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Author: Italo Vignoli

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.1

Immediately available for Linux, MacOS X and Windows

wall51smallBerlin, February 10, 2016 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.1, a full featured open source office suite which compares head-to-head with every product in the same category, while standing out with superior interoperability features.

LibreOffice 5.1 offers a completely reorganized user interface, and several improved features targeted at enterprise deployments: better support for ODF 1.2, interoperability with proprietary document formats and file management on remote servers.

LibreOffice has been downloaded 120 million times since the launch in January 2011. The office suite is deployed by large organizations in every continent, with the latest addition being the Italian Defense Staff with over 100,000 desktops.

LibreOffice 5.1 Highlights

lo51-starsmallUser Interface: LibreOffice 5.1’s user interface has been completely reorganized, to provide faster and more convenient access to its most used features. A new menu has been added to each of the applications: Style (Writer), Sheet (Calc) and Slide (Impress and Draw). In addition, several icons and menu commands have been repositioned based on user preferences.

Interoperability: Compatibility with proprietary document formats has been improved, as a part of the ongoing effort for a better interoperability with other productivity software. In addition, filters have been added for Apple Keynote 6, Microsoft Write and Gnumeric files.

Spreadsheet Functions: Calc’s formula engine has been improved with features addressing restrictions in table structured references and sticky column/row anchors, interoperability with OOXML spreadsheets and compatibility with ODF 1.2

File Access on Remote Servers: Files on remote file servers such as Sharepoint, Google Drive and Alfresco can now be accessed from the File menu, with read and write options, without the need of a dialog window.

A complete list of the most significant new features is available in the accompanying press release (LibreOffice 5.1 New Features), and has also been published on the website at http://www.libreoffice.org/discover/new-features/. Short videos presenting the most significant new features for Writer, Calc and Impress are available at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0pdzjvYW9RHSwdRnZfaxAWICrkBrQl7k.

LibreOffice 5.1 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 5.1 is another step forward to fulfilling our vision of an office suite tailored on user needs and preferences”, says Bjoern Michaelsen, a Director at The Document Foundation (TDF) and a leading LibreOffice developer. “Since 2010, we have gone through different development cycles to clean up the code and make it more responsive. We are now at a stage where we are close to providing a better user interface.”

“LibreOffice’s third development cycle is leading us to a new user interface concept, where the user will be able to choose the best layout of the elements on the screen for his own needs, to leverage desktop space in the best way” adds Jan Holesovsky, a Director at TDF, and a member of the design team.

Availability and enterprise deployments

LibreOffice 5.1 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 5.0.x branch (soon at 5.0.5). In any case, TDF suggests deploying or migrating to LibreOffice with the backing of certified professionals providing Level 3 support, migration consultancy or trainings according to recognized best practices (http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

LibreOffice 5.1 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.

Launch Pack and Screenshots

The entire launch pack, with background documents and the high resolution images, can be downloaded from: http://tdf.io/lo51launchpack. Some Windows 10 screenshots can be downloaded from: http://tdf.io/lo51screenshots.

Tender for a Quality Assurance Engineer (#201601-01)

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks a

Quality Assurance Engineer

to start work as soon as possible.

The role, which is scheduled for 20 hours a week, includes amongst other items:

  • keep a continuous overview and reporting on the state and progress of LibreOffice QA as seen on its bug trackers, mailing lists, Gerrit, and other tools and communication channels (e.g. Jenkins, IRC)
  • foster communication between QA and other teams
  • help community outreach to encourage more people to join the QA team and help onboarding new QA contributors
  • provide and regularly maintain bibisect repositories of the LibreOffice codebase
  • maintain, update and create feature patches for our Bugzilla instance
  • organize and coordinate bug hunting sessions
  • stress test LibreOffice development builds daily on multiple platforms
  • triage unconfirmed bugs on master
  • run master to try to find regressions early in release cycles
  • run release tests on alphas, betas and release candidates to identify blockers
  • create, improve, and keep up-to-date and understandable documentation, howtos and introductions for volunteers to LibreOffice QA
  • represent the QA project during weekly ESC calls

The role requires the following:

  • an established relationship within the quality assurance team as well as with other teams including development and marketing, and with users
  • ability to build and run LibreOffice daily on different platforms and operating systems
  • understanding of many of the features within each component and ability to learn other features quickly
  • stress testing each component daily
  • understanding of BugZilla
  • a general understanding of LibreOffice code
  • ability to write automated tests to ensure consistent quality in future releases
  • an understanding of quality assurance procedures
  • a firm understanding of bibisect, both the code and how to use it
  • use of MozTrap for running manual tests

Speaking and writing English fluently is a mandatory requirement.

The work time during the day is flexible, apart from some fixed times when availability is required (e.g. during meetings, which usually take place at 1400 or 1500 UTC once per week).

