Home » Archives for 2018 » Page 12

Year: 2018

LibreOffice 6.0 Writer Guide

LibreOffice Documentation Team has just released the LibreOffice 6.0 Writer Guide, with a general Introduction to LibreOffice Writer followed by the following chapters: Working with Text (basics), Working with Text (advanced), Formatting Text, Formatting Pages (basics), Formatting Pages (advanced), Print Export Email, Introduction to Styles, Working with Styles, Templates, Images & Graphics, Lists, Tables of Data, Mail Merge, TOCs Indexes Biblios, Master Documents, Fields, Forms, Spreadsheets Charts Objects, Setting Up Writer and Customizing Writer, for a total of 448 pages.

LibreOffice 6.0 Writer Guide is available from TDF Wiki as ODT and PDF, both the complete book and individual chapters, and from ODF Authors as ODT of individual chapters.

LibreOffice 6.0 Writer Guide is also available as a printed book from Lulu, by Friends of Open Document Inc., an Australia-based volunteer organisation with members around the world which will be using profits from the sale to benefit the LibreOffice community.

DBMS migration in LibreOffice

In 2017, The Document Foundation (TDF) launched four tenders aimed at improving LibreOffice in several strategic areas, and documenting the approach and work carried out, to foster sharing of knowledge and inclusion of the wider volunteer community.

One of the tenders was focused on the implementation of a HSQLDB binary format import in LibreOffice (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/05/04/tender-implement-hsqldb-binary-format-import-libreoffice-201705-03/), and after a careful evaluation by the Foundation’s Board of Directors – with the help of competent and independent volunteers – has been assigned to Collabora.

Tenders are funded by donations, and are supposed to improve LibreOffice in specific areas where the tasks are beyond the capabilities of independent volunteer developers, and also share the knowledge amongst the volunteer community to foster active participation in development and related tasks.

Collabora has developed a mechanism to import database files with high fidelity from the HSQLDB binary file format, used by many existing ODB files, by reading the Java serialization code, and writing a filter to import all data into LibreOffice Base. The objective was to remove the legacy Java/HSQLDB database and to simplify the move to Firebird.

Tamás Bunth, the Hungarian software engineer working at Collabora who has worked at the tender, has extensively reported about the progress and the results on his personal blog:

  1. DBMS migration in LibreOffice: Firebird and HSQLDB schema import
  2. DBMS migration in LibreOffice: HSQLDB binary import
  3. Final steps of LibreOffice database migration
  4. Database migration in LibreOffice: bug fixes and more

The feature is going to be released with LibreOffice 6.1, as an experimental one (to allow some further testing before being officially released with LibreOffice 6.2). So, to access it users have to flag the “enable experimental features” option in Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Advanced. If the option is not enabled, the embedded HSQLDB database engine remains the default for new Base files with LibreOffice 6.1, as in any previous version.

If experimental mode is enabled, the embedded Firebird database engine will not only be enabled but will also become the default, while the embedded HSQLDB database engine – although deprecated – will still be available as an alternative.

LibreOffice Base users are encouraged to migrate their database using the embedded HSQLDB to embedded Firebird new migration assistant (released with LibreOffice 6.1 as part of the tender), which is not using the HSQLDB database engine and will be available in LibreOffice releases even after the embedded HSQLDB support will be fully removed.

At the same time, LibreOffice Base users who want to stick with the HSQLDB database engine should start planning the migration of their database to an external HSQLDB server.

LibreOffice at OSCON in Portland

OSCON is the largest open source conference and exibition in the United States. The event has returned to Portland to celebrate its 20th anniversary on July 18/19, 2018, after a couple of years in Austin, Texas. The Document Foundation was given a free booth in the Non Profit Pavilion, and was represented by three enthusiastic volunteers – Robinson Tryon and Robin Haberman from the US, and Eric Bright from Canada – who had lots of good conversations with everyone from long-term users and supporters of LibreOffice, to those who were new to the whole concept of FOSS.

TDF participation at OSCON, as in other events, was possible thanks to our generous donors, who support the project development with their financial support.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.0.6

Berlin, August 2, 2018 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 6.0.6, the sixth minor release of the 6.0 family, ready for mainstream users and enterprise deployments.

