LibreOffice monthly recap: May 2021 – Community activities

Check out our summary of what happened in the LibreOffice community last month…

  • Right on the first day of May, we started a new Month of LibreOffice, showing our thanks to everyone involved in the LibreOffice project and community. Everyone who contributes during the month can get a sticker pack – and a chance to win extra merch. We’ll announce the full winners here in the next few days!

  • Did you know that you can work with 3D objects in LibreOffice? Long-time community member Regina Henschel wrote a tutorial showing how to make a 3D globe, using a map and a sphere. Rather neat…

  • In May, TDF announced two bugfix updates for LibreOffice: 7.0.6 and 7.1.3. This marks the last release of the 7.0 branch – from here on, we will be maintaining the LibreOffice 7.1 series.

  • Meanwhile, the PowerPoint compatibility team reported on its recent work, showing how PPTX presentations are imported more accurately into recent versions of LibreOffice. Of course, when you’re working on a presentation in LibreOffice, its best to use its native format – OpenDocument.

  • LibreOffice is free and open source software, available for anyone to use, modify and share – and that will always be the case. At the same time, we really appreciate the contributions of companies in the wider LibreOffice ecosystem, who sell long-term support (LTS) versions and other benefits, and add many features to the codebase. So spread awareness of them, we’ve set up some LinkedIn pages for the “LibreOffice Enterprise” brands.

  • The Google Summer of Code begins! This is a programme that connects students with free and open source software projects.We announced the list of selected projects – and we’re really looking forward to seeing the results. Good luck to all the students, and thanks to the mentors for helping them!

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 for everyone!

Albanian Community Meeting – May 2021

While many pandemic restrictions around the world are still in place, some smaller events are finally becoming possible. Sidorela Uku from the Albanian LibreOffice community reports from a recent event in Tirana, which hosted the LibreOffice Conference 2018:

There were eight people present at this meeting. We had a short presentation about LibreOffice – what it includes, and its features. Also, we introduced the various ways how someone can become part of the community. We are planing to have more events in the future, as there are a few people interested in localization, but as well for people who want to switch and use LibreOffice. Also, we translated a few strings on the whatcanIdoforlibreoffice.org website, and pushed the changes to Gerrit.

Thanks to the community in Tirana for their work and support! It’s great to see some in-person events becoming possible again. LibreOffice users around the world are welcome to join our project, and help to build up local communities. If there’s no LibreOffice community in your area, drop us a line and we’ll help you to establish one!

Contest for LibreOffice Ecosystem and LibreOffice Technology logo

The Strategic Marketing Plan discussed in 2020 has introduced a couple of concepts – LibreOffice Ecosystem and LibreOffice Technology – which will be the cornerstone of LibreOffice marketing activities for the foreseeable future, and will be deployed on web properties, marketing materials, documents, presentations and merchandise for events. Now, we need high-impact visuals to stress the importance of these concepts for LibreOffice.

Based on the success of the community contest for the 2020 Anniversary Logo, which has provided a consistent visual image for presentations at virtual events in 2020 (and will be used in 2021 as well), The Document Foundation is challenging community members with the task of developing two different logos:

(1) LibreOffice Ecosystem logo, to underline the unique characteristics of the LibreOffice project: global reach, continuous research for improvement and high quality, inclusiveness, loyalty to copyleft licenses, smooth combination of paid and volunteer contributors, and eventually lots of fun especially at events. The LibreOffice Sustainability slide deck provides an extensive description of the concept: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/4qLzRad8wNd8pFk.

(2) LibreOffice Technology logo, to underline the uniqueness of the LibreOffice platform, which provides a single common engine for all platforms, from desktop to mobile to cloud, and therefore a more consistent way of handling files both in ODF and OOXML document formats, which improves interoperability. The LibreOffice Technology slide deck provides an extensive description of the concept: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/Xw4A7mY6W6yJTqo.

LibreOffice Ecosystem logo is the most important one, so community members should focus their best energies on it. LibreOffice Technology logo would be nice to have, but not as important as the Ecosystem one, as this will be a logo that all community members should use.

As a reference, TDF design and style guides (Corporate Image) are published on the wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Branding.

Both logos will be used for presentations, event signage, merchandise and gadgets (like stickers). They should be easy to recognize and read even at small sizes.

