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Author: Italo Vignoli

The Document Foundation announces feature-rich LibreOffice 5.3

Berlin, February 1st, 2017 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.3, one of the most feature-rich releases in the history of the application. The office suite is immediately available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and for the first time also for the private cloud.

LibreOffice 5.3 represents a significant step forward in the evolution of the software: it offers an introduction to new features such as online with collaborative editing, which increase the competitive positioning of the application, and at the same time provides incremental improvements, to make the program more reliable, interoperable and user-friendly.

“LibreOffice is backed by a fantastic community of developers”, says Michael Meeks, a member of the board of The Document Foundation. “In 2010, only a few people were betting on our capability of attracting a large number of code contributors, which are instrumental for the success of a large code base. In six years we have attracted over 1,100 new developers and, thanks to this large community, during the last two years we have had an average of 300 people active on the source code”.

LibreOffice 5.3 highlights

LibreOffice 5.3 offers a number of interesting new features in every area: a new cross-platform text layout engine that uses HarfBuzz for consistent text layout on all platforms, with significant advantages across languages and alphabets; a revised Help menu, with new quick links to user guides and community support forums, for an improved user experience; and better import/export filters to new and legacy MS Office documents.

Writer now supports Table Styles, for applying formatting to a table which is preserved when you make edits to it; a new Page Deck in the sidebar lets the user quickly customise page settings without having to go through a separate dialog box; and a new Go to Page Box makes it possible to jump to another page in the document with just a few keystrokes.

Calc provides a new set of default cell styles, with greater variety and better names than in previous releases; in fresh installations, “Enable wildcards in formulas” is now the default option, rather than regular expressions, to improve compatibility with other spreadsheet software; and a new text entry box lets the user narrow down the functions he is looking for, and simplifies the search for the right one.

Impress now opens with a template selector, to get the user off to a quick start; and a new Slide Properties Deck is now available in the sidebar while in slide master mode.

A list of the most significant new features is available in a separate document (http://tdf.io/lo53features) and is presented in a series of short videos (http://tdf.io/53vids). A page with the top new features is also available on the website at http://www.libreoffice.org/discover/new-features/.

LibreOffice 5.3 has also been improved “under the hood,” thanks to the work of hundreds of volunteers. This translates into an open source office suite which is easier to develop, maintain and debug. Although this is not visible to users, it is extremely important for enterprise deployments.

LibreOffice is deployed by large organizations in every continent. A list of the most significant migrations announced in the media is available here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/LibreOffice_Migrations.

LibreOffice Online

LibreOffice 5.3 features the first source release of LibreOffice Online, a cloud office suite which provides basic collaborative editing of documents in a browser by re-using the LibreOffice “core engine”. Rendering fidelity is excellent, and interoperability matches that of LibreOffice.

LibreOffice Online is fundamentally a server service and should be installed and configured by adding a cloud storage and an SSL certificate, which are not included in the solution. It might be considered an enabling technology for the public cloud of ISPs or the private cloud of enterprises and large organizations.

Builds of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are available as Docker images: https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online/.

A background document providing the positioning of LibreOffice Online is available here: http://tdf.io/loonlineback.

Experimental UI features

Starting from the 5.3 family, LibreOffice UI has been extended with the addition of an experimental Notebookbar, which offers another UI option in addition to the Default UI (with two toolbars), the Single Toolbar UI and the Sidebar with a Single Toolbar. Each UI layout has been thought to serve a different cluster of LibreOffice users.

LibreOffice UI is code named MUFFIN, an acronym for My User-Friendly & Flexible INterface. A background document explaining the UI concept is available here: http://tdf.io/muffinback.

Availability and enterprise deployments

LibreOffice 5.3 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open source office suites, and as such is targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users.

For enterprise class deployments, TDF maintains the more mature 5.2.5 version, which should be supported by certified professionals according to best practices recognized worldwide (http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

LibreOffice 5.3 is immediately available from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. LibreOffice users, free software advocates, and all community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

Press Kit and Screenshots

The press kit, with background documents and high-resolution images, can be downloaded from http://tdf.io/lo53presskit. Screenshots can be downloaded from http://tdf.io/lo53screenshots.

Announcement of LibreOffice 5.2.5

Berlin, January 26, 2017 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.2.5 “still”, the fifth minor release of the LibreOffice 5.2 family. Based on the upcoming announcement of LibreOffice 5.3, all users are invited to update to LibreOffice 5.2.5 from LibreOffice 5.1.6 or previous versions.

TDF suggests deploying LibreOffice in large organizations, public administrations and enterprises with the backing of professional support by certified people (a list is available at http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

Road to LibreOffice 5.3

LibreOffice 5.3 will be announced in less than a week, on February 1st, 2017. Users can start learning about the new features on LibreOffice 5.3 Release Notes page (https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.3).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.2.5 is immediately available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/. LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

Several companies sitting in TDF Advisory Board (http://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) are providing either value added Long Term Supported versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for migrations and training, based on best practices distilled by The Document Foundation.

