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LibreOffice Viewer (Beta) now available for Android

Berlin, January 21, 2015 – The Document Foundation (TDF) is happy to see the LibreOffice Viewer (Beta) for Android released in the Google Play Store, allowing mobile users to access Open Document Format (ODF) files from devices such as tablets and smartphones.

The application, created by Collabora, is available from the following link: .

The first release of LibreOffice Viewer handles text documents and basic presentations. Support for spreadsheets have been included in an early form, while support for more complex presentations is planned for a future release. Users are invited to download and test the application, although care is advised for production environments.

“Support for Android is the result of cooperation between organizations as well as individual contributors,” said Michael Meeks, VP of Productivity at Collabora, “LibreOffice’s open ecosystem has again proved its ability to bring diverse groups together to produce great software without restrictions”.

The mobile app fulfils the wishes of many users who access ODF files on the go, and is also able to read proprietary document formats from other suites including Microsoft Office.

“This release is the first of a new series of mobile applications,” said Björn Michaelsen, a Director of The Document Foundation. “Individuals, companies and organizations are encouraged to participate in the open development process by joining the LibreOffice community.”

The LibreOffice Viewer (Beta) has been created by Collabora with the support of SMOOSE. It is built on foundational work by the LibreOffice community, SUSE, and the Mozilla Corporation, with additional development by Jacobo Aragunde of Igalia, and Andrzej Hunt and Ian Billet as part of Google Summer of Code.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

The City of Munich joins The Document Foundation Advisory Board

Berlin, January 12, 2015 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces that the city of Munich has joined TDF Advisory Board, where it will be represented by Florian Haftmann. Back in 2003, the city of Munich – the third largest in Germany – has launched Project LiMux to migrate their software systems from closed-source, proprietary products to free and open-source software. The project was successfully completed in late 2013, which involved migrating 16,000 personal computers and laptops of public employees to free and open-source software. The City of Munich has hosted a LibreOffice HackFest since 2011, to improve features targeted to enterprise environments.

“The city of Munich is a healthy reference for every migration to free software, and as such will add a significant value to our Advisory Board, where it will seat side by side with MIMO, representing the migration to LibreOffice of French Ministries, and with other companies providing value added services on top of LibreOffice,” says Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of The Document Foundation. “Florian Haftmann will be introduced to other members of TDF Advisory Board during next planned meeting, on January 15, 2015.”

TDF Advisory Board has 17 members: AMD, CIB Software, City of Munich, CloudOn, Collabora, FrODeV (Freies Office Deutschland), FSF (Free Software Foundation), Google, Intel, ITOMIG, KACST (King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology of Saudi Arabia), Lanedo, MIMO (Consortium of French Ministries), RedHat, SPI (Software in the Public Interest), Studio Storti and SUSE.

About the City of Munich and Project LiMux

Munich, Bavaria’s capital, between 2005 and 2013 has successfully managed to migrate around 16,000 PCs in 11 business units and 4 municipal undertakings to an open source based, standard and stable operating system. Munich is the largest public-sector open source stake holder in Germany, and Project LiMux has always had a high visibility.

Project LiMux has been able to reduce in a significant way the dependence from legacy proprietary software products, and attain – in the long term – the desired flexibility of software and architecture, based on three fundamental decisions:

– Introduce a free and open source operating system, with office communications based on open standards for all workstations;

– To acquire or develop platform independent administrative procedures;

– To use a standardised IT platform with consolidated applications and databases.

In such a scenario, a suitable desktop office suite is a strategic core product. In the beginning, LiMux has started to deploy OpenOffice.org, but by now the reference office suite is LibreOffice.

Create a Template for LibreOffice, and get a free T-shirt

The Document Foundation launches a competition to increase the number of document templates bundled with the upcoming major release of Libreoffice, open to designers, artists, and creatively talented users.

Deadline for submission, to be included in LibreOffice 4.4, is January 4, 2015. Templates submitted after this deadline will be considered for later LibreOffice major and minor releases, like LibreOffice 4.5 or LibreOffice 4.4.1.

