The next batch is here! We’re editing and uploading more videos from our recent conference – these ones covering C++, the LibreOffice WebAssembly port from Allotropia, and Collabora Online. Use the icon in the top-right to choose videos from the playlist:
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This year, LibreOffice was once again a mentoring organization in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a global program focused on bringing more developers into free and open source software development. Seven projects were finished successfully, plus one project mentored under Linux Foundation. Contributors and mentors enjoyed the time, and here we present some of the achievements, which should make their way into LibreOffice 25.2 in early February 2025!
You can experiment with the new features by using daily builds and report any problems in our bug tracker.
Mentors: Rafael Lima, Heiko Tietze (TDF)
Theming LibreOffice has a long history. Support for Mozilla Personas was added in version 4.0 released in 2013. This was later changed to a selection of preinstalled themes. The current work started by Sahil aims to also supersede Application Colors.
The groundwork has been done and the design team is currently discussing how to present the feature in the user interface. Sahil continues to engage in the work and discussion and we are grateful for the commitment.
Learn more about the theme project in the final report.
Mentors: Sarper Akdemir (allotropia), Heiko Tietze (TDF)
The Sidebar has proven to be very powerful when dealing with complex documents. The complexity of comments can certainly increase quickly, so the ability of managing them via the Sidebar was seen as a welcome addition.
Mohit is currently polishing the feature while working closely with the design team.
Learn more about the comment feature in the final report.
Mentors: Andreas Heinisch, Heiko Tietze (TDF)
Both the Sidebar deck and the wizard now display the functions in collapsible groups when viewed with the “All” filtering option. Both also now have an optional similarity search.
Ahmed is currently working on adding a category to store favourite functions.
Learn more about the Functions deck improvements in the final report.
Mentors: Tomaž Vajngerl (Collabora)
The new chart type will make it possible to visualise ranges of values. Adding a new type of chart is a can of worms, because file format support has to be added both for ODF and OOXML. Devansh is working to finish the implementation in this regard.
Learn more about the chart work in the final report.
Mentors: Hossein Nourikhah (TDF), Thorsten Behrens (allotropia)
This is big news for .NET developers hoping to make use of LibreOffice’s UNO API. The earlier support was undocumented and targeted versions released over twenty years ago. Now with .NET 8 support added, the bindings for .NET programming languages, including C#, F# and Visual Basic are cross platform, available for Windows, Linux and macOS.
Learn more about the .NET work in the final report.
Mentors: Thorsten Behrens (allotropia), Stephan Bergmann (allotropia)
Lua is a small language originally developed in Brazil. Many might know it as a scripting language used in games. We also use Lua in our wiki through the Scribunto extension. Thanks to the work of Venetia, it can now be used to drive LibreOffice.
Learn more about the Lua work in the final report.
Mentors: Xisco Faulí (TDF), Hossein Nourikhah (TDF)
The quality of LibreOffice’s code base is guarded by a vast collection of automated tests, many of which are based on bugs that were discovered and fixed. Adam added many such tests and also converted some ancient Java-based tests to C++. He created a guide for writing tests for fixed bugs.
Learn more about the test authoring work in the final report.
Mentors: Michael Weghorn (TDF), Till Kamppeter (OpenPrinting), Gaurav Guleria, Sahil Arora, Ira McDonald
This project was done under Linux Foundation’s OpenPrinting and benefits the Linux version of LibreOffice. The Common Print Dialog Backends technology had received updates and it was necessary to rework LibreOffice’s code to make use of the improvements. Now the printer lists are periodically refreshed to avoid stale printers, the Print Directly button prints to the default printer and the print dialog is more responsive.
Learn more about the print dialog work in the final report.
Many thanks to all contributors who spent their summer time improving LibreOffice. You are awesome! And special thanks also to the mentors who always put so much love and energy into these tasks. That’s what makes LibreOffice rock.
Now we are looking forward to next year’s GSoC. If you are interested, why not prepare early? Learn more at out wiki page where some ideas are listed.
Participating in GSoC is a great way to build your skills, and show future employers what you’re capable of!
We’re editing and uploading more videos from our recent conference – these ones covering the Google Summer of Code, new Calc functions and optimisations, improvements to language support and more (use the icon in the top-right to choose videos from the playlist):
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Hello Jonathan, you have been hired by The Document Foundation in the role of developer focusing on the issues of languages written from right to left, or RTL (Right to Left).
Not only RTL topics – also CTL (Complex Text Layout), and CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean). I wanted to point this out, first for the interest of those communities, and second because I feel strongly about the scope The Document Foundation has chosen for this role.
In order to have great language support, I think you need to have two different kinds of people working together: those who can speak to the incredible depth of specific languages and the unique needs of the people who use them; and generalists who can, in the limit, think about all languages, and thus avoid oversights that will prove costly in the long term. I see this role as much closer to the latter than to the former.
Let’s start with a short biography: your origins, your studies, your professional experiences.
My origin is the Canadian wilderness. My parents introduced me to PC games when I was young, and I was instantly and insatiably curious about how they worked. I learned C++, and that eventually led to an undergraduate degree in Computing Science from the University of Alberta.
Most of my professional experience has been working on commercial C++ software quality tools, both as an individual contributor and by providing technical leadership.
For the past few years, I’ve been doing a deep dive on modern game engine technologies as a passion project. Among many other topics, this included real-time text layout and hardware-accelerated text rasterization.
When and how did you approach open source software?
As a user, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t use open source software in one way or another. I’ve never felt comfortable trusting closed-source software for anything important, and that discomfort has only grown over time as business practices change.
