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        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
                <description></description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
                <atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
        
        <item>
                <title>Best way to create a docbook book?</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;I tried to send this text to the
&lt;ahref=&quot;https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/&quot;&gt;docbook-apps
mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org&lt;/a&gt;, but it only accept messages
from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
out.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
learning curve at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
available from
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
problems.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Using dblatex, the &amp;lt;part&amp;gt; handling is not the way I want to,
   as &amp;lt;/part&amp;gt; do not really end the &amp;lt;part&amp;gt;. (See
   &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683166&quot;&gt;BTS report #683166&lt;/a&gt;), the
   xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
   index references spanning several pages (See
   &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682901&quot;&gt;BTS report #682901&lt;/a&gt;), and
   I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
   &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682936&quot;&gt;BTS report #682936&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
   &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683163&quot;&gt;BTS report
   #683163&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
   show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
   footnote and text body, see
   &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683197&quot;&gt;BTS report #683197&lt;/a&gt;), and
   fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
   refs listed are not right).&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;li&gt;Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
   index problems the xmlto + fop processing.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What about HTML and EPUB versions?&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>OOXML og standardisering</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OOXML_og_standardisering.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OOXML_og_standardisering.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jul 2012 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;DIFI har
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/DIFI_foresl_r___kaste_ut_ODF_og_ta_inn_OOXML_fra_statens_standardkatalog.html&quot;&gt;en
høring gående&lt;/a&gt; om ny versjon av statens standardkatalog, med frist
2012-09-30, der det foreslås å fjerne ODF fra katalogen og ta inn ISO
OOXML.  I den anledning minnes jeg
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/upload/FAD/Vedlegg/IKT-politikk/Refkat_v2.pdf&quot;&gt;notatet
FAD skrev&lt;/a&gt; da versjon 2 av standardkatalogen var under
utarbeidelse, da FAD og DIFI fortsatt forsto poenget med og verdien av
frie og åpne standarder.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Det er mange som tror at OOXML er ett spesifikt format, men det
brukes ofte som fellesbetegnelse for både formatet spesifisert av
ECMA, ISO, og formatet produsert av Microsoft Office (aka docx), som
dessverre ikke er det samme formatet.  Fra en av de som implementerte
støtte for docx-formatet i KDE fikk jeg høre at ISO-spesifikasjonen
var en nyttig referanse, men at det var mange avvik som gjorde at en
ikke kunne gå ut ifra at Microsoft Office produserte dokumenter i
henhold til ISO-spesifikasjonen.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;ISOs OOXML-spesifikasjon har (eller hadde, usikker på om
kommentaren er oppdatert) i følge
&lt;a href=&quot;http://surguy.net/articles/ooxml-validation-and-technical-review.xml&quot;&gt;Inigo
Surguy&lt;/a&gt; feil i mer enn 10% av eksemplene, noe som i tillegg gjør
det vanskelig å bruke spesifikasjonen til å implementere støtte for
ISO OOXML.  Jeg har ingen erfaring med å validere OOXML-dokumenter
selv, men ser at
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5124&quot;&gt;Microsoft
har laget en validator&lt;/a&gt; som jeg ikke kan teste da den kun er
tilgjengelig på MS Windows.  Finner også en annen kalt
&lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/officeotron/&quot;&gt;Office-O-Tron&lt;/A&gt; som
er oppdatert i fjor.  Lurer på om de validerer at dokumenter er i
formatet til Microsoft office, eller om de validerer at de er i
henhold til formatene spesifisert av ECMA og ISO. Det hadde også vært
interessant å se om docx-dokumentene publisert av det offentlige er
gyldige ISO OOXML-dokumenter.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 21 Jul 2012 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;I reported earlier that I am working on
