how can my English speaking stink, but this is another history).

And finally our Ana Sáiz García gave a CSS introduction. I couldn’t saw the videoconference, but she helped me sometimes with CSS so I know she did a good work explaining how important and easy is detaching contents and appearance

The photos of the event by Fid (with my camera) in my gallery.

Open Document Format is standard ISO for exchangin documents: ISO/IEC 26300

• New at Slashdot
• New at Barrapunto (in Spanish)
• Press note of OASIS Alliance
• New by Teodd in gpul.org

I don’t want receive any .doc from a public institution nevermore

Via Slashdot, we know we must welcome to the blogsphere to Tim Berners-Lee, the Wide World Web first developer. We can read in his first post at MIT’s Descentraliced Information Group Tim explains briefly about his ideas fifteen years ago: use of browser-editor, on-line edition of web pages. So, we can bypass from that times to now: current trends aim to use wikis, blogs… and we think these are new ideas!

I won’t make grow the over 450 comments to his first post, so, from here, Sir Tim, thanks for made it possible!

Engeneers near free software desire a powerful CAD program to their GNU/Linux stations, and, when they read news like this in slashdot about little steps to open source by Autodesk they immediately think it’s possible in nearly future. Projects like qcad are too young, varkon is a good project, it’s used by SAAB Aircraft, but it hasn’t specific features to civil engeneering. By now, we must patiently wait.

About this, there is some confusion about file formats. I can read in Beowulf’s blog his post about Autodesk. Beowulf is civil engeneer and he’s Debian developer, so he can see both sides of problem. But I think he’s in a mistake: he’s interested in .dxf to be an open standard. Actually it is an open standard, but Autodesk includes privative extensions. As it’s explained in white papers of Open Design Alliance, .dxf is a poor format. ODA started its actions in order to achieve an open format compatible with .dwg

In 2003 ODA signed an important agreement with Bentley. The Bentley OpenDGN Initiative was born. So, everybody with his work in .dgn (it usually happen in road databases and maps in Spain and several GIS support it) they have complete control over it. Experts think dgn is better format than dwg, too (i.e. dgn supports serious units management).

Then I think the next step is a great free CAD project based in .dgn, not in .dxf nor .dwg

More about inaccesible web pages: Spanish Govern page about avian flu is made with flash. You know, blind people, you can die like chiken:“Best prevention against avian flu is information”, President Office says (but you can’t read it).

(You can find this an another funny examples in this column of Daniel Rodríguez Herrera at Libertad Digital (in Spanish))

In this my new home in the Paradise I decided to build my homepage. I was trying to do it some time ago (actually three years ago, when I began Linuxbeat with Bille), but I nerver had time to do it.

I saw Jacobo Tarrío’s home page, he took Mediawiki, the Wikipedia engine, and customized it. “It was perfect”, I thought, “I can translate my math expressions with LaTeX”.

I tried to copy the idea, but I couldn’t do it. I have no php knowledgement nor time to waste. I could make my own web writing the html, but I have no sftp connection to the server when I am at the Campus. I was too looking for an easy way to create web pages to my neighbour Belén, to avoid her using the stinky frontpage :-P.

So I began to look for another wiki engines. I started with this interesting article about comparison of wiki engines in the Wikipedia. I tried with phpWiki but I have some problems with my hosting (I’m not the root). Then I tested MoinMoin, I liked it because it didn’t need a database, but it was to big to my disk quota and I couldn’t overcome some configuration problems.

Finally I found WikkaWiki, and I saw opened Heaven: small, easy to install and use, good security, customizable by CSS and very important XHML 1.0 compliant. Then I got it. You can verify it at Tsao in the Paradise home page (in spanish).

I’ve just begun my protest against unaccesible web pages in Internet. I’m raging against web that doesn’t follow neither the Wide World Web Consortium standards nor accesibility guidelines of WAI. I’m tired of meeting web pages that I can only read “Macromedia Flash plugin required” or so, they are barriers to individuals with disabilities in the www.

You can read the list in Lista Negra in my personal homepage
You can contribute to the list with an e-mail to tsao _at_ enelparaiso_dot_ org

We have a lot of work today with our work to the Territory and Town Planning subject. My friends Silvia and Rocío and myself are in the same group, we must investigate the growing of the city centres in our area.
We use ours School maps, but we wanted to use another resources in Internet. We had very unpleasant experience. Let’s see this links:

• GIS service of CESGA(Galician Supercomputation Center): I couldn’t see anything because it requires the Flash plugin (obviously it sucks a lot)
• SigPac, dependent on Agriculture, Fishing and Food Office: it requires flash too but finally I downloaded the stinky plugin because I began to receive killing look of my friends. I could find no more information than Google Maps (and this doesn’t use flash and it’s faster)
• Urbanistic Planning of Xunta de Galicia and Official Association of Architects: this is the worst site I ever saw! The site were I must read the urbanistic law of the whole Galicia spits out me a message: “Microsoft Internet Explorer required” and don’t give us any information more!

Why we pay taxes to the govern :-P?

(We could find a decent web page, the Virtual Land Registry, it is fast, give the right information, and doesn’t require no plugins, congratulations to the authors)

Update: SitGa: several maps servers of Xunta de Galicia: I installed the f*ck*ng flash plugin, the propietary and *bad documented* svg plugin of Adobe. It didn’t work, I only could get a web that says “IE 6.0 recommended”