LibreOffice 4.2.1 is already available, to improve the experience of early adopters
Berlin, February 20, 2014 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.2.1, three weeks after the availability of LibreOffice 4.2. The first minor release – based on a shorter cycle than expected – solves over 100 problems, introduced by the larger than usual code refactoring of the LibreOffice 4.2 family. The changelog is available here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.2.1/RC1
“LibreOffice 4.2 was extremely ambitious, in terms of code refactoring. Because of this, we planned an extensive quality assurance cycle, based on automated tests followed by QA sprints in December and January, but we were not able to catch all the issues”, says Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of The Document Foundation. “Based on early adopters feedback, developers and QA experts have jumped in immediately, and have solved the most urgent problems in less than three weeks, showing the importance of our large community.”
LibreOffice 4.2.1 and LibreOffice 4.1.5 will be on stage at CeBIT in Hannover from March 10 to March 14 (Hall 6, Booth H14). In addition, Florian Effenberger and Italo Vignoli will speak about LibreOffice at the Open Source Conference.
LibreOffice 4.2.1 is immediately available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to grow the infrastructure, and support marketing activities to increase the awareness of the project, both at global and local level.
1. Regarding the The Document Foundation Wiki; Current Releases window at: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Main_Page – LibreOffice 4.0.6 is not listed here any more. Can you please restore it? I would argue that LibreOffice 4.1.5 can hardly be presented as “Safe for production use by most users and enterprises”, when the release notes Most Annoying Bugs section, lists the bug; “letters move around during editing/typing (fdo#64957)”, as current. Refer to: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.1#Most_Annoying_Bugs.
I think it would also be helpful to apply the same to the LibreOffice Download Release Notes page at: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/release-notes/
2. According to your release notes for LibreOffice 4.2.1, https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.2#Most_Annoying_Bugs – there are no bugs listed in the Most Annoying Bugs section. Am I correct in assuming that this is in fact the case, and that the only bug is the long outstanding Security-Related Bug; fdo#51819 ?
It’s quite very interessting features and improvements. Very good job. I’m yet very disappointed to see that the tab feature has been removed from the startcenter. To my point of view, having tabs in the startcenter is very usefull to sort documents. May be it will be there in a future version and I deeply hope so.
Is there some setting for what the “Check for updates” feature looks for? I’m on 4.2.0.4 but the check does not say that 4.2.1 is available even though the release is up the on libreoffice.org frontpage? I want “check for updates” to inform me when a new version is released, not wait some (unknown) time before doing so.
While I’m hear I’ll also say this: please redesign the page you get after clicking download on the main libreoffice.org page. The most important information, “Your download LibreOffice_4.2.1_Win_x86.msi should begin shortly” is in the smallest and most modest font on the page. An image gallery steals attention. A whopping big, green download icon with text about a help file download steals attention. A very long sentence about donation has a big font. And so on.
These are suggestions for making the page simpler:
– tone down the libre office help download icon and make it smaller
– remove the text “You can find the optional downloads on the right”
– Shorten “Available translations of this page:” to “Translate page:”
– remove the translation filter box, since there are only a dozen or so translations anyway
– make the text for “Your download LibreOffice_4.2.1_Win_x86.msi should begin shortly.” much larger and bolder. Add more white space around it. Make sure that is what all users immediately see when loading the page.
– shorten this text
“LibreOffice is Free Software and is made available free of charge. Your donation, which is purely optional, supports our worldwide community. If you like the software, please consider a donation. We have only a very few employees, supporting a community of hundreds of developers and other volunteers, serving tens of millions of users worldwide.”
into
“LibreOffice is Free Software and free of charge.
If you like the software, please donate.
We have only a few employees, supporting a community of hundreds of developers and other volunteers, serving tens of millions of users worldwide.”
– shorten this
“You can donate directly via credit card, or via PayPal:”
into
“Donate via credit card or PayPal”
– shorten this
“Select one of the default values
5 USD
10 USD
20 USD
50 USD
Or enter a custom amount and currency
(only those marked with * are also available via PayPal)”
into a simpler list of radio buttons:
” 5 USD
10 USD
20 USD
50 USD
custom amount and currency”
– Don’t show the currency drop down box until the user clicks the “custom amount and currency” radiobutton.
And no imagen rotación un Writer yet.
I love LibreOffice, however the 4.2.1 version has a serious problem in Calc.
Links between cells do not update. It seems that feature is strangely set to
Never update. Even after turn it to Always update it won’t work.
I have tried many solutions. Only going back to 4.1.5 worked.
It is very hard to find anything on this but I figured you should know.
Good luck fixing it.
Gary
Please offer your support for ODF: Comment Deadline on UK Cabinet Office “ODF Only” Policy is February 26
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20140220165521599
You have remarked very interesting details! P.s. Nice web site =)