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Author: Mike Saunders

Annual Report: LibreOffice Documentation Project in 2021

The LibreOffice Conference is the annual gathering of the community, our end-users, developers, and everyone interested in free office software. This year, it took place online once again.

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2021 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

New and translated guides

Throughout the year, the documentation project closed the gap between LibreOffice major releases, and the updates of the corresponding user guides. By the year end, all of the version 7 guides updated to match the release of LibreOffice 7.2, and ready to continue for the forthcoming release – 7.3 – which arrived in February 2022. The goal of tracking the software release closely was achieved, and the documentation team is now in a steady state of small updates between releases.

The updates and enhancements of the guides was an effort of all the team, coordinated by Jean Weber (Writer and Getting Started Guide), Steve Fanning (Calc and Base guides), Peter Schofield (Impress and Draw guides), Rafael Lima (Math guide). A number of volunteers also worked in each guide by writing and reviewing contents and suggesting improvements. Special thanks to Jean Weber for making the guides available for sale in printed format via Lulu Inc.

In the last quarter of 2021, thanks to The Document Foundation’s budget, some master documents bugs were fixed under contract by Michael Stahl of allotropia, and now the documentation team can safely assemble it guides with master documents, and produce PDFs with hidden sections and correct navigation indexes in PDF readers.

ScriptForge Library and Wiki Pages

The documentation community also had a nice contribution from Jean Pierre Ledure, Alain Romedenne and Rafael Lima, for the development of the ScriptForge macro library, in synchronization with the much-needed Help pages on the subject, a practice rarely followed by junior developers of LibreOffice. As we know, undocumented software is software that’s lacking; features that are unknown to the user can be a cause of costly calls to a help desk in corporate deployments. ScriptForge developments came together with its documentation, demonstrating the ScriptForge team’s professional maturity.

Special thanks to Steve Fanning for his leadership of the Calc Functions wiki pages maintenance. The wiki pages were initially developed by Ronnie Gandhi in 2020 under the Google Season of Docs programme, and are now run by Steve, providing richer content about the functions, with better descriptions, new examples, and other reference information. The in-depth review of the Calc Function wiki pages gave very good feedback for the Help pages, which also lead to help content improvements. The Calc functions wiki pages are available for translation, thanks to the dedication of Ilmari Lauhakangas at TDF.

Very important as well: the documentation community also had a team of Help page bug fixes, closing Help documentation bugs, bridging gaps, fixing typos and improving quality, a must-have update to keep LibreOffice in-shape for its user base. The Help pages, which are part of the LibreOffice code, were also refactored continuously for better maintenance and code readability. The L10N team of volunteers (localization and translators) were quick in flagging typos and English mistakes – while translating the help content and the user interface.

LibreOffice Bookshelf

In 2021, the documentation community also launched the LibreOffice Bookshelf, another download page for LibreOffice guides that is different from the current documentation.libreoffice.org server page. The Bookshelf can be cloned and installed in organizations, libraries, colleges and schools, for immediate availability in controlled environments, as well as online reading of the guides. The OpenDocument Format chapters were transformed into static HTML pages, and are ready to display on computers, tablets and cell phones, bringing LibreOffice user guides closer to its public, anywhere, anytime. The conversion process is extensive and was described at the LibreOffice 2021 Conference. It was also extended to the Portuguese translation of the guides, and can easily extended for other languages. Many thanks to Tulio Macedo for his work on it.

Like what we do? Support the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation – get involved and help our volunteers, or consider making a donation. Thank you!

Latin-American LibreOffice Conference 2022 will take place in Brasília

The 2022 edition of the Latin-American LibreOffice Conference will take place in Brasilia, Brazil between August 25 and 26. The event will be held at the Catholic University of Brasília, in the Taquaritinga – DF.

