Last Saturday, November 8, I have managed a workshop at SFScon on Font management for document interoperability in LibreOffice. The workshop aimed to demonstrate how to configure and manage the LibreOffice font replacement feature, one of the key elements of document interoperability. Although font replacement on the fly is a long-standing LibreOffice feature, it is rather unknown and must be configured and managed properly in order to substitute proprietary fonts, which are standard on Windows and macOS and have been used as a lock-in tool for years, with metrically compatible free fonts.…
Author: Italo Vignoli
Long-term archiving with ODF: a future-proof strategy
Digital documents in proprietary formats often become inaccessible within a few years due to undocumented changes to the XML schema that are intentionally employed for lock-in purposes. To avoid this problem, it is advisable to use the Open Document Format (ODF) not only for everyday tasks, but also for long-term storage. This ensures that documents remain accessible for years or even generations.…
ODF format security: encryption, signatures and metadata management
Open Document Format (ODF) is an open standard for office documents – texts, spreadsheets, presentations and more – that is flexible and interoperable. As with any other digital format, its security is a key concern, as ODF files often contain sensitive information that, without adequate protection measures, can be exposed, tampered with or tracked.
This post analyses how ODF handles security, focusing on encryption, digital signatures and metadata management: three features that protect documents from prying eyes and tampering.…
The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 25.2.7
Berlin, 30 October 2025 – The Document Foundation announces the release of LibreOffice 25.2.7, the final maintenance release of the LibreOffice 25.2 family, available for download at www.libreoffice.org/download [1]. Users of LibreOffice 25.2.x should update to LibreOffice 25.8.x, as LibreOffice 25.2.x is approaching the end of its support period.
LibreOffice 25.2.7 is based on the LibreOffice Technology, which enables the development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions – either from TDF or from the ecosystem – that fully supports the two document format standards: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP), and the closed and proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX).…
LibreItalia Conference 2025 in Gradisca d’Isonzo
Libreitalia Conference 2025 was organized by Marco Marega – a LibreItalia and TDF Member – in Gradisca d’Isonzo, near the border with Slovenia, in Gorizia’s province. Gradisca is a very nice fortified city surrounded be beautiful parks. The conference venue was the historical Monte di Pietà palace, that the municipality administration kindly allowed to use.
Gorizia, the administrative center, is a city divided in two parts, half in Italy (Gorizia itself), and half in Slovenia (Nova Gorica).…
Make your ODF files accessible: a simple guide for everyone
People without disabilities have no problem viewing documents on a computer screen, but there are people with visual impairments or who are blind who use screen readers and keyboard navigation. ODF files have everything they need to be accessible to these people too, and this is a short guide to creating documents that they can use without any problems.…