The available options are listed in this poll: http://www.doodle.com/sz6eehwtn57f765a

Now… features and functions added or worked on recently are:

• The file picker now has a list of bookmarks, 2012-04-02, commit message / info, related issue: –.
• Added Presentationsize 16:9 Widescreen, 2012-04-18, commit message / info, related issue: 42986.
• Add a “Save cell formulas” checkbox to the CSV Export panel, 2012-04-21, commit message / info, related issue: 45664.
• Proper sort SelectionTree control of Custom Setup with a custom action for all languages, 2012-04-24, commit message / info, related issue: 46355.
• Border width in Calc and Writer tables, lots of ongoing fixes…
• RTF import improvements, lots of ongoing fixes…
• Install only one language on Windows during silent install, 2012-04-25, commit message / info, related issue: 40481.
• Enable insertion of OLE objects into external applications, 2012-04-26, commit message / info, related issue: 47944.
• Paragraph and lists: don’t overwrite numbering properties with paragraph properties, 2012-04-26, commit message / info, related issue: –.
• Make detection of certificate folder ui-configurable, 2012-04-27, commit message / info, related issue: 39825.
• Ruler: implemented new design, 2012-04-27, commit message / info, related mail on the list.
• Cleaned up command line arguments, behaviour has been changed slightly, 2012-05-02, commit message / info, related issue: –.
• Autoformat in tables saving more information, such as column width, margins, text orientation, 2012-05-03, commit message / info, related issue: 31005.
• Wiki-publisher: media-wiki export was broken (testing highly appreciated to add fix to 3.5 branch!), 2012-05-09, commit message / info, related issue: 46509.

This is the first post in what we expect will be a long series. We hope it’s useful and look forward to feedback, results and suggestions!

Berlin, May 7, 2012 – The Document Foundation announces the Certification Program, to foster the provision of professional services around LibreOffice and help the growth of the ecosystem of the world’s best free office suite. The program is outlined on the following page: http://www.documentfoundation.org/certification.

“The Certification Program will recognize the competence of individuals capable of developing and supporting LibreOffice, provide integration services around the suite, offer training and maintenance, and migrating enterprises deployments from proprietary to free software”, comments Italo Vignoli, Member of the Board of Directors of The Document Foundation. “TDF Certification is an opportunity for sponsors, TDF members and third parties, to build a business around LibreOffice, to help companies of any kind and size to get the most out of the best free office suite ever”.

The Certification Program will be overseen by the Board of Directors, through a Certification Committee coordinated by Italo Vignoli and composed by 10 people: Olivier Hallot and Charles Schulz for the Board of Directors; Sophie Gautier and Cor Nouws for the Membership Committee; Stephan Bergmann, Jan Holesovsky, Tim Janik and Björn Michaelsen for the developer’s community; Lothar Becker and Jacqueline Rahemipour for third parties.

The first certified developers and third parties will be announced in May during LinuxTag (Berlin, May 23-26), when the Certification Committee will meet for the first time. After the meeting, TDF will announce the roadmap for certification, including pre-requisites for third parties not involved in the project, and the first dates for trainings and exams.

Berlin, May 2, 2012 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5.3, the fourth version of the 3.5 family. LibreOffice 3.5.3 provides additional stability to corporate and individual users of the best free office suite ever.

“In April 2012, 34 new developers contributed code to The Document Foundation, the largest number since January 2011 [Source: http://www.ohloh.net]. Eight of them have already committed more than once, thanks to the help of an extremely welcoming community, where old developers spend a portion of their time mentoring new ones to bring them up to speed,” comments Norbert Thiebaud, a volunteer developer active since September 28, 2010. “In less than two years, we have been able to build an authentically diverse community, where full time and volunteer developers coexist and help each other, as it should happen in every free software project.”

Ten of the new developers are Google Summer of Code 2012 students, who will work at developing the following features:

• Calc performance improvements;
• Lightproof improvements;
• collaborative spreadsheet editing using Telepathy;
• a Microsoft Publisher import filter;
• a signed PDF export;
• a smartphone remote control;
• a new UI for picking templates;
• a Java based GUI for an Android viewer;
• an improved Impress SVG export filter;
• tooling for more and better tests.

LibreOffice 3.5.3 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

Change logs are available at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.3/RC1 and http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.3/RC2.

The LiMux office of the city of Munich invited us for a second LibreOffice Hackfest in Bavaria’s capital this autumn. To determine the best weekend, please cast your vote in our poll at

http://www.doodle.com/sz6eehwtn57f765a

The final date will be announced as soon as we know the time of the LibreOffice Conference in Berlin, to avoid collisions.

Note that the Hackfest runs from Friday evening to Sunday lunchtime, but we have only listed the respective Saturdays.

Happy hacking!

on behalf of the worldwide LibreOffice community, and on behalf of the donor Freies Office Deutschland e.V., we would like to express our sincerest thanks to all of you for your kind and generous support in setting up the legal entity.

On February 17th, The Document Foundation has been incorporated as a German Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts, located in Berlin, and in the meantime, the transfer of all assets has been nearly finished. In other words: The long-awaited foundation is finally in existence and fully operating.

For us, it is still unbelievable how strong the worldwide support is, how many people support the idea of an independent foundation, and how many contributed by either getting engaged in the project, or by donating to fund our operations.

Following our open and transparent approach, we have made public our budget, and will constantly update it, so you see what your donations are being used for.

Our sincere thanks also go out to the members of our advisory board, who provide us not only with guidance, but also with financial support.

Although many of us are volunteers, working pro bono in their spare time, running such an entity needs funds. Travel support, participation in events, providing infrastructure, and many other areas need to be covered. Without all your support, The Document Foundation would not be what it is today.

Your contribution made a real difference and enabled us to create a strong community-driven, meritocratic, vendor-neutral foundation for the best free office suite. We could not have done it without you.

Thank you very much for your support of The Document Foundation!

The Board of Directors

Thank you very much for your continued and ongoing support!

LibreOffice has recently been selected as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. Students are invited to look at the GSoC Ideas Wiki Page at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Gsoc/Ideas to get inspired for their next task. One of 2011 GSoC projects, the MS Visio Import Filter, has been integrated in LibreOffice 3.5 (and the author, Eilidh McAdam, has already found a LibreOffice development related employer: Lanedo).

“The Document Foundation continues to grow month after month, with a constant flow of new hackers and volunteers taking care of development, quality assurance and localization”, says Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board. “The updated LibreOffice infographic represents some of the numbers, with the growth of pure code hackers – who are now 429 (376 if we do not include the former Sun/Oracle employees) – being the most impressive achievement”.

LibreOffice 3.5.2 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

Change logs are available at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.2/RC1 and http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/3.5.2/RC2.