LibreOffice project and community recap: March 2022

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 off March with a custom shape tutorial from Regina Henschel. If you’ve ever tried to draw special and complex shapes beyond the basic offerings of LibreOffice, check it out!

  • During March, TDF released two new updates for LibreOffice: 7.3.1 and 7.3.2. These fix bugs and improve compatibility – so all users of the 7.3 branch are recommended to update. (We also released LibreOffice 7.2.6 on March 10.)

  • Meanwhile, the Czech community worked on a translation of the LibreOffice Base Guide 6.4. Thanks to Marcela Tomešová, Martin Kasper, Zdeněk Crhonek, Jan Martinovský, Roman Toman and Miloš Šrámek for their great work! 👍

  • How can we make free and open source software development sustainable in the long term? Mike Saunders from The Document Foundation appeared on the Sustain OSS podcast to talk about this issue, along with the challenges and opportunities in building communities.

  • In the middle of the month, the Board of Directors at The Document Foundation started its new term. Welcome to new new members, and thank you to those who are moving on, for all their work and support.

  • Companies in the LibreOffice ecosystem contribute many features and fixes to the software, and provide long-term support (LTS) versions and other benefits. We caught up with Michael Meeks of Collabora Productivity to find out what his team has been working on in recent versions of the suite.

  • And finally, our documentation team announced the Writer Guide 7.3. This covers all aspects of the word processing component in LibreOffice, and is well worth keeping on your (digital) bookshelf…

Keep in touch – follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Mastodon. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join us and help to make LibreOffice even better!

Writer Guide 7.3

Writer Guide 7.3 comes with the latest updates for LibreOffice Community 7.3

The Documentation team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the Writer Guide 7.3.

This user guide has been updated from Writer Guide 7.2. It covers changes that are visible in the LibreOffice Writer user interface and additional information from earlier releases, including:

  • Enhancements to Track Changes (Chapter 3). More details are in the Release Notes.
  • Added details about the Print dialog in macOS (Chapter 7).
  • Updated details about Templates dialog (Chapter 10).
  • Updated list terminology in Chapter 11 and anywhere else lists are mentioned.
  • Minor rewording and replacement figures in several chapters.

LibreOffice 7.3 Community includes many changes not visible in the user interface. These changes include further improvements in interoperability with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats, including new features targeted at users migrating from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, or exchanging documents between the two office suites. These improvements include:

  • New handling of change tracking in tables and when text is moved.
  • Performance improvements when opening large DOCX and XLSX/XLSM files, improved rendering speed of some complex documents, and new rendering speed improvements when using the Skia back-end introduced with LibreOffice 7.1.
  • Improvements to import/export filters.
  • ScriptForge libraries, which make it easier to develop macros, have been extended with various features.

LibreOffice Community 7.3 release notes are here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.3.

This update was possible with the volunteer work of Jean H. Weber and Kees Kriek from the LibreOffice Documentation Team.  A big thank you to Jean and Kees for their wonderful work.

Jean Weber
Kees Kriek

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donwload the LibreOffice Writer Guide 7.3 from the Documentation website and the LibreOffice Bookshelf.

The LibreOffice Documentation Team is devoted to produce the best documentation for LibreOffice and is open to everyone interested in contributing to our collective effort.

The Document Foundation supports the “Deutschlandstipendium”

In 2019, the German LibreOffice community sadly lost one of its most active members, Klaus-Jürgen Weghorn. In his memory, The Document Foundation (the non-profit foundation behind LibreOffice) has decided to support a student through the Deutschlandstipendium initiative:

With the Deutschlandstipendium, the German government is expanding student funding through a program that is also kick-starting a new scholarship culture in Germany. The federal government and private sponsors – companies, associations, foundations and individuals – work together to support high-achieving students. In this way, civil society is taking responsibility for talented young people and making a contribution to Germany’s future.

We are in contact with the student and will report more here on the blog.

Join the Indian LibreOffice community!

Across the globe, LibreOffice communities help to improve the software, translate the user interface, update documentation and spread the word. You can see a list of international projects on this page, and today we’re announcing communication channels for the Indian LibreOffice community!

Check them out – they’re bridged together, so you only need to join one to take part:

So, join in and let’s help to spread the word about LibreOffice – and grow the community – in India!

Of course, it’s a large and diverse country, so here are a few images that reflect its diversity…

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus – Amnydv1710, CC-BY-SA

 

Sikh pilgrim at the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar – Paulrudd, CC-BY-SA

 

Red Fort – Closer view of the top part of the gate above the Meena Bazaar – Dennis Jarvis, CC-BY-SA

 

Constitution of India

Czech translation of LibreOffice Base Guide 6.4

Zdeněk Crhonek (aka “raal”) from the Czech LibreOffice community writes:

The Czech LibreOffice docs team has finished its translation of the Base Guide 6.4. As usual it was a team effort, namely: translations by Petr Kuběj and Zdeněk Crhonek; revisions by Marcela Tomešová, Martin Kasper, Zdeněk Crhonek and Jan Martinovský; localised pictures by Roman Toman; and technical support from Miloš Šrámek. Thanks to all the team for their work and especially thanks to Petr, who translated almost whole book!

The Czech translation of the Base Guide 6.4 is available for download on this page.

The whole set of official guides are now translated to Czech languages, see the old announcements: Writer Guide, Draw Guide, Impress Guide, Calc Guide, and Getting Started Guide.

The team continues with translations of the Getting Started Guide 7.3. We always looking for new translators and correctors – Join us!

Indeed, many thanks to everyone in the Czech community for their work! Learn more about LibreOffice’s documentation project here.