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;a
norwegian version&lt;/a&gt; of the book
&lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig.
Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
(preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
print. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
translations, if you want the book to be available in your
language.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Tips for å bli med i Skolelinux-prosjektet (som faktisk er aktivt)</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tips_for___bli_med_i_Skolelinux_prosjektet__som_faktisk_er_aktivt_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tips_for___bli_med_i_Skolelinux_prosjektet__som_faktisk_er_aktivt_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Jeg fikk nettopp spørsmål på epost om Skolelinux-prosjektet lever
fra en som var interessert i å bidra, og måtte jo konstatere at i og
med at spørsmålet ble stilt har prosjektet ikke lyktes med å formidle
sin aktivitet.  Her er det jeg svarte:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Jada, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux-prosjektet&lt;/a&gt;
lever, men det meste av utvikling foregår nå under paraplyen
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; som er det
internasjonale navnet på prosjektet.  Dugnaden i Norge organiseres av
medlemsforeningen
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/&quot;&gt;Fri programvare i
Skolen&lt;/a&gt;, og det finnes minst ett selskap som selger kommersiell
support på løsningen (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slxdrift.no/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
Drift AS&lt;/a&gt;, der jeg er styremedlem).  Anbefaler at du melder deg på
epostlisten
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;debian-edu@lists.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;
(og debian-edu-announce) og
&lt;a href=&quot;http://medlem.friprogramvareiskolen.no/&quot;&gt;melder deg inn i
foreningen&lt;/a&gt; for å få beskjed om aktivitet som planlegges.  Det
planlegges
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering&quot;&gt;utviklersamlinger
i august&lt;/a&gt; og utover høsten.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Bidra gjerne med å spre ordet om Skolelinux.  Det er alt for få som
bidrar til pressedekning, bloggposter, twittermeldinger, etc. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Jeg antar du har funnet
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju/&quot;&gt;bloggserien
min med intervjuer&lt;/a&gt;.  Det er antagelig også interessant for deg å
følge med på &lt;a href=&quot;http://planet.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Planet
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Hm, jeg burde vel blogge alle disse lenkene slik at de blir enklere
å finne...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Herved gjort. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;project
to translate&lt;/a&gt; the book
&lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig
to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version, to
allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
send pull requests with fixes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Fri programvare - &quot;fri&quot; som i &quot;talefrihet&quot;, ikke som i &quot;fri bar&quot;</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fri_programvare____fri__som_i__talefrihet___ikke_som_i__fri_bar_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fri_programvare____fri__som_i__talefrihet___ikke_som_i__fri_bar_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 15 Jul 2012 21:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Et ofte brukt sitat i fri programvareverden er Stallman-sitatet
«&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en&quot;&gt;Free Software,
&quot;free&quot; as in &quot;free speech&quot;, not as in &quot;free beer&quot;&lt;/a&gt;».  Men det er
ikke direkte overførbart til norsk, da det baserer seg på koblingen
gratis/fri på engelsk.  En direkte oversettelse ville være «Fri
programvare, &quot;fri&quot; som i &quot;talefrihet&quot;, ikke som &quot;gratis øl&quot;», og det
går jo glipp av poenget.  I forbindelse med at vi er
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;igang
med å oversette&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt;
av Lawrence Lessig, måtte jeg forsøke a finne en bedre
oversettelse.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Mitt forslag til oversettelse blir dermed å droppe ølet, og heller
fokusere på det kjente norske uttrykket &quot;fri bar&quot;.  Dermed blir
oversettelsen «Fri programvare - &quot;fri&quot; som i &quot;talefrihet&quot;, ikke som i
&quot;fri bar&quot;».&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Noen som har bedre forslag?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Forøvrig bruker jeg fri programvare som et samlebegrep på norsk for
begge de engelske uttrykkene Free Software og Open Source, jamfør
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/folder-friprogramvare.pdf&quot;&gt;NUUGs