TDF recommends deploying LibreOffice in production environments with the backing of certified professionals, providing development, migration and training support (list at https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/). This is extremely important for the growth of the LibreOffice ecosystem.

For enterprise class deployment, LibreOffice should be sourced from a company providing a Long Term Supported version of the suite (members of TDF Advisory Board: http://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/).

LibreOffice 6.0.6 change logs are available at the following links: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.0.6/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.0.6/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 6.0.6 is immediately available for download at the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/. Donations help TDF to maintain its infrastructure, share knowledge, and fund the presence of volunteers at events like the LibreOffice Conference, where they can meet with free software advocates coming from all over the world (https://www.libocon.org/).

Several companies sitting in TDF’s Advisory Board (https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) provide either value-added LTS versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for migrations and training, based on best practices distilled by The Document Foundation.

LibreOffice monthly recap: July 2018

There’s a lot going on in the LibreOffice community, in the lead up to LibreOffice 6.1, in development, documentation, design, QA, translations and much more. Here’s a summary of news and updates in July…

  • Preparations for LibreOffice 6.1 continued, with the final Bug Hunting Session on July 6. Users around the world helped to test new features and report bugs so that they can be fixed before the final release – thanks to everyone who took part!

Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

  • Another Bug Hunting Session took place in July, this time with the Turkish LibreOffice community. 15 people were present, and tested the software for three hours. See the full report here.

  • TDF published its Annual Report for 2017. This describes activities in and around the LibreOffice and Document Liberation projects, and provides additional information on how donations to TDF have been used. Read it here.
  • Later in the month, we described how automated tools and the volunteer contribution of security specialists are constantly improving the quality of LibreOffice’s source code. Check out the blog post for full details.
  • Finally, our Albanian community is organising the LibreOffice Conference 2018, which will take place from September 25 – 28 in Tirana, Albania. Come and join us – register today! Here’s a quick video overview of what to expect:

Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

Keep in touch – follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join us and help us to make LibreOffice even better!

How LibreOffice’s quality has improved thanks to automated tools and the volunteer contribution of security specialists

Last Coverity Scan metrics about LibreOffice, with 0 outstanding defects on 6 million lines of code. Kudos to our developers.

Berlin, July 25, 2018 – The Document Foundation celebrates five years of improvements to LibreOffice’s source code under Red Hat’s leadership, thanks to the adoption of automated tools such as Coverity Scan and Google OSS-Fuzz, and to the key contributions in the area of source code fuzzing of security specialists such as Antti Levomäki and Christian Jalio of Forcepoint.

“The combination of Coverity Scan, Google OSS-Fuzz and dedicated fuzzing by security specialists at Forcepoint has allowed us to catch bugs – which could have turned into security issues – before a release,” says Red Hat’s Caolán McNamara, a senior developer and the leader of the security team at LibreOffice.

Since 2013, Coverity Scan has helped to reduce the number of issues by several orders of magnitude (from 0.93 to 0.00093 per 1,000 lines of code). The score is significantly better than the FOSS software average of 0.65 and the proprietary software average of 0.71.

LibreOffice defect density score during the last two years

The Coverity Scan score is related to a static analysis to find source code defects and vulnerabilities. In static analysis, the code under examination is not executed. As such, the score does not represent an absolute value about quality and security of the software when executed on end user desktops.

More recently, developers have implemented fuzzing or fuzz testing, a technique that involves providing invalid, unexpected or random data as inputs to a program, which is then monitored for exceptions such as crashes or failing built-in code assertions, or for potential memory leaks. Fuzzing is able to catch issues just a few hours after they appear in the upstream source code repository, and help to solve bugs and potential security issues before they reach the end user.

#abetterlibreoffice

Press Releases

Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.4

Berlin, 18 December 2025 – LibreOffice 25.8.4, the fourth minor update to the free office suite developed by volunteers for…

Open Document Format

Relaunching ODF Advocacy as ODF News

I decided to start the current campaign, with one blog post per week focusing on the different aspects of Open…