Calling all developers! The LibreOffice Technology Hackfest will take place in the City of Budapest on June 4th and 5th, 2024.
Author: Mike Saunders
Half-way point in the Month of LibreOffice, May 2024!
Love LibreOffice? Help the community that makes it, learn new things, and get a sticker pack for your contributions! (Plus the chance to win some bonus extra merchandise, including mugs, T-shirts and hoodies…)
We’re two weeks into the Month of LibreOffice, May 2024. And so far, 178 people have already taken part and can claim their sticker packs at the end of the month. If you don’t see your name/username on that page yet, and haven’t taken part, here are some ways to join in:
How to take part – be a…
- Handy Helper, answering questions from users on Ask LibreOffice. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim your shiny stickers.
- First Responder, helping to confirm new bug reports: Go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 11 and LibreOffice 24.2.3”.
- Drum Beater, spreading the word: Tell everyone about LibreOffice on Mastodon or Twitter! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim your stickers.
- Globetrotter, translating the user interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.
- Code Cruncher, contributing source code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started.
- Docs Doctor, writing documentation: Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.
Keep an eye on this blog and our Mastodon, Bluesky and X (Twitter) accounts during the rest of May for more updates! 😊
Do something awesome – Join the Month of LibreOffice, May 2024!
Want to learn new skills, for a potential future career change? Or just expand your knowledge and have fun on the way? Get involved in the Month of LibreOffice, May 2024! Over the next four weeks, hundreds of people around the world will collaborate to improve the software – and you can help them. There are many ways to get involved, as you’ll see in a second.
And best of all: everyone who contributes to LibreOffice in May can claim a cool sticker pack, and has the chance to win extra LibreOffice merchandise such as mugs, hoodies, T-shirts, rucksacks and more (we’ll choose 10 participants at random at the end):
How to take part
There are many ways you can help out – and you don’t need to be a developer. For instance, you can be a…
- Handy Helper, answering questions from users on Ask LibreOffice. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim your shiny stickers.
- First Responder, helping to confirm new bug reports: Go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 11 and LibreOffice 24.2.2”.
- Drum Beater, spreading the word: Tell everyone about LibreOffice on Mastodon, Bluesky or X (Twitter)! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim your stickers.
- Globetrotter, translating the user interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.
- Code Cruncher, contributing source code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started.
- Docs Doctor, writing documentation: Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.
We’ll be updating this page every few days with usernames across our various services, as people contribute. So dive in, get involved and help make LibreOffice better for millions of people around the world – and enjoy your sticker pack at the end as thanks from us! And who knows, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to win bonus merch as well…
So let’s get going! We’ll be posting regular updates on this blog and our Mastodon, Bluesky and X (Twitter) accounts over the next four weeks – stay tuned…
LibreOffice project and community recap: April 2024
Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…
- We started April with very good news: the northern German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein has decided to move from Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office to Linux and LibreOffice (and other free and open source software) on the 30,000 PCs used in the local government.
- Then we chatted with Adam Seskunas who’s recently joined LibreOffice’s developer community…
- Our Czech community reported back from the InstallFest 2024 conference in Prague, where they had a booth with LibreOffice merchandise and flyers.
- In the middle of the month, we shared a tip about exporting “hybrid” PDFs in LibreOffice. Very useful if you want to send a PDF with the option to edit the source file too!
- Kira Tubo told us about her experiences joining the LibreOffice community, and being mentored by the team at The Document Foundation.
- And finally, the Documentation team announced that it had published the Calc Guide and Writer Guide as on-line pages in the LibreOffice Bookshelf. Great work!
Keep in touch – follow us on Mastodon, X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky, Reddit and Facebook. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join our community and help to make LibreOffice even better!
Community Member Monday: Kira Tubo
Tell us a bit about yourself!
I live in San Jose, California, USA. I’ve lived around the Bay Area my whole life, after my parents moved away from the Philippines when I was about a year old.
I have had experience as a CRM (customer relations management) administrator, which partially functioned sort of like an internal tech support position, and I’ve also done crowdsourced testing and a11y (accessibility) testing as a side hustle. So I’ve had a lot of experience with troubleshooting and manually testing software.
My hobbies/interests are: reading, walking, video games/board games, and my dog.
What are you working on in the LibreOffice project right now?
Right now, I am attempting to write C++ unit tests in LibreOffice. As someone with rudimentary coding skills, it is quite challenging but interesting to learn.
Why did you choose to join the project, and how was the experience?
For the longest time, I’ve been wanting to contribute my technical skills to an open source project and learn about test automation. I saw some forums that suggested LibreOffice, and I thought it may be a good fit because I have also used the product (albeit lightly) in the past. What I like about the LibreOffice project is that there is a dedicated wiki for those interested in QA (not just development). Because of this, it is fairly easy to get started with contributing.
Since I’ve joined the project, I’ve helped the QA team with bug triaging, regression testing, bibisecting, etc. I’ve also submitted patches to Gerrit for some easy code fixes and updated the LibreOffice help documentation. I’ve learned so much and picked up a lot of new skills along the way. But there is definitely a lot more to learn, which is exciting!
I’d also like to say that the people working on the LibreOffice project are fantastic. They acknowledge the work that you do and are more than happy to help you when needed (shoutout to Ilmari Lauhakangas for taking the time to explain how things work to me). So for anyone feeling overwhelmed or hesitant about joining, don’t be! We are all friendly here 🙂
Anything else you plan to do in the future? What does LibreOffice really need?
One of these days, I’d like to look into writing UI unit tests with Python, and maybe also unit tests for a11y (accessibility). As for improvements, I think perhaps it would be great if the wiki would be a little more beginner-friendly for those who want to get into writing unit tests, especially if they don’t have much development experience yet.
Many thanks to Kira for all her contributions! Every LibreOffice user is welcome to get involved, find out what they can do in our community, and learn new skills along the way 👍
Quick tip: creating “hybrid” PDF files in LibreOffice
Here’s a LibreOffice feature you may not know about: when exporting a PDF, the “Hybrid PDF” option embeds the original file. Then anyone with a PDF reader can view the file – and LibreOffice users can edit it too.