Yes, the main part of the LibreOffice Conference 2019 is underway, in Almeria, Spain. We’ll have a full write-up (including presentation videos) on this blog – but in the meantime, a quick look-back at the first day…
Category: LibreOffice
The LibreOffice Conference 2019 is underway! First stop, community meetings
The LibreOffice Conference 2019 begins! Before the main talks start tomorrow, we’re having a community meeting to talk about translating LibreOffice and spreading the word. If you’re near Almeria, Spain, come and join us…
LibreOffice has a new Macro Team
Power users often implement macros in their documents, and LibreOffice’s volunteer contributors are typically power users, so it makes sense to ensure the tools they need are in excellent shape. We are excited to announce the creation of a dedicated team for macro improvements in the LibreOffice contributor community.
The team composition is currently as follows:
- Andreas Heinisch, a new contributor who has improved the user interface of macro editing
- Tomoyuki Kubota, a contributor for 1.5 years who has done bug and build system fixes and code cleanups
- Luane, a new contributor who is improving the documentation related to macros and extension development as well as analysing macro-related bug reports
- Alain Romedenne, a veteran documenter of macro matters
To make sure the macro team can work efficiently, the LibreOffice quality assurance team has cleaned up the collection of macro issues. The QA team will offer help to all macro team members to the best of its ability.
Examples of tasks the team members have worked on:
- Article on creating a Hello World LibreOffice extension
- A guide for designing and developing Python applications for LibreOffice
- Beanshell editor: Show current file name as window title
- Fix for macro list sorting
- Fix indenting in Beanshell Editor
- Make WatchWindow in macro editor report correct type for global constants
If you are interested in contributing to the macro team (development, testing or documentation), please send an email to ilmari.lauhakangas@libreoffice.org. Thanks!
LibreOffice 6.3.1 and LibreOffice 6.2.7 announced, focusing on security
Berlin, September 5, 2019 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.3.1, the first minor release of the LibreOffice 6.3 family, and LibreOffice 6.2.7, the seventh minor release of the LibreOffice 6.2 family, with many bug fixes and a key security improvement.
LibreOffice 6.3.1 and LibreOffice 6.2.7 consider the presence of any call to a script-like thing as equally hazardous as a macro, and present the user a warning dialog about the document trying to execute a script. Users should never allow the execution of macros and scripts embedded in documents, unless they are perfectly aware of the potential risks associated with the action.
LibreOffice 6.3.1 “fresh” is targeted at technology enthusiasts and power users, while LibreOffice 6.2.7 “still” is targeted at users in production environments and individual users who prefer robustness over advanced features. All LibreOffice users should update immediately their current version.
LibreOffice’s individual users are helped by a global community of volunteers: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/community-support/. On the website and the wiki there are guides, manuals, tutorials and HowTos. Donations help us to make all of these resources available.
LibreOffice users are invited to join the community at https://ask.libreoffice.org, where they can get and provide user-to-user support. While TDF can not provide commercial level support, there are guides, manuals, tutorials and HowTos on the website and the wiki. Your donations help us make these available.
LibreOffice 6.3.1’s change log pages are available on TDF’s wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.3.1/RC1 (changed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.3.1/RC2 (changed in RC2). LibreOffice 6.2.7’s change log page is also available on TDF’s wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.2.7/RC1 (changed in RC1).
LibreOffice in business
For enterprise class deployments, TDF strongly recommend sourcing LibreOffice from one of the ecosystem partners to get long-term supported releases, dedicated assistance, custom new features and bug fixes, and other benefits. Also, the work done by ecosystem partners flows back into the LibreOffice project, benefiting everyone.
Also, support for migrations and trainings should be sourced from certified professionals who provide value-added services which extend the reach of the community to the corporate world and offer CIOs and IT managers a solution in line with proprietary offerings.
In fact, LibreOffice – thanks to its mature codebase, rich feature set, strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and long-term support options from certified partners – represents the ideal solution for businesses that want to regain control of their data and free themselves from vendor lock-in.
Availability of the new versions of LibreOffice
LibreOffice 6.3.1 and LibreOffice 6.2.7 are immediately available from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements are specified on the download page. Builds of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are available as Docker images: https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online/.