lille folder om temaet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Dugnad for å sende norsk versjon av Free Culture til stortingets representanter!</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Da opphavsrettsloven ble revidert i forrige runde rundt 2005, var
det skummelt å se hvor lite stortingsrepresentantene forsto hvordan
Internet påvirket folks forhold til kulturuttrykk, og min venn Vidar
og jeg spekulert på at det hadde kanskje vært fornuftig om samtlige
representanter fikk en norsk utgave av boken
&lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; av Lawrence Lessig
som forklarte litt om problemstillingene.  Vi endte opp med å
prioritere utvikling i
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;-prosjektet i
stedet, så den oversatte boken så aldri dagens lys.  Men i forrige uke
ble jeg inspirert til å ta opp tråden og se om det er mulig å få til
bokprosjektet denne gang, da det er tydelig at kulturdepartementet i
sitt nye forsøk på å gjøre opphavsrettsloven enda mer ubalansert til
fordel for forlag og store mediehus fortsatt trenger en annen vinkling
i debatten.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Planen min er å oversette boka på dugnad, sette den opp for
trykking med en av de mange
&lt;a href=&quot;http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trykk_på_forespørsel&quot;&gt;trykk på
forespørsel&lt;/a&gt;-tjenestene, skaffe sponsor til å finansiere trykking
til stortingsrepresentantene og alle som har bidratt med
oversettelser.  Kanskje vi også kan få en avtale med et forlag om
publisering når boka er ferdig?  Kommentarene til
&lt;a href=&quot;http://newth.net/eirik/2011/04/01/e-selvpublisering/&quot;&gt;Eirik
Newth&lt;/a&gt; og
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.espen.com/norskblogg/archives/2008/09/erfaringer_med_publishing_on_demand.html&quot;&gt;Espen
Andersen&lt;/a&gt; om erfaringene med selvpublisering og trykk på
forespørsel er interessante og ikke avskrekkende, og jeg mistenker at
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lulu.com/&quot;&gt;Lulu&lt;/a&gt; er en grei leverandør av
trykketjenester til prosjektet.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Jeg har satt opp
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;et
Github-prosjekt&lt;/a&gt; for a lage boken, basert på Docbook-utgaven jeg
fant fra Hans Schou.  Skolelinux har hatt byggesystem for å lage
oversatt HTML og PDF-utgave av Docbook-bøker i en årrekke, så jeg har
kopiert og utvidet dette oppsettet.  Originalteksten er i Docbook, og
oversettelsen gjøres i .po-filer med hjelp av vanlige
oversetterverktøy brukt i fri programvareverden.  Dernest tar
byggesystemet over og lager PDF og EPUB-utgave av den oversatte
teksten.  Resultatet kan ses i Github-prosjektet.  For å komme raskt
igang har jeg brukt maskinoversettelse av alle tekstbitene fra engelsk
til norsk, noe som grovoversatte ca. 1300 av de ca. 1700 tekstbitene
boken består av.  Jeg håper nå at flere kan bidra med å få
oversettelsen på plass, slik at teksten kan være klar i løpet av
høsten.  Når alt er oversatt må teksten gjennomgås for feil og
konsistent språk.  Totalt er det nok mange timer som trengs for å
gjennomføre oversettelsen.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Økonomien i dette er ikke avskrekkende.  169
stortingsrepresentanter og nesten like mange varamedlemmer bør få
bøker, og estimert produduksjonskostnad for hver bok er rundt 6 EURO i
følge et raskt estimat fra Lulu.  Jeg vet ennå ikke hvor mange sider
det blir i størrelsen 5,5&quot; x 8.5&quot; (det er ca. 140 sider i A4-format),
så jeg gjettet på 400 sider.  Jeg tror originalutgaven har nesten 400
sider.  For 169*2 eksemplarer snakker vi om en trykkekostnad på
ca. 2000 EURO, dvs. ca 15 000 NOK.  Det burde være mulig å finne en
sponsor for å dekke en slik sum.  I tillegg kommer distribusjon og
porto, som antagelig kommer på like mye.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Kan du bidra med oversettelse og docbook-typesetting?  Ta kontakt
og send patcher i github.  Jeg legger gjerne inn folk i prosjektet
slik at du kan oppdatere direkte.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 9 Jul 2012 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; project have users all over the globe, but until
recently we have not known about any users in Norway&#39;s neighbour
country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
to adjust and scale the just released
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
happy to share his answers with you here.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
&quot;folkhighschool&quot; teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
Norwegian I believe it&#39;s called &quot;Vuxenupplaring&quot;. I also have a master
in &quot;Technology and social change&quot;. So I&#39;m not really a tech guy, I
just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
perspective when working with IT.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
seriously into Skolelinux instead.