Both logos logo must be developed with free and open source software, and released in vector-based (SVG) as well as bitmap-based (PNG, JPG) formats. The logo must be available in a square or nearly square version, plus other formats as appropriate. An example of a possible implementation should also be provided with the proposal.

Intellectual property must be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), while a copyright transfer to TDF is not required. The authors must declare in writing that they are the sole owner of all rights related to the artwork they have developed.

It should be clear that this is not a request for a mascot, and any kind of proposal which could be interpreted as a mascot will not be considered. Also, the logo must have a global reach, and as such any reference to a regional styling approach will not be considered.

Logo proposals must be sent to: italo@libreoffice.org by Augus 31, 2021, at 11:59PM UTC. TDF Team will select the winning proposals, which will be announced – and used – during the LibreOffice Virtual Conference, from September 23 to September 25, 2021.

We look forward to meeting the authors of the winning proposals at FOSDEM 2022 in Brussels or at the LibreOffice Conference 2022 (location still to be decided), to celebrate their work.

Community Member Monday: Hüseyin GÜÇ

Today we’re speaking to Hüseyin GÜÇ from our Turkish community, who’s helping with translations and spreading the word. Last year, he updated us on a LibreOffice migration in a municipality in Turkey.

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I’m a passionate administrator and open source enthusiast, starting my career 26 years ago. I live in Istanbul, and enjoy keeping myself up to date with the latest in the open source world, and trying out the latest tools, features, and services around Linux. In my spare time, I participate in the Turkish translation of open source applications.

You recently decided to become a Member of The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind LibreOffice. Tell us about that…

I want the OpenDocument Format and LibreOffice application to be used in my institutions and city. For this reason, I wanted to support The Documentation Foundation individually.

Also, I am here because I think the LibreOffice community has a differentiation from other open source communities. You can install and use open source applications, but there is a need for the OpenDocument Format to become widespread in order to use the produced output.

Here, I want to be a part of this dissemination and I believe that there will be an opportunity for this. Open source usage in Turkey is not at the desired level yet. In addition, it is very sad that many individuals and institutions are unaware of the OpenDocument Format and LibreOffice. I want to strive to eliminate this problem.

Many thanks to Hüseyin for his contributions! Learn more about the Turkish LibreOffice community here. And if you want to spread the word about LibreOffice in your area, join our marketing community – we can help you!

The LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.1 is Here!

The LibreOffice Documentation community announces the immediate availability of the Calc Guide 7.1, with additions based on the the improvements in LibreOffice Calc 7.1, which was released in February this year.

Download Calc Guide 7.1

The Guide is the volunteer effort of many members of the documentation community. Revisions and enhancements on the contents are the work of Rafael Lima from Brazilian community, Martin Van Zijl and Kees Kriek from the Dutch community, Celia Palacios from the Hispanic language community. A special mention to Yusuf Keten from the Google Summer of Code program on new extensions and templates dialogs, to Steve Fanning for his editorial review and to Jean Hollis Weber for her improvements and organization of the text. The LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.1 update activities was coordinated by Felipe Viggiano from Brazil.

Celia, Jean, Kees, Steve, Rafael, Felipe

The book is available in PDF format and contains 545 pages, covering all basic and advanced features of the spreadsheet module of LibreOffice, and is a must-read book for exploiting the maximum of LibreOffice Calc.

Download the Calc Guide 7.1

Month of LibreOffice, May 2021 – Half-way through!

At the start of May, we launched the Month of LibreOffice, encouraging all users to get involved and help to make the software even better. Everyone who contributes – be it to documentation, translations, bug report testing and other areas – can claim a cool sticker pack, and has a chance to win extra merch too:

So how’s it looking? 285 sticker packs have been awarded so far – so if you see your name/username on that list, congrats! We still have two weeks to go, though, so if you’re not yet on the list, read on to find out how you can take part…

Do something awesome

So, let’s get started! There are many ways you can help out – and as mentioned, 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 10 and LibreOffice 7.1.2”.
  • Drum Beater, spreading the word: tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter or Mastodon! 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.
  • Docs Doctor, writing documentation: Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.

So, join us! And keep following updates on this blog and our Mastodon and Twitter accounts…