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Year: 2019

LibreOffice monthly recap: May 2019

May was an especially busy month in the project, with new releases of LibreOffice, events, workshops, interviews and more. Check it out…

  • We started with a new Month of LibreOffice. These are twice-yearly campaigns where we encourage people to join our community and help to improve the software. Everyone who contributes can claim a cool sticker pack at the end – and this year, we have some exclusive glass mugs for a randomly selected bunch of winners too! Learn all about it here.

  • You’ve probably heard of the Google Summer of Code, right? Well now there’s the Google Season of Docs – and LibreOffice is taking part! The goal is to give technical writers an opportunity to gain experience in contributing to open source projects, and to give open source projects an opportunity to engage the technical writing community.

  • Another event that’s being planned is the First LibreOffice Latin America Conference in Asunción, Paraguay. This will take place on July 19 – 20, and the call for papers is now open. Come and join our community there!

  • Meanwhile, our C++ workshops are still going strong – they’re a great opportunity to explore features of the programming language, with the help of experienced LibreOffice developers. The first one this month focused on binary trees, while the second covered binary search trees.

  • LibreOffice 6.3 is on the way! Our community is adding and polishing new features – and you can help to make it rock-solid reliable by joining a Bug Hunting Session. Alpha 1 is already available – but more testing versions will be released, before the final public announcement in early August.

  • Members of the German LibreOffice community met at Linuxhotel in Essen for a weekend of discussions, ideas, hacking – and great food! They created a list of tasks to focus on in the coming weeks and months, assigned to various members of the community.

  • On May 13, we talked to Vera Blagoveschenskaya from the Russian community, about her contributions to the project in Quality Assurance. Later in the month, we also had a chat with Buzea Bogdan who is also helping with QA – along with useful videos showing tips and tricks in the software. A big thanks to both of them for their contributions!

  • In other Paris news, LibreOffice Paris HackFest 2019 will take place on the weekend of July 5-6, at le 137, which is at 137 Boulevard Magenta, Paris 10e, France. The event is sponsored by INNO3, hosting the hackfest in their building, and The Document Foundation, providing reimbursement for travel and accommodation. If you’re in the Paris region, come along and say hello!
  • Finally this month, TDF welcomed Adfinis SyGroup to the project’s Advisory Board. Adfinis SyGroup is using LibreOffice for office productivity, in addition to providing professional consultancy to customers with SLA contracts to support migrations from proprietary software to LibreOffice. More recently, Adfinis SyGroup has helped Collabora to start porting LibreOffice to Apple iOS to allow drafting and editing ODF standard documents on Apple iPads.

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

Annual Report 2018: LibreOffice Online

LibreOffice Online is a cloud-based version of the suite that end users can access via a web browser. It uses the same underlying engine as the desktop app, so that documents look identical across the versions. But where did it come from, what happened in 2018, and how can you deploy it on your infrastructure? Read on to find out…

Some History

Development of LibreOffice Online started back in 2011, with the availability of a proof of concept of the client front-end, based on HTML5 technology, produced by SUSE. In 2015, this proof of concept was re-written into an initial Online Development Edition by Collabora, allowing advanced users to check out LibreOffice in the cloud for the very first time.

In 2016, the first source code release of LibreOffice Online, a cloud office suite which provides basic collaborative editing of documents in a browser by re-using LibreOffice desktop’s “core engine”, was added to the master branch for the announcement of LibreOffice 5.3.

This last development brought collaborative editing to LibreOffice Online, a feature which transforms the application into a state of the art cloud office suite – the first to natively support the ISO/IEC standard Open Document Format (ODF) with collaborative editing features.

The rendering fidelity of LibreOffice Online is equivalent to that of the desktop software, and interoperability matches that of LibreOffice thanks to the support of both standard and proprietary document formats. LibreOffice Online has been developed mainly by Collabora, a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community.

LibreOffice Online in 2018

The main feature in online office suites is collaborative editing, and LibreOffice Online is no exception. The server module, which is key for this feature, is improved with every new major release of LibreOffice, with a focus on performance and security.