The conference aims to bring together the community of LibreOffice contributors and users and promote the dissemination of knowledge and experiences related to LibreOffice. The planned tracks for talks and lectures will cover the following topics:

  • Cases of LibreOffice adoption in companies, governments, educational institutions, NGOs, etc.
  • LibreOffice usage tutorials
  • Getting started with contributing to LibreOffice (development, documentation, translations, etc)
  • Improving and promoting LibreOffice (user communities, marketing, design, quality)
  • Inclusion and diversity in free software and LibreOffice

The event will be organized by the Brazilian LibreOffice community, with the joint participation of other communities in Latin America and the world. Representatives from The Document Foundation – LibreOffice maintainer – will also participate in the event.

The submissions of talks and lecture proposals will be open from May 1 to June 30, 2022. The procedures for submitting proposals will be announced shortly.

Supporters

About the Catholic University of Brasília

The Catholic Educational Center of Brasília is an institution maintained by the Brazilian Union of Catholic Education – UBEC. It is a civil, confessional, private, non-profit, educational, assistance, cultural and philanthropic association.

About The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation is the legal entity that maintains LibreOffice, based in Berlin, Germany. The Document foundation is a non-profit foundation under German law (gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts).

Annual Report: LibreOffice Conference 2021

The LibreOffice Conference is the annual gathering of the community, our end-users, developers, and everyone interested in free office software. This year, it took place online once again.

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2021 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

Normally, the conference takes place at a different venue each year, to reflect the international and diverse LibreOffice community. For instance, in 2019 we were in Almeria, in 2018 in Tirana, and in 2017 in Rome. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, though, we decided to move the conference online in 2020. This wasn’t an easy decision, as face-to-face meetups are important for free and open source software projects, but we focused on making it work.

We faced the same situation in 2021: ideally, we would have had an in-person conference, but uncertainty surrounding travel restrictions and containment measures means that we decided to move the conference online for another year.

The conference took place from 23 – 25 September, with sessions usually running from 10:00 to 16:00 (UTC). We created multiple Jitsi “rooms” for the various talks and presentations, along with extra channels for social interaction and general chit-chat via IRC, Matrix and Telegram. Although the conference was online, some members of the German community met in-person in Hamburg.

Here’s a video of the opening session (also available on PeerTube):

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Conference Tracks

Following the opening session, presentations and talks were given across various “tracks”, or categories: Development, Advocacy, Marketing, Design, OpenDocument Format, Quality Assurance, Documentation and more. There were highly technical talks focused on specific areas of the software and source code, along with more open discussions about community building and recent updates from The Document Foundation.

On the final day, the conference wrapped up with a closing session, headed by TDF’s Chairman, Lothar Becker. He thanked the presenters and all attendees for their support and contributions to the conference.

Sponsoring and merchandise

The event was sponsored by Collabora, allotropia, the Linux Professional Institute, Omnis Private & Hybrid Cloud, and Carbone.io. Conference merchandise was provided by FreeWear, a company that specialises in clothing items and other merchandise for free and open source software projects.

Full Programme

Full details about the event are available on the main conference website. For a quick overview of all the talks, including links to PDF versions of the presentations, see the schedule. Videos from most of the talks are available as a playlist on our YouTube channel, and on PeerTube:

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Conference in 2022

At the time of writing, we are hoping to organise an in-person conference in northern Italy, in late September. We will post updates on this blog as we get closer to the event.

Like what we do? Support the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation – get involved and help our volunteers, or consider making a donation. Thank you!

Annual Report: The Document Foundation in 2021

The Document Foundation (TDF) is the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice. In 2021, we had elections for the foundation’s Board of Directors, along with regular Advisory Board calls, and support for other projects and activities.

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2021 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

Election of new Board of Directors

The Board of Directors (or “BoD”) is the main administration of the foundation’s projects and teams. Directors are directly elected by Community Members. The Board of Directors consists of seven members and three deputies. The Board of Directors may launch any other teams or committees ad hoc if necessary.

The Board of Directors decides on all fundamental matters on its own authority in accordance with the Articles and conducts the ongoing business of the foundation. The Executive Board has the status of a legal representative and represents the foundation in and out of court. More about the Board’s responsibilities and decision-making processes is in the foundation’s statutes.

