LibreOffice project recap: July 2021

Check out our summary of what happened in the LibreOffice community last month…

• We started July by welcoming allotropia to The Document Foundation’s Advisory Board. Founded in late 2020 with five long-time LibreOffice developers, allotropia’s stated mission is to bring LibreOffice to shine – in as many different shapes and forms as necessary, to serve the modern needs of office productivity software. allotropia was spun off from CIB, another long-time provider of LibreOffice-based products and services (and also a member of the Advisory Board).

• On the very same day, our documentation team announced the LibreOffice Getting Started Guide 7.1. Covering all LibreOffice modules, from the Calc spreadsheet to the Base database and including chapters on the suite settings as well as macro coding, the Getting Started Guide 7.1 is a valuable companion for organizations that want to deploy documentation on LibreOffice together with the software suite on their offices and also at user’s homes.

• Meanwhile, we chatted with Tim Brennan Jr. from the Brazilian LibreOffice community. He’s on the Brazilian Portuguese translation and editing team, and recently decided to become a Member of The Document Foundation. Welcome, Tim!

• Then the Spanish-speaking community held an online meeting with video talks streamed live. The activity was attended by several members, who are recognized for their participation and collaboration in the project.

• Looking for LibreOffice tutorial videos? We have playlists in English, German and French – but the videos don’t just happen by magic. They’re created by volunteers, so we asked Harald Berger how he makes the German videos. Check it out, and help us to make more!

• LibreOffice 7.2 is tantalisingly close; it’s due to be released in the middle of this month. We held a Bug Hunting Session for the first release candidate, to identify and squash any last bugs before it goes live.

• Our LibreOffice New Generation project aims to bring new – and especially younger – contributors into the LibreOffice community. Earlier in the year, we created a flyer for schools and universities, and we’ve sent out printed versions to many people around the world. Now, here’s an alternative design, thanks to Rizal Muttaqin and the Indonesian community!

• LibreOffice’s documentation team is driven by volunteers around the world. We wanted, we want to say a special thanks to members of the Brazilian Portuguese community, who’ve worked hard to translate and update user guides. So we sent out Open Badges – special, customised badges with embedded metadata, describing their achievements.

• Our second community interview in the month was with Jackson Cavalcanti Junior, who told us about his work in the documentation project.

• In design news, LibreOffice is getting a new website! We caught up with the volunteers who’re helping to design it, who have backgrounds in UX, research and other fields. We really appreciate their help!

• Release-wise, we had one update in July: LibreOffice 7.1.5 with 55 bugfixes and compatibility improvements.

• The LibreOffice Conference 2021 is coming up: check out the sponsorship package. The event will run online again this year, due to the ongoing pandemic situation, from September 23 – 25.

• Just before the end of the month, the documentation team announced another guide: the Draw Guide 7.1. This covers all aspects of the image-editing component of the suite. Great work, everyone!

• And finally, we talked to Hossein Nourikah, our new Developer Community Architect at The Document Foundation about fixing interoperability bugs in LibreOffice. Two more parts of this series are coming!

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