The graphical user interface was enhanced with the release of LibreOffice 6.1 by exposing various dialogs in LibreOffice core to the web browser. These dialogs were:

  • Writer: Find & Replace, Edit Style, Hyperlink, Special Character, Index Entry, Character, Paragraph, Bullets & Numbering, Table Properties, Spelling & Grammar, Word Count, Change Tracking Management, Insert Header & Footer, and Column Formatting
  • Calc: Ability to Add Autofilter, Ability to Filter Items via Autofilter Popup, Format Cell, Sorting Functionality, Support for Hidden Tabs, Support for Chart Data Series Editing, and Data Validation
  • Impress: Position & Size, Line and Area

The most significant improvements and new features announced at the time of LibreOffice 6.2 were the following:

  • Performance: improvements of scroll wheel, zooming, disk space, session and cache management, reduction of latency and unnecessary animation, and avoidance of repeated re-layout of comments & red-lines
  • Mobile: simplification of user interface, improvement of on-screen keyboard and cursor handling, addition of context toolbar and cleaning of other toolbars, and improvements to comment rendering
  • Integration: insertion of remote graphic from integration, addition of configurable time-limit for document conversion, installation of sample webserver config snippets, and addition of hosting/capabilities endpoint to list online features
  • Document signing: integration of Vereign compatible authentication and document signature, new LibreOfficeKit signing and certificate APIs, configuration to enable/disable the signature, and addition of a signing infobar
  • Other features: opening PDF files in a new tab instead of downloading them, improving configuration options for track changes, addition of a new shape insertion toolbar and of missing configuration defaults, and cleaner and more attractive 404 error reporting

LibreOffice Online Positioning

LibreOffice Online is server software which – to be fully functional – must be integrated with a service that provides file storage and authentication. As such, it can be considered an enabling technology for the public cloud of ISPs, or the private cloud of enterprises and large organizations, when it is integrated – for example – with enterprise file sync and sharing software, or a groupware solution.

The Document Foundation does not plan to develop or deploy a public cloud solution similar to existing products from Google and Microsoft, because this would not be in line with the original mission of the project. The task is therefore open to ISPs and providers of open source cloud solutions, with many options already available on the market.

Given the mission-critical nature of LibreOffice Online, The Document Foundation will not be maintaining binaries for enterprises, because this would create expectations which could not be fulfilled by volunteer-based support. However, builds of the latest code, suitable for home users and those who wish to contribute to development – which is encouraged – are available as Docker images.

Community Member Monday: Buzea Bogdan

Today we talk to Buzea Bogdan, who is making useful videos for LibreOffice users – check them out below!

Where do you live, and what do you enjoy in your spare time?

I live in Romania, a country with beautiful landscapes. I like computers and I like to ride my bicycle – or, more recently, my electric scooter.

What are you working on in the project at the moment?

I am reporting bugs, verifying them, and helping with other bug reports. In addition, I created a channel on YouTube with short tutorials about LibreOffice.

With the help of Xisco Fauli (LibreOffice’s QA engineer) and others in the LibreOffice groups on Telegram, I began to bibisect bugs. Also, with the help of others in the same direction, I may learn more about finding bugs and checking for fixes. I feel there are not so many technical videos about this.

How did you get involved with LibreOffice?

I started with LibreOffice almost a year ago, following a post about how everyone can contribute to this project. At that time, I thought it was time to financially support the LibreOffice community with a small donation. But I soon returned to the software’s website, because I had a small problem with displaying menus. Xisco helped me to solve the problem at the time, and then I thought: “If it is so simple to help others like me, could not I use my time to contribute with the little that I know?”

From that point on, I began to contribute by checking bug reports, along with videos and other information to solve some other bugs. I have also been involved in the translation of LibreOffice into Romanian. And recently I started the new YouTube channel that I mentioned, with short and simple explanation about little things that people usually find hard to solve. Here is a playlist – you can switch between videos using the icon in the top-left:

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Finally, what do you see in the future for LibreOffice?

A few years ago I started using LibreOffice after watching a video on YouTube where OpenOffice and LibreOffice were compared by a well-known blogger. This kind of video could help LibreOffice become more familiar, and help people to discover the features and possibilities they have with open source software.

I feel LibreOffice is more mature now than ever, but the stable version needs to be stable enough – well tested. And this is the way I can help a little bit. I also feel that LibreOffice needs more engineers to work on bugs in order to maintain a smaller numbers of unsolved bugs, relative to all bugs that are reported.