In October, Marina Latini – on behalf of the Membership Committee – announced the start of the election process. The existing Board started its duty on February 18, 2020, and remained in charge until the end of February 17, 2022 – so the new Board was set to take charge the day after that, ie February 18, 2022.

After the nomination phase, which ran until late November, the elections began, with 10 days for TDF Members to cast their votes. Between the end of the nomination phase, and before the official start of the election, the Membership Committee organised public (and recorded) live sessions, where members of the Board of Trustees could ask questions to the candidates. Everyone, including non-members, was invited to join these sessions. TDF then made available to the general public the recordings and the answers given.

In December, TDF’s Membership Committee announced the preliminary results, with the following confirmed as Full Members: Thorsten Behrens, Paolo Vecchi, Jan ‘Kendy’ Holešovský, Emiliano Vavassori, Caolán McNamara, Cor Nouws and László Németh. Deputies: Gábor Kelemen, Ayhan Yalçınsoy and Gabriel Masei.

TDF would like to say thank you to all past and new members of the Board for their service to the community, and to all candidates for running. Congratulations to the newly elected Board members and their deputies.

Advisory Board members and meetings

The Document Foundation relies on its Advisory Board Members in order to receive advice and support. The Advisory Board’s primary function is to represent The Document Foundation’s supporters and to provide the Board of Directors with advice, guidance and proposals. Current members are Adfinis SyGroup, allotropia software GmbH (joined in 2021), Red Hat, Hypra (joined in 2021), Collabora, GNOME, Google, Kopano b.v., City of Munich (Landeshaupstadt München), CIB Software, IHC Invest Inc., Software in the Public Interest (SPI), KDE e.V., UK Government Digital Services, and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).

Throughout the year, TDF had regular calls with representatives of the Advisory Board. Team and Board of Directors members at TDF provided updates on the foundation, software and community, and described plans and activities for the future. Advisory Board members were invited to provide valuable feedback on TDF’s work, and various ideas and proposals were discussed during the calls. TDF would like to express its thanks to all of the members for their help and support.

Highlights of activities

Throughout the year, TDF supported – and provided information about – various campaigns and events, via this blog and social media channels. For instance, on 14 February we joined the Free Software Foundation Europe’s campaign “I love Free Software”. This was the perfect opportunity to say thank you to the contributors of the various Free Software we love: developers, translators, designers, testers, or documentation writers, of huge software projects – or smaller ones.

Similarly, we backed International Women’s Day on March 8, raising awareness against bias and prejudices. Free Software projects tend to be heavily male-dominated, but our community is trying to be more open and inclusive.

In October, we reported that the Free Software Foundation Europe was starting a new competition, “Youth Hacking 4 Freedom”. This was open for 14 – 18 year-olds who live in Europe, and who like to work on and “hack” (develop) free software projects. The competition helped like-minded people from around Europe to connect, win cash awards, and travel to Brussels to meet others in the free software movement.

In November, TDF spread the word about a German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice. The north-German state of Schleswig-Holstein had made public its plans to switch to open source software, including LibreOffice, in its administration and schools.

In doing so, the state plans to reduce its dependence on proprietary software, and eventually end it altogether. By the end of 2026, Microsoft Office is to be replaced by LibreOffice on all 25,000 computers used by civil servants and employees (including teachers), and the Windows operating system is to be replaced by GNU/Linux.

Lothar Becker and Thorsten Behrens from TDF were invited to a meeting with those responsible for the planned migration. The focus was on cloud solutions, integration with LibreOffice and other systems, and video conferencing tools. We at TDF are pleased that LibreOffice is being used in public institutions, and hope that more federal states, governments and other organisations around the world will join the migration.

Finally, throughout the year we celebrated our community of translators, which provide LibreOffice in over 110 different languages (with more hopefully becoming available in the future), more than any other software. This helps us to fulfil one of the most important objectives of The Document Foundation: “to support the preservation of mother tongues by encouraging all people to translate, document, support, and promote our office productivity tools in their native language”. Today, there are over four billion people in the world who can use LibreOffice in their native languages. We are very thankful to our hard-working community which makes all of this possible.