Templates will be selected by the members of the LibreOffice Design Team, and may be edited before the inclusion. Authors of the templates bundled with LibreOffice 4.4 will get a free T-shirt either at LibreOffice booth at FOSDEM on Saturday January 31, or Sunday February 1, 2015, or by post after FOSDEM, and will be credited with a mention on http://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/credits/. They will also have a chance to meet LibreOffice developers and the design team during and after the show.

To be considered for inclusion, templates must meet the following conditions:

  • They are an original work, and are not converted from existing templates.
  • They are licensed under Creative Commons CC0.
  • They are based only on fonts bundled with LibreOffice (Caladea, Carlito, DejaVu, Gentium, Liberation, Libertine G, Open Sans, PT Serif, Source Code, Source Sans).
  • They are based on LibreOffice styles, and not on direct element formatting. Styles must be created according to the expected use of the template.
  • They contain only a minimum of text (ideally, no text at all), as they will not be translated for LibreOffice 4.4. Because of that, language must be en_us.

To participate, either upload the template on TDF wiki or send it by email to templatecontest@libreoffice.org, and we will add it to the list. Templates will be collected here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/Templates_for_LibreOffice_4.4.

Please specify the category and/or the intended use of the template, and the license of the template. You can send any number of templates, provided that all of them meet the above conditions.

For more information about creating templates, please check here: https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Creating_a_Document_Template and
here: http://lodahl.blogspot.ae/2014/12/making-good-and-solid-templates.html.

As an example, categories of templates could be: books of various types, address/phone books, business cards, calendars, curriculum vitae/resumes, essays, expense reports, letters, lists, records and reports of various types, schedules, etc.

Be creative ! We look forward to bundle your template designs !

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.3.5

Coverity Scan Project LibreOffice OverviewBerlin, December 18, 2014 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.3.5, the fifth minor release of LibreOffice 4.3 “fresh” family, which is a stable release of the more advanced version of the software, targeted to individual and enterprise users. LibreOffice 4.3.5 contains over 70 bug fixes.

The Document Foundation suggests to deploy LibreOffice 4.3.5 in enterprises and large organizations when backed by professional support by certified individuals (a list is available at http://www.documentfoundation.org/certification/) capable of providing value added support.

People interested in technical details can find change logs for LibreOffice 4.3.5 here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.5/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.5/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

The image on the left provides the updates figures about LibreOffice source code as provided by the Coverity Scan Service on December 14, 2014. To learn about LibreOffice and Coverity Scan, you can read this blog post.

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.3.5 “Fresh” and LibreOffice 4.2.8 “Still” are immediately available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

TDF announces the second and final LibreOffice 4.4 bug hunting session from December 19 to December 21

The Document Foundation (TDF) announces the second LibreOffice 4.4 bug hunting session, which will happen from December 19 to December 21, 2014, immediately after the availability of the first release candidate of the new major release (with the final release planned for the end of January 2015).

Details of the second LibreOffice 4.4 bug hunting session are available on TDF wiki at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/BugHunting_Session_4.4.0_RC1. A list of LibreOffice 4.4 features that have to be checked for bugs and regressions is also on TDF wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.4.

To participate, it will be necessary to download LibreOffice 4.4 RC1 for Windows, MacOS or Linux from http://www.libreoffice.org/pre-releases. Filing bugs will be extremely easy, thanks to the help of experienced volunteers who will be around on the QA mailing list (libreoffice-qa@lists.freedesktop.org) and IRC channel (irc://irc.freenode.net/#libreoffice-qa).

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.2.8

Berlin, December 12, 2014 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.2.8 “Still”, the eight – and definitely the last – minor release of the most solid version of the software, ready for enterprise deployments and conservative users.

LibreOffice 4.2.8 solves a Calc sort problem and includes several fixes for the RTF import filter. Change logs with a complete list of all the fixes are available on the wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.2.8/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.2.8/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

LibreOffice 4.2.8 is available from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money is used to grow the project both at global and local level.

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