Marketing & PR at TDF in the second half of 2016

In terms of marketing and PR, a large free software project is quite similar to a large corporation. In fact, activities are following each other without interruption: major and minor product announcements, global events and local events, community fostering projects, and day to day activities (such as working with journalists).

In addition, there are the so called back office activities, which are instrumental for the success of the main ones but are less visible (and usually tedious). For instance, a major announcement has a burst of PR activities during the last week, which are based on a careful check of journalists’ email addresses, and on a thorough read of articles published during the last few months.

July is the month of a major announcement, which happens either at the end of July or during the first week of August. In 2016, we have announced LibreOffice 5.2, a feature rich major release, introducing – amongst a wealth of interesting novelties – document classification, a significant new feature for enterprise deployments.

August is usually the month before the LibreOffice Conference, and as such is spent finalizing the event schedule, and putting the finishing touches to the program.

September is the conference month. In 2016, the community has gathered in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic and a technology hub, at the local IT university. The event was organized by OpenAlt and backed by Red Hat, which has a large software dev facility in the city. During the conference, we have announced LibreOffice 5.2.1 and LibreOffice 5.1.5.

October is usually the month when we start planning the next major announcement. In 2016 we have worked together with the Design Team at the new user interface concept, which will be affecting not only LibreOffice 5.3 but also the following major release, and possibly even the next one.

We have discussed extensively the concept, because we wanted to provide users a clear path forward without leaving behind those loyal to the traditional LibreOffice UI, which will not be abandoned.

LibreOffice will offer a flexible user interface, where each user will be able to configure the UI to fit his working habits. In fact, with millions of users, it would be impossible to please everyone by offering only one option in term of user interface.

In November, during the Month of LibreOffice, we have prepared the UI announcement, while working at media mailing lists and monitoring articles about LibreOffice 5.2 (which have reached the record amount of over 2,000 in less than six months).

We have also improved the results, in terms of clicks, of our Google sponsored AdWord account. This is a fine tuning activity, based on the mix of keywords and the bid value associated to each keyword.

In December, we have announced the MUFFIN – My User Friendly & Flexible Interface – with a record number of over 20,000 visits (and over 80,000 page views) to TDF blog. It is an unexpected success, which confirms that we have chosen the right approach to an issue affecting a large number of LibreOffice users.

At the end of the semester, we are ready for a new exciting year (and another semester of ongoing marketing and PR activities, which will start in early January with the first draft of the documents for the announcement of LibreOffice 5.3).

Happy 2017

A huge thanks to our donors

Donations to The Document Foundation have been steadily growing for the last three years, thanks to the generosity of many thousands of people around the world.

In 2016, donations have been 82,036 (a 14.2% increase over 2015).

In 2015, donations have been 71,839 (a 9.5% increase over 2014).

In 2014, donations have been 65,579.

Donations are key to our project, as they provide the economic resources to keep the organization and the infrastructure running, to fund activities such as participation of volunteers to FOSDEM and the LibreOffice Conference, and to help local activities organized locally by native language projects.

You can find examples of activities funded by donations money in the annual report: http://tdf.io/report2015.

Without donations, The Document Foundation could not be an independent community led project. Thanks again to all donors.

The Document Foundation opens LibreOffice Certification for Migrations and Trainings to all project volunteers, to members of not-for-profit bodies, and to individuals of proven competence

LibreOffice Certification represents a business opportunity for value added resellers, based on the proposition of consultancy and training services

Berlin, December 27, 2016 – Effective from January 1st, 2017, access to LibreOffice Certification will be extended to volunteers active at global and local levels, members of not-for-profit bodies sitting in the Advisory Board (namely, FSF, FSFE, Gnome Foundation and KDE), and for individuals whose competence and commitment are demonstrated by facts (successful migrations and trainings). In addition, Members of the Certification Committee can invite people to apply for certification, even if they do not belong to the approved categories, based on their direct relation, and to the competence and commitment of these individuals.

So far, LibreOffice Certification was limited to TDF Members who were active on a regular basis, in order to test the process with candidates already acquainted with the project.

In any case, every individual who applies will have to go through the same certification process, based on a first analysis of pre-requisites and documents, a second optional written questionnaire, and a third face-to-face discussion with the Certification Committee. The second optional written questionnaire is at the sole discretion of the Certification Committee.

“LibreOffice Certification for Migrations and Trainings has been received in a different way in different geographies. In Italy, where it has been more successful, the availability of certified professionals has triggered a number of migrations in public administrations and enterprises”, says Italo Vignoli, Chairman of the Certification Committee.

Lothar Becker, Eliane Domingos de Sousa, Sophie Gautier, Olivier Hallot, Thomas Krumbein, Marina Latini, Gustavo Pacheco and Italo Vignoli have been renewed as members of the Certification Committee. In addition, Franklin Weng – a certified professional from Taiwan – has been added to the Certification Committee, with the objective of helping to increase the number of LibreOffice certified professionals in Asia.

The LibreOffice Certification website is available at the following link: http://www.documentfoundation.org/certification/program/.

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