As a developer, I’m a bit of a hypocrite – other than a few small projects, I haven’t contributed much. However, speaking both normatively and from experience, I firmly believe that the only way to deliver quality software is with the transparency and accountability of open source.
Why did you decide to respond to The Document Foundation’s job search?
I think it’s important. I want to help people use open source software to work and create in their own language.
There are other reasons, too: I’m a long-time user, interested in linguistics, and my background seemed like a good fit for the role. But the most important thing to me is that I can believe in the mission.
What is your experience as a developer, and why do you think you can contribute significantly to LibreOffice?
As an individual contributor, I’ve been using C++ for a long time and I’m comfortable with large code bases. I’d never looked at the LibreOffice source code before, but it’s similar to projects I’ve worked on in the past.
Finally, what is your feedback after the first few months in the LibreOffice project?
The main feedback I want to offer is praise for the new contributor outreach effort. Most open source projects seem to treat this as an afterthought, but a lot of work has been put into attracting, guiding, and retaining new LibreOffice contributors. It’s wonderful to see.
It’s also been great to see the passion from the community about improving language support.
FOSDEM 2025 will be only in person, taking place on Saturday, February 1, and Sunday, February 2. LibreOffice Technology DevRoom is scheduled for the morning of Saturday, February 1, from 10AM to 2PM.
IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER
Submission open: 30th October 2024
Submission deadline: 1st December 2024 at 11:59PM CET
Acceptance notifications: 6th December 2024
Final confirmation deadline: 12th December 2024
Final schedule announcement: 15th December 2024
Devroom: 1st February 2025 from 10AM to 2PM
Please note that the submission deadline is managed by the FOSDEM team and not by the devroom managers, which means that after that deadline nothing will be accepted.
We might update this call for papers with further details, as soon as we receive them from FOSDEM organizers. Please check TDF blog and social media channels on a regular basis.
CALL FOR PAPERS
We are inviting proposals for talks about “LibreOffice Technology, a development platform for desktop, mobile and cloud office suites“.
Main topics are LibreOffice development, localization, QA, UX, documentation, extensions, migrations and general advocacy, plus the native document format ODF. Please keep in mind that product pitches are not allowed at FOSDEM.
In order to fit as many presenters as possible in the schedule, the length of talks will be limited to a maximum of 20 minutes, including questions, according to the number of submissions.
TALK SUBMISSIONS
FOSDEM Pretalx system will be open for applications starting from October the 30th, 2024.
To submit a talk, please visit the FOSDEM 2025 Pretalx website: https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2025/cfp. Please select “LibreOffice” as the *track* and ensure you include all the requested information when submitting a proposal: the title of the talk, a short abstract (one / two paragraphs), some information about yourself (name, bio and photo, but please do remember that your profile might be already stored in Pretalx).
If you already have a Pretalx account from last year, even if your talk was not accepted, please reuse it. Create an account if, and only if, you don’t have one from a previous year. The system is the same used for LibreOffice Conference, so you should not have issues with Pretalx, but in case you have please contact italo at libreoffice.org for help.
All presentations will be recorded and streamed. Sending your proposal implies giving permission to be recorded.
For accepted talks, speakers will receive an email to confirm that the proposal has been accepted. They may expect additional emails with more instructions, for instance to confirm their travel schedule.
CONTACTS
Italo Vignoli: italo at documentfoundation.org
Michael Meeks: michael.meeks at collabora.com
I live in Delhi, India, where I’m working my way towards a bachelor’s degree in IT with a focus on network security at Netaji Subhas University of Technology.
My journey into programming began with QBASIC in school, sparking a love for coding. Since then, I’ve explored everything from game development to operating system internals, embedded systems to mobile apps – anything that catches my interest. My hobbies include learning random science-y things, binge-watching sitcoms, and working late nights only to fall asleep in the middle of the next day 😛
Before the Google Summer of Code (GSoC), my open-source experience was mostly limited to personal projects. Now, I’m much more comfortable filing bug reports, submitting patches, and engaging in code reviews. I also feel more confident in discussing problems and solutions with people I consider far more knowledgeable than me.
I recently completed upgrading the .NET Bindings for UNO as part of GSoC 2024.
Currently, I’m on a short hiatus for exams and personal projects, but I’ve been chipping away at the next item on my future work checklist: adding support for in-process bridging, thus enabling LibreOffice extensions to be created with the new .NET Bindings.
Since switching to Linux a while back, I’ve almost become dependent on the LibreOffice suite to get me through university, having used it for everything from assignments to presentations. The chance to give back to this amazing project, to gain the experience of participating in GSoC, and to tackle a complex .NET and C++ project all at once was too good to pass up.
My experience with the LibreOffice community has been nothing but positive, especially with my mentors, Mr. Hossein Nourikhah and Mr. Thorsten Behrens. Their guidance, paired with the freedom they gave me to make my own decisions on the bindings, was integral to the project’s success.
I’m planning on continuing the .NET Bindings project. While the core of the bindings was completed in time for GSoC, there’s still more features, documentation, and examples to work on.
Additionally, I believe LibreOffice needs more documentation, especially for legacy code. Much of my GSoC time was spent understanding the existing bindings before I could start work on the new ones. Using what all I’ve figured out, I want to try and help the Docs team document the bindings better. I might also consider working on introducing more languages bindings in the future.
Big thanks to Ritobroto for all his contributions! Everyone is welcome to join our community, build new skills, and help to make LibreOffice even better for the whole world 😊