Like what we do? Support the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation – get involved and help our volunteers, or consider making a donation. Thank you!

Panel Discussion on Mentorship (Fedora Mentor Summit 2022) – including LibreOffice

How do different free and open source software projects do mentorship, and how can we all learn from each other? Daniel Garcia Moreno (EndlessOS Foundation and GNOME), Emily Gonyer (openSUSE), Ilmari Lauhakangas (The Document Foundation), and Marie Nordin (Fedora) discuss this in a panel moderated by Ben Cotton:

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Annual Report 2021: LibreOffice releases and updates

In 2021, LibreOffice celebrated its eleventh birthday. Two new major versions of the suite introduced a variety of new features, while minor releases helped to improve stability as well

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2021 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

The Document Foundation announced two major releases of LibreOffice in 2021: version 7.1 on February 3, and version 7.2 on August 19. In addition 13 minor releases were also made available:

  • LibreOffice 7.1.1 – March 4
  • LibreOffice 7.0.5 – March 12
  • LibreOffice 7.1.2 – April 1
  • LibreOffice 7.1.3 – May 6
  • LibreOffice 7.0.6 – May 13
  • LibreOffice 7.1.4 – June 10
  • LibreOffice 7.1.5 – July 22
  • LibreOffice 7.1.6 – September 9
  • LibreOffice 7.2.1 – September 16
  • LibreOffice 7.1.7 – November 4
  • LibreOffice 7.2.3 – November 25
  • LibreOffice 7.2.4 and 7.1.8 – December 6

In July, our Quality Assurance community organised a Bug Hunting Session in preparation for the release of LibreOffice 7.2. This was based on the first Release Candidate (RC), and we encouraged technically-minded users to try out the RC and help to identify and fix bugs before the final release. Communication took part on our QA IRC channel, which is also bridged to a Telegram group. The session ran from 07:00 UTC to 19:00 UTC.

LibreOffice 7.1

On February 3, LibreOffice 7.1 was officially released after six months of work. Developers at Collabora, allotropia, CIB, Red Hat, NISZ, The Document Foundation and other companies and organisations – along with volunteers – worked on many new features. For instance, a new dialog was added which lets users select their desired user interface design on first startup (including the regular menu+toolbar setup, and NotebookBar alternative).

In Writer, a new Style Inspector was created to display the attributes of Paragraph and Character Styles, and manually formatted (Direct Formatting) properties. In Calc, significant speed improvements for Autofilter and find/replace operations were implemented, while the possibility to add visible signatures to existing PDF files in Draw was included too. On top of the new features, there were many other general improvements to performance, compatibility and stability.

With the help of the Indonesian community, TDF produced a video to explain and demonstrate many of the new features in LibreOffice 7.1. This was linked to in the announcement, and embedded into various web news websites that covered the release. The video is also available on PeerTube.

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LibreOffice 7.2

Later in the year, on August 19, TDF released LibreOffice 7.2. Based on the LibreOffice Technology platform for personal productivity on desktop, mobile and cloud, it provided a large number of interoperability improvements with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats. In addition, LibreOffice 7.2 Community offered numerous performance improvements in handling large files, opening certain DOCX and XLSX files, managing font caching, and opening presentations and drawings that contain large images. There were also drawing speed improvements when using the Skia back-end that was introduced with LibreOffice 7.1.

A popup list to search for menu commands was added to the user interface, helping new users to find features that may otherwise be tucked away inside the menu. In addition, a built-in “Xray”-like UNO object inspector was implemented, along with a new list view for the Templates dialog. In Writer, background fills were updated to cover whole pages, beyond margins, while in Calc, HTML tables listed in the External Data dialogue now show captions. Impress was boosted with a set of new templates, to make presentations more attractive and appealing: Candy, Freshes, Grey Elegant, Growing Liberty, Yellow Idea and more.

Many other features were added as well, and there were a large number of compatibility improvements. As with the previous release, the TDF team worked with the Indonesian LibreOffice community to make a video to demonstrate the new features:

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Like what we do? Support the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation – get involved and help our volunteers, or consider making a donation. Thank you!

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