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Community Member Monday: Baltasar García Perez-Schofield

Today we have a quick chat with Baltasar García Perez-Schofield, who recently became a Member of The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice…

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I’m from Spain, in that north-west corner called Galicia. Professionally I’m a teacher of computer science, and dedicate my spare time to my family, swimming, hiking, and retro computing.

I defended my PhD Thesis in 2002, wrote it entirely in what was then OpenOffice, and later forked to LibreOffice, and more importantly spawned The Document Foundation. I then decided that I should somehow return the favor by collaborating (as far as I could), with the product.

What are you working on in the LibreOffice project right now?

I’ve lately dedicated my time to the Basic interpreter, solving simple bugs such as type-persistence through compilation and execution, or the behaviour of certain functions that do not adhere to the specification.

Why did you decide to become a member of TDF?

I think that the open standards for document formats are vital for any computer user, and therefore defend the TDF’s existence. In that sense, becoming a member was an honor for me, and I also perceived it as a recognition for the work I did.

Anything else you plan to do in the future? What does LibreOffice really need?

I plan to continue collaborating with LibreOffice, at least in my free time gaps. Regarding the needs of LibreOffice, I think it probably needs marketing and compatibility (right now it is a must) with MS Office. The objective would be to let computer users realize that they have the possibility to use a free product as capable (or even more so!) as the private one.

Thanks to Baltasar for all his contributions! All LibreOffice users can join him in helping to improve the software, and find out what they can do for LibreOffice. 👍

“LibreOffice Expert” magazines available for schools and communities

Recently, Linux New Media released a special edition magazine, full of tutorials, tips and tricks about LibreOffice. And some articles were contributed by members of the LibreOffice community! Well, we have 50 issues to give away – and we’d like to get them in the hands of students, communities and other projects around the world:

The magazines come with DVDs that include LibreOffice for Linux, Windows and macOS, alongside extra templates, extensions and guidebooks. So ideally, we’d like to get these magazines out to locations and communities where internet connections aren’t always available – so that the users can really benefit from the discs.

So, if you can help us to distribute these magazines to students, local communities and other places, drop us a line! Let us know what you plan to do with them, and how many you need. Send us an email and let’s spread the word!

Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! The LibreOffice Draw Guide 7.2 has arrived!

Peter Schofield and the LibreOffice Documentation Team announcs the immediate availability of the Draw Guide 7.2, the update of the Draw Guide for LibreOffice version 7.2.

Draw Guide 7.2

Anyone who wants to quickly acquire knowledge about LibreOffice Draw and is new to drawing software, or may be familiar with another office suite, will find this user guide very useful. It introduces the main features of LibreOffice Draw. Although Draw is a vector graphics drawing tool, it can also perform some operations on raster graphics (pixels) such as photographs.

Using Draw, a wide variety of graphical images can be created quickly. Some of the drawing functions are: layer management, snap functions and grid-point system, dimensions and measurement display, connectors for making organization charts, 3D functions that enable small 3D drawings to be created (with texture and lighting effects), drawing and page-style integration, and Bézier curves.

A printed version is available at Lulu Inc, thanks to Jean H. Weber. The Draw Guide completes the LibreOffice 7.2 book collection, and opens the LibreOffice 7.3 shelf for more work and activities.

Peter Schofield
Peter Schofield

The Draw Guide 7.2 – as well as many other LibreOffice Guides – can be downloaded from the LibreOffice Documentation website and the LibreOffice Bookshelf website.

A big thank you to Peter and the LibreOffice Draw documentation team!

Join the Documentation Team

Writer Guide 7.2 macOS Edition

Thanks to the effort of Jean H. Weber of the LibreOffice Documentation Team, a special edition of the Writer Guide 7.2 for macOS users is now available for download.

Download Writer Guide 7.2 macOS edition

“The changes include translating keyboard keys from the Windows/Linux default to their Mac equivalents; replacing Windows/Linux screenshots with Mac equivalents (most screenshots were already taken from macOS); rewording some sections as required (removing Windows or Linux specific instructions). The only major change was about the Print dialog, which is quite different on macOS. I also amended the covers to include the words macOS edition“. Said Jean in her announcement to the documentation list mailing list.

Jean Weber

The guide is available for download at the documentation website and the LibreOffice bookshelf.

Join the Documentation Team

 

LibreOffice at FOSDEM 2022 – February 5-6

FOSDEM is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open-source software development – and one of the biggest such events of its kind. Normally it takes place in Brussels, but due to the pandemic, it’ll be online this year.

And the LibreOffice community will be there! We’ll have 25 talks about the technology behind the suite, open standards, and other topics.

See a full list of the talks here, and join us!

LibreOffice project and community recap: December 2021

Happy new year, everyone! Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks of 2021 – click the links to learn more…

  • We started December by announcing the LibreOffice Technology DevRoom Call for Papers for FOSDEM. This year, FOSDEM will take place online once again, and the LibreOffice community will be present with talks and discussions. Join us!

  • In December, TDF announced two updates for LibreOffice, for the 7.2 and 7.1 branches. These fix an important security issue and all users are recommended to upgrade.
  • Meanwhile, the Coalition for Competitive Digital Markets, a group of more than 50 technology companies from 16 different European countries, sent an open letter to members of the European Parliament to raise awareness about interoperability and to impose stricter rules on big companies – the so-called ‘big tech’ companies – that act as gatekeepers and prevent transparency and openness in digital markets.

  • In November, we ran a Month of LibreOffice, crediting contributions all across the project. And in December, we announced the winners – 324 people could claim sticker packs! And we had extra merchandise to give away as well…

  • We talked to Ravi Dwivedi from the Indian LibreOffice community. He’s helping to spread the word about free software in India, and has interesting insights into free software adoption in his country.

  • The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice, recently had an election for its Board of Directors. Well, the preliminary results came in – click the link to see the lists of full and deputy members.
  • ODF is the OpenDocument Format, the native format used by LibreOffice (and supported by many other apps too). Then there’s the ODF Toolkit, a set of Java modules that allow programmatic creation, scanning and manipulation of ODF files. Svante Schubert gave us some updates.

  • Finally, we wished everyone a good start to 2022 – here’s hoping that we’ll be able to meet more in-person this year, and celebrate good times together.

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!

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