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
same. In our VNC-based solution you had to &quot;beat around the bush&quot; by
setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit &quot;oldish&quot; applications. Debian is
quicker to update.

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
sound from working with them.  It&#39;s a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
some applications can&#39;t be open source. As for us we really need to
run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
market to Adobe. The only &quot;equivalent&quot; to InDesign in the opensource
world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
sound file.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Myself I&#39;m running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
it&#39;s also very important that the multimedia support is working
flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
idea. It&#39;s also important that the open source software works even for
the administration.  It&#39;s hard to convince the teachers to stick with
open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
will create a difference in &quot;status&quot; between classes, so a good
support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
article &lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/&quot;&gt;Radio station
management with Airtime&lt;/a&gt;,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/&quot;&gt;Airtime&lt;/a&gt; which
claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rivendellaudio.org/&quot;&gt;Rivendell&lt;/a&gt; which claim to
be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
useful to the aspiring radio producer.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Why do schools waste money on IT?</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 8 Jul 2012 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
Steinberg in his blog post
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/&quot;&gt;Can
you recognize the million pound chair?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  Read it and weep for the
spending of your tax money.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
purchases.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jul 2012 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Included in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is a large collection of end user and school specific
software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
receive.  The software is

&lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/&quot;&gt;named FET&lt;/a&gt;, and it provide a
graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
both teachers and students.  It is available both for
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html&quot;&gt;Linux, MacOSX and
Windows&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html&quot;&gt;the
feature list&lt;/a&gt;, liftet from the project web site:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
    You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it &lt;/li&gt;
        
  &lt;li&gt;Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
    (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
    (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
    (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
    (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
    (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
    sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
    (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
    &lt;/li&gt;
        
  &lt;li&gt;Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
    semi-automatic or manual allocation&lt;/li&gt;
        
  &lt;li&gt;Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
    GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports &lt;/li&gt;
        
  &lt;li&gt;Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
    with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)&lt;/li&gt;
        
  &lt;li&gt;Import/export from CSV format&lt;/li&gt;
        
  &lt;li&gt;The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
    formats &lt;/li&gt;
        
  &lt;li&gt;Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
    and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
    non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
    (as separate sets)&lt;/li&gt;
        
  &lt;li&gt;Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
    (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
    percentage)&lt;/li&gt;
        
  &lt;li&gt;Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
    demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
    memory):
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of working days per week: 35&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of teachers: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of subjects: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of activity tags&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of activities: 30000&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of rooms: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of buildings: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
          students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
          also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
          activity)&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of time constraints&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of space constraints&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Break periods&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;For teacher(s):
        &lt;ul&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Max/min days per week&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Max gaps per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Min hours daily&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;

          &lt;li&gt;Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
            days per week&lt;/li&gt;
        &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;For students (sets):
        &lt;ul&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Max gaps per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Min hours daily&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;

          &lt;li&gt;Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
            days per week&lt;/li&gt;
        &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
        &lt;ul&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;A single preferred starting time&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;A set of preferred starting times&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;A set of preferred time slots&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Min/max days between them&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;End(s) students day&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Same starting time/day/hour&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
            flexible constraint, useful in many situations)&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Not overlapping&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Max simultaneous in selected time slots&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities&lt;/li&gt;
        &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Room not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;For teacher(s):
        &lt;ul&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Home room(s)&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Max building changes per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between building changes&lt;/li&gt;
        &lt;/ul&gt;
      &lt;/li&gt;
                
      &lt;li&gt;For students (sets):
        &lt;ul&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Home room(s)&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Max building changes per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between building changes&lt;/li&gt;
        &lt;/ul&gt;
      &lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Preferred room(s):
        &lt;ul&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;For a subject&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;For an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;For a subject and an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Individually for a (sub)activity&lt;/li&gt;
        &lt;/ul&gt;
      &lt;/li&gt;

      &lt;li&gt;For a set of activities:
        &lt;ul&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Occupy a maximum number of different rooms&lt;/li&gt;
        &lt;/ul&gt;
      &lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
manually, check it out. 

A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
&lt;a href=&quot;http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/&quot;&gt;a
blog post from MarvelSoft&lt;/a&gt;.  If you find FET useful, please provide
a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos&quot;&gt;Debian Edu HowTo
section&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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