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Author: Italo Vignoli

Open Document Format (ODF) 1.2 published as International Standard 26300:2015 by ISO/IEC

odf12Berlin, July 17, 2015 – The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) Version 1.2, the native file format of LibreOffice and many other applications, has been published as International Standard 26300:2015 by ISO/IEC. ODF defines a technical schema for office documents including text documents, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents like drawings or presentations.

“ODF 1.2 is the native file format of LibreOffice. Today, ODF is the best choice for interoperability, because it is widely adopted by applications, and is respected by applications in every area”, says Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of The Document Foundation. “ODF makes interoperability a reality, and transforms the use of proprietary document formats into a relic of the past. In the future, people will tell stories about incompatible document formats between two releases of proprietary office suites, as a bygone problem”.

ODF is developed by the OASIS consortium. The current version of the standard was published in 2011, and then was submitted to ISO/IEC in 2014. The standard is available – in three parts: schema, formula definition and packages – from the repository of Publicly Available Standards as a free download from the following links:

  1. Schema: http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c066363_ISO_IEC_26300-1_2015.zip

  2. Formula Definition: http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c066375_ISO_IEC_26300-2_2015.zip

  3. Packages: http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c066376_ISO_IEC_26300-3_2015.zip

The standard is also available from the OASIS ODF TC website, from the page at the following address: http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/OpenDocument-v1.2.html.

ODF 1.2 is supported by all the leading office suites, and by a large number of other applications. It has been adopted by the UK Cabinet Office as the reference for all documents exchanged with the UK Government, and is currently proposed as the reference standard by the Référentiel Général d’Interopérabilité 1.9.9 of the French Government. In addition, ODF 1.2 has been adopted by many European public administrations. In Brasil, ODF is part of the Progranma do Governo Eletrônico (e-PING) and can be accessed at this link: http://eping.governoeletronico.gov.br/#p2s3.

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Registration for the LibreOffice Conference is now open

Berlin, Juli 1st, 2015 – Registration for the LibreOffice Conference, which will be hosted by the Danish city of Aarhus from September 23 to September 25, 2015, is now open at: http://conference.libreoffice.org/2015/registration/.

Call for Papers is still open until July 15, 2015. Details on the tracks and the call for papers are available at: http://conference.libreoffice.org/2015/call-for-papers/. Tracks are about Development, Quality Assurance, Localization, Documentation and Native Language Projects, Ease of Use, Design and Accessibility, Migrations and Deployments, Certifications and Best Practices, ODF, Document Liberation and Interoperability, and Building a Business around LibreOffice.

The conference website (http://conference.libreoffice.org/) is also including some practical info (http://conference.libreoffice.org/2015/practical-info/) about VISA, transportation and accommodation.

Of course, do not forget to pay a visit to the sponsors who have made the event possible with their generous support: CIB, Collabora, Google, Magenta and RedHat (http://conference.libreoffice.org/2015/our-sponsors/).

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.4.4

Berlin, June 30, 2015 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 4.4.4, the fourth minor release of the LibreOffice 4.4 family, with over 70 fixes over LibreOffice 4.4.3. New features introduced by LibreOffice 4.4 are listed on this wiki page: .

The Document Foundation suggests to deploy LibreOffice in enterprises and large organizations with the backing of professional support by certified people (a list is available at: http://www.documentfoundation.org/certification/).

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change log here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.4.4/RC1 (fixed in RC1), https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.4.4/RC2 (fixed in RC2) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.4.4/RC3 (fixed in RC3).

Get involved: LibreOffice 5.0 and LibreOffice Conference

The LibreOffice community is actively working at next major release, LibreOffice 5.0, expected in early August 2015. After two successful bug hunting sessions, developers are putting the finishing touches to the software. Preliminary release notes are available at: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.0.

Also, the Call for Paper for LibreOffice Conference 2015, which will be hosted by the Danish city of Aarhus from September 23 to September 25, is open until July 15, with further details on the website: http://conference.libreoffice.org/2015/call-for-papers/.

The LibreOffice community is growing, and these are exceptional opportunities to join the fun together with over 900 developers who have contributed to the code and over 3,000 volunteers who have localized the suite, chased the bugs, written the manuals, spoken at conferences, and advocated LibreOffice both at global and local levels.

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.4.4 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.

Publication of TDF Ledgers

TDF has begun publishing the accounting ledgers to the general public. As part of the foundation’s transparency and openness principles, TDF is committed to publishing the accounting ledgers on a regular basis from now on.

Accounting is done by a professional accountant, and the resulting ledgers are slightly anonymized and translated. The style of the ledgers is defined by our tax/accounting requirements and changes are possible only on a limited basis.

You can find TDF Ledgers at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/Ledgers.

TDF is grateful to all donors and volunteers for the ongoing donations, support and contributions, which make TDF what it is today and contribute greatly to the ongoing success of the LibreOffice community!

Contribute to LibreOffice 5.0 with a brand new Impress Template

LibreOffice Design Team launches a competition to increase the number of Impress templates bundled with the upcoming Libreoffice 5.0, due in early August 2015. The competition is open to designers, artists and creatively talented users.

The project is focused on Impress templates, as this is the primary place where templates are needed. As Impress templates do not contain text, they can be included in all language versions without the need of translation.

Deadline for submission of new Templates is July 18, 2015, to be included in LibreOffice 5.0. Works submitted after this deadline will be added to the next LibreOffice release.

Templates will be selected by the members of the LibreOffice Design Team, and may be edited before the inclusion. Authors will be credited on http://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/credits/.

To be considered for inclusion, templates must meet the following conditions:

  • They are an original work, and are not converted from existing templates.
  • They are licensed under Creative Commons CC0.
  • They are templates for LibreOffice Impress and contain two or more master slides.
  • They are based only on fonts bundled with LibreOffice (Caladea, Carlito, DejaVu, Gentium, Liberation, Libertine G, Open Sans, PT Serif, Source Code, Source Sans).
  • They contain no text, including no text in images, as they are intended to be used in any language without the need for translation.
  • They are based on LibreOffice styles, and not on direct element formatting. Styles must be created according to the expected use of the template.

For more information about creating templates, please check here: and here: http://lodahl.blogspot.ae/2014/12/making-good-and-solid-templates.html.

The submission page for the new Impress templates, with all details, is here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/Templates_for_LibreOffice_5.0.

Be creative ! We look forward to bundle your template designs !

Second bug hunting session for LibreOffice 5.0

Berlin, June 9, 2015 – The LibreOffice community is getting ready for the next major release – planned for late July or early August – with a second bug hunting session focused on new features, including Windows 10 compatibility, and fixes for bugs and regressions. The session will last 3 full days, from June 19 to June 21, 2015, and check the first release candidate of LibreOffice 5.0.

On those dates, mentors will be available from 08AM UTC to 10PM UTC to help less experienced volunteers to triage bugs, on the QA IRC channel and via email on the QA mailing list.

Those who cannot join during the bug hunting session are always welcome to help chasing bugs and regressions when they have time.

Builds of LibreOffice 5.0.0 RC1 will be available until early July from this link: http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/pre-releases/. Further information are available here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/BugHunting_Session_5.0.0_RC1.

Preliminary release notes for LibreOffice 5.0.0 are available on the wiki at the following link: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.0.

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