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Annual Report 2021: LibreOffice releases and updates

In 2021, LibreOffice celebrated its eleventh birthday. Two new major versions of the suite introduced a variety of new features, while minor releases helped to improve stability as well

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2021 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

The Document Foundation announced two major releases of LibreOffice in 2021: version 7.1 on February 3, and version 7.2 on August 19. In addition 13 minor releases were also made available:

  • LibreOffice 7.1.1 – March 4
  • LibreOffice 7.0.5 – March 12
  • LibreOffice 7.1.2 – April 1
  • LibreOffice 7.1.3 – May 6
  • LibreOffice 7.0.6 – May 13
  • LibreOffice 7.1.4 – June 10
  • LibreOffice 7.1.5 – July 22
  • LibreOffice 7.1.6 – September 9
  • LibreOffice 7.2.1 – September 16
  • LibreOffice 7.1.7 – November 4
  • LibreOffice 7.2.3 – November 25
  • LibreOffice 7.2.4 and 7.1.8 – December 6

In July, our Quality Assurance community organised a Bug Hunting Session in preparation for the release of LibreOffice 7.2. This was based on the first Release Candidate (RC), and we encouraged technically-minded users to try out the RC and help to identify and fix bugs before the final release. Communication took part on our QA IRC channel, which is also bridged to a Telegram group. The session ran from 07:00 UTC to 19:00 UTC.

LibreOffice 7.1

On February 3, LibreOffice 7.1 was officially released after six months of work. Developers at Collabora, allotropia, CIB, Red Hat, NISZ, The Document Foundation and other companies and organisations – along with volunteers – worked on many new features. For instance, a new dialog was added which lets users select their desired user interface design on first startup (including the regular menu+toolbar setup, and NotebookBar alternative).

In Writer, a new Style Inspector was created to display the attributes of Paragraph and Character Styles, and manually formatted (Direct Formatting) properties. In Calc, significant speed improvements for Autofilter and find/replace operations were implemented, while the possibility to add visible signatures to existing PDF files in Draw was included too. On top of the new features, there were many other general improvements to performance, compatibility and stability.

With the help of the Indonesian community, TDF produced a video to explain and demonstrate many of the new features in LibreOffice 7.1. This was linked to in the announcement, and embedded into various web news websites that covered the release. The video is also available on PeerTube.

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LibreOffice 7.2

Later in the year, on August 19, TDF released LibreOffice 7.2. Based on the LibreOffice Technology platform for personal productivity on desktop, mobile and cloud, it provided a large number of interoperability improvements with Microsoft’s proprietary file formats. In addition, LibreOffice 7.2 Community offered numerous performance improvements in handling large files, opening certain DOCX and XLSX files, managing font caching, and opening presentations and drawings that contain large images. There were also drawing speed improvements when using the Skia back-end that was introduced with LibreOffice 7.1.

A popup list to search for menu commands was added to the user interface, helping new users to find features that may otherwise be tucked away inside the menu. In addition, a built-in “Xray”-like UNO object inspector was implemented, along with a new list view for the Templates dialog. In Writer, background fills were updated to cover whole pages, beyond margins, while in Calc, HTML tables listed in the External Data dialogue now show captions. Impress was boosted with a set of new templates, to make presentations more attractive and appealing: Candy, Freshes, Grey Elegant, Growing Liberty, Yellow Idea and more.

Many other features were added as well, and there were a large number of compatibility improvements. As with the previous release, the TDF team worked with the Indonesian LibreOffice community to make a video to demonstrate the new features:

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Like what we do? Support the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation – get involved and help our volunteers, or consider making a donation. Thank you!

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.

The new Board of Directors has started its two year term

The new Board of Directors of The Document Foundation has just started the two year term on February 18, 2022. Full members are: Thorsten Behrens, Paolo Vecchi, Jan ‘Kendy’ Holešovský, Emiliano Vavassori, Caolán McNamara, Cor Nouws and László Németh. Deputies are: Gábor Kelemen, Ayhan Yalçınsoy and Gabriel Masei.

Four people have been elected for the first time to the Board of Directors: László Németh and Gábor Kelemen from Hungary; Ayhan Yalçınsoy from Turkey; and Gabriel Masei from Romania.

During the first meeting of the Board of Directors, its members have elected Thorsten Behrens as Chairman and Caolán McNamara as Deputy Chairman. In the meantime, also the responsibilities and areas of oversight have been discussed and decided:

  • Employees & hiring: Thorsten, Paolo, Kendy, Emiliano
  • Infrastructure & community: Emiliano, Caolán
  • QA & community: Gabor, Gabriel
  • Documentation & community: Kendy, Gabor, Ayhan
  • Native language projects, translation, localisation & community: Laszlo, Gabor, Ayhan
  • Certifications and other business development activities: Cor, Laszlo
  • Licenses, development & releases, including schedules & community: Caolán, Gabriel
  • Affiliations, e.g. advisory board, peer foundations, politics: Paolo, Kendy
  • Marketing, events, communication & design, brands & community: Emiliano, Cor, Laszlo
  • Assets, finance, taxes: Thorsten, Paolo
  • Contracts, legal compliance, GDPR, trademarks: Thorsten, Paolo, Kendy

At the same time, five people – who have served as board members and deputies during the previous term(s) – have left the board, but will continue their activity as TDF Members: Lothar Becker, Chairman; Franklin Weng, Deputy Chairman; Michael Meeks and Daniel Rodriguez, Full Members; and Nicholas Christener, Deputy.

We are deeply grateful to all of these for their dedication, contribution to decision making and for all of their volunteer time spent in BoD duties, as well as for their ongoing contribution to the project.

 

Best Wishes from TDF

Dear community members, TDF members, Advisory board members, team members, membership committee and board!

Another year marked by the global pandemic is coming to an end these days. In addition to all the depressing news and circumstances that affect us all, there are also pleasing and uplifting developments.

Apart from the painfully missed opportunity to meet in person, be it in the local communities or at our annual conference, we have nevertheless achieved so much together, worked together and brought our foundation forward, so that we can already say that it was one of the most successful years for and with our project.

I would like to thank all of you on behalf of our project. Everyone has contributed to the success story in different ways. All the contributions intertwine, and without these individual parts the whole thing would not be possible and so successful. Especially in these times. Thank you very much again for this.

And it is precisely this commitment, this proof of the resilience of our project during this time, that allows me to look to the future with good cheer. Please continue to support our community in so many ways in the coming year, every contribution is needed.

After two very intensive and busy years, I myself will say goodbye to the board, but after a short phase of rest, I will continue to work with you in the project in one or two different places again. I wish the newly elected board all the best!

I wish you and your beloved ones a few days of recreation at the end of this year and a stable good health for the next one.

Thanks again and hope to see you all with your contributions in the new year again,

yours
Lothar Becker
as chairman of the board

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