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member, or never having contributed before, does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

The job is offered on a freelance basis. Work happens from the applicant’s home office, which can be located anywhere in the world.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, including curriculum vitae, your financial expectations, and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at floeff@documentfoundation.org no later than March 1, 2016, midnight UTC. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

If you haven’t received feedback by April 1, 2016 your application could not be considered.

Tenders Extended to February 12

Tenders published in December, and supposed to expire on January 29, have been extended till Friday, February 12.

Single tenders can be accessed via the following links:

R.I.P. John McCreesh

533120_10151138749737628_577502702_nJohn McCreesh, a founding member of The Document Foundation and the author of the project “manifesto“, has suddenly passed away on Saturday, January 16, at the age of 61.

This is an extremely sad time for The Document Foundation, as John has been a friend of every project founder, and often a mentor for the younger members. Without his work as a volunteer, the free office suite environment would have not been what it is today.

In fact, John wrote the original OOo Strategic Marketing Plan, which was instrumental for the growth of the project from 2004 to 2010, and contributed to the birth of LibreOffice and The Document Foundation.

If you have never met John, you can read his LinkedIn professional profile or his FaceBook page. His recent activity is summarised in the News & Star commemorating article.

Our thoughts and condolences go out to his family and friends. We will never forget John.

 

First 2016 meeting of the LibreOffice Indian community

CYcrDHsUoAAeZpMToday, the LibreOffice Indian community meets in Delhi, the capital of India, at Social Cops, to discuss 2016 activities. The event is supported by the FUEL Project, one of the largest localization communities worlwide (India alone has a large number of native languages, and localization is one of the first issues to tackle for any free software community).

The development of the LibreOffice Indian community is a very important objective for the entire project, as the Republic of India is the second largest country in the world by population, with over 1.2 billion inhabitants. In addition to Hindi, the official language of the Union, there are 21 officially recognised regional languages: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

LibreOffice mini Conference 2016 Osaka

banner_2000x667The Japanese community has just organized their LibreOffice mini Conference 2016 in Osaka. We have asked Takeshi Abe, a leading member of the Japanese community, a few questions about the event.

Can you tell us more about the context of the Japan LibreOffice Mini-Conference?

In 2012, the idea of a mini Conference in Japan has emerged from discussions in LibreOffice Japanese Team, in charge of the organization of the series of events. Our team consists of the most active contributors in the Japanese community, serving as a NLP (native language project) now.

To explain the situation, let’s summarize the history of the Japanese community since the OOo era (please note that this is based on
my personal opinions). OOo had earned huge expectations from Japanese users. It was obvious both from the number of migrations [1] in the country, and the fact that a government agency was leading a technical research project for specific features of Japanese Language [2].

Unfortunately, like other communities in the OOo project, Japanese volunteers suffered from the bureaucratic nature of the project. Core members of the NLP faced difficulty to focus on contribution. They eventually parted ways, and some of them formed the so-called “users group” [3] in 2002, to try to manage the situation better than the “official” NLP. The dispute seems to remain unresolved until today.

This kind of separation resulted in fewer collaboration between volunteers and in a poor communication within the community. Worse, even, user and business organizations became skeptical about the availability of skilled people who could help to send the right feedback to the project. This resulted in even fewer contributions over time.

Time passed and the launch of LibreOffice struck. Its manifesto sounded exactly essential to us. Sure, meritocracy is the key. Early members of the LibreOffice Japanese Team have chosen a flat structure with no lead. Our team has encouraged each one to do what he/she could do in his/her favorite manner. It worked magically, and it still works today.

We have a practical issu, though: how can we communicate effectively outside the project to promote LibreOffice, recruit new volunteers or exchange ideas with the industry, when we have neither the authority nor a structured organization?

One of the answers was quite simple: let’s gather and ask people who are interested. This is how the mini Conference was born.

Is LibreOffice known in Japan and are there known deployments in the public or private sector?

Yes. You can find visible deployments at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/JA/Marketing/CaseStudy.

Last question: do you have any specific goal for this mini-conference that would make you and the Japanese community happy?

Yes. We gather people annually to unify the community. Also, our Japanese Team has the time to have a face-to-face off-line meeting.

The last mini Conference was held in late 2014, focused on code development from the Japanese community. It was not only a success with interesting presentations by young hackers, but also provided a tutorial for newbies about how to start hacking LibreOffice.

This time we plan to meet people with broader interests. We have called for both long and short form of presentations on whatever,
whoever in the community would like to share. Accepted papers include ones from users, volunteers, academia and companies providing value-added service.

In addition, we have Kohei Yoshida as our guest speaker, talking about “five years of LibreOffice”.

I am sure that meeting friends in the community in early January and enjoying the refreshingly cold air in Osaka will be a great start for the activities in 2016.

[1] http://ossforum.jp/jossfiles/OpenOffice.org_use_cases_0.pdf
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20070506220203/http://www.ipa.go.jp/software/open/ossc/2007/theme/koubo1_t01.html
[3] http://oooug.jp/

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