So, huge thanks to Buzea for his help in the QA community, and the videos too! Checking and confirming bug reports is a great way to make LibreOffice even stronger, and doesn’t need a lot of time – if you want to give us a hand, jump into the LibreOffice QA channel and we’ll show you what to do. Cheers!

LibreOffice Paris HackFest

The LibreOffice Paris HackFest 2019 will take place on the weekend of July 5th-6th, at le 137, which is at 137 Boulevard Magenta, Paris 10e, France. The event is sponsored by INNO3, hosting the hackfest in their building, and The Document Foundation, providing reimbursement for travels and accommodations.

LibreOffice Paris HackFest will start on Friday at 10AM. During the day there will be an informal meeting of the French community, to discuss local activities, while developers and other volunteers will hack the LibreOffice code. The venue will be available until 2AM. On Saturday the venue will open at 10AM, to allow people to continue working, and share hackfest results. The event will officially end at 8PM, but on Sunday there will be a city tour.

More details on the LibreOffice Paris HackFest are available on the wiki at the following link: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Hackfest/Paris2019.

LibreOffice Conference 2020 – it could be in your city

The LibreOffice Conference 2020 will be an event to remember, for a couple of reasons: it will be the 10th in a series of successful conferences, and it will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the LibreOffice project and the 20th of the FOSS office suite. In 2020, The Document Foundation will be on stage at many FOSS events around the world, and the LibreOffice Conference will be the most important of the year. Organizing this conference is a unique opportunity for FOSS communities, because the event will make the history of free open source software.

So far, LibreOffice Conferences have been organized in Paris, October 2011; Berlin, October 2012; Milan, September 2013; Bern, September 2014; Aarhus, September 2015; Brno, September 2016; Rome, October 2017; Tirana, September 2018, and Almeria, September 2019.

The Call for Location for LibreOffice Conference 2020 is open until June 30, 2019. TDF’s Board of Directors wants to to give next year’s event organizers the opportunity to attend this year’s conference in Almeria, Spain, September 11 to 13, 2019, to familiarize with the community and the structure of the event. For historical and practical reasons, the LibreOffice Conference takes place between September and November, with a preference for September.

More details about LibOCon 2020 Call for Locations are available on the original blog post.

The Document Foundation welcomes Adfinis SyGroup to the project’s Advisory Board

Berlin, May 23, 2019 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announced today that Adfinis SyGroup – a Swiss FOSS company headquarted in Bern, with offices in Basel, Zurich and Crissier (Vaud) – has joined the project’s Advisory Board.

Adfinis SyGroup is using LibreOffice for office productivity, in addition to providing professional consultancy to customers with SLA contracts to support migrations from proprietary software to LibreOffice. The company has helped to organize the LibreOffice Conference in 2014, when the event was hosted by the Bern University, is contributing patches to the source code, and is also hosting various TDF servers and buildbots on their infrastructure.

More recently, Adfinis SyGroup has helped Collabora to start porting LibreOffice to Apple iOS to allow drafting and editing ODF standard documents on Apple iPads. The underlying base of the software is LibreOfficeKit, which uses the LibreOffice code base to do tiled rendering. On top of that, a HTML/JS solution builds the UI for platforms using VCL under the hood.

“Adfinis SyGroup has been a friend of The Document Foundation since forever, and has recently increased its involvement in the LibreOffice project with the port to Apple iOS. We share the same vision about FOSS as a key element for the future of technology and innovation, and open standards as the only available road to true interoperability”, says Marina Latini, TDF Chairwoman.

“Our support for LibreOffice is part of our strategy to not only use FOSS software, but actively enable its improvement, strengthening the ecosystem and through that making the solution usable for more people. We are working closely with our partner Collabora as they invest in the iOS port, as well as helping branded LibreOffice products to gain more market share in the enterprise environment. By convincing more corporate and government organizations to choose an enterprise subscription for a branded LibreOffice we help to fund resources to further improve the product and project. We’re looking forward to contribute our many years of experience as part of the FOSS community, as well as our strong network to enterprise customers, to the TDF Advisory Board in order to contribute to one of the most important FOSS projects”, says Nicolas Christener, Adfinis SyGroup CEO and CTO.
TDF Advisory Board’s (AB) primary function is to represent supporters of the project, and to provide the Board of Directors (BoD) with advice, guidance and proposals. In addition, the AB is at the kernel of the LibreOffice ecosystem, and as such is key to the further development of the project.

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…