LibreOffice Online is fundamentally a server-based platform, and should be installed and configured by adding cloud storage and an SSL certificate. It might be considered an enabling technology for the cloud services offered by ISPs or the private cloud of enterprises and large organizations.
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.
All versions of LibreOffice are built with document conversion libraries from the Document Liberation Project: https://www.documentliberation.org.
LibreOffice developers team up to improve PPT/PPTX (PowerPoint) file support
Good news for all users of high quality presentation software: a dedicated team has been formed within the LibreOffice community with the aim of further improving PPT/PPTX (PowerPoint) file format support. The initial developer members are:
- Bartosz Kosiorek, known for his numerous improvements to Windows Metafile support
- nd101, a new contributor with a passion for PPT/PPTX support
- Mark Hung, invited due to his experience in fixing many PPT/PPTX and Impress issues
Team members will be able to support each other through code reviews and advice. We will document the progress here on the TDF blog.
LibreOffice’s Quality Assurance team is currently going through the collections of PPT and PPTX issues and carefully re-analysing and prioritising them. The QA team will continue to provide support in the form of patch testing and verification.
Examples of tasks that the team members have worked on:
- Fixed lack of audio in saved PPTX files
- Fix grow-shrink animation in saved PPTX
- Fix missing underline of hyperlink in opened PPT file
- Add support for import/export line caps for PPTX
- Fix exporting closed Polylines to PPTX
Everyone is invited to participate, either in development or testing. If you are interested in joining, please send an email to ilmari.lauhakangas@libreoffice.org. Or if you have a PPT(X) file that doesn’t look quite right in LibreOffice, help us to improve compatibility – attach it to a bug report so that our QA team can investigate!
(PPTX icon: ncrow on DeviantArt)
Community Member Monday: Emmanuel Semutenga
Today we’re talking to Emmanuel Semutenga, who helps young people in Uganda to develop key IT skills. Of course, LibreOffice plays a role in this…
To start with, tell us a bit about yourself!
I’m currently a back-end web developer by profession. I’m also a Project Manager for the project entitled “ICT for youth employability” at Kampabits, where my main work is on curriculum development. I live in Kampala, Uganda, Rubaga Division.
My hobbies and interests include blogging, cycling with Ultimate Cycling Uganda, dancing, making new friends, movies and hackathons.
What is Kampabits, and what does it do?
Uganda currently has the highest youth population between 17 to 24 years – that makes 80 percent of the population, and most of these young people lack the practical skills to enable them to get employed. Hence the intervention of Kampabits.
Kampabits is a youth-based organization founded in 2010 that uses ICT multimedia creatively to improve the lives of less privileged youth from the non-formal settlements. We also create safe spaces for persons with disabilities to freely express themselves while learning these in-demand skills.
We have helped 350 young people since our inception, with skills in computer literacy, graphic design and coding skills (front-end, back-end and full-stack developers) during our six month trainings. Kampabits later places these young people in a three month internship with their partner companies.
Kampabits also runs a “Women in Tech” project that trains 15 women in advanced coding skills, to make them employable, in a period of six months. This project focuses on women who have prior knowledge of computer basics. They are later placed in outsourcing jobs in companies like Tunga.
How does LibreOffice fit into your work?
During the whole scope of the training, especially our computer literacy sessions, presentations and curriculum development, we use LibreOffice (Writer, Impress and Calc) to train the young people in word processing, presentations and business book keeping.
This is done to remove costs the involved in acquiring proprietary software, and also show the them that free alternatives will deliver the same quality of work as proprietary software. We use Ubuntu, Lubuntu and Linux Mint as our main operating systems – and they always come with LibreOffice preinstalled.
Other free software we use includes: Gimp as an alternative for Photoshop, Inkscape in place of Illustrator, OBS Studio for recording screencasts, Visual Studio Code as our main code text editor, and Scratch to introduce youth to computer programming
We also use both the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 models to compliment our computer lab.
What advice would you have for other projects with similar goals?
Using free software alternatives can help to divert funds to the more pressing needs of organizations – like acquiring more computers to cater for more beneficiaries. So I would advice other organizations to try them out in phases, until they feel comfortable enough to overhaul the whole structure.
A huge thanks to Emmanuel for his work, and it’s great to see free and open source software making a big change all across the planet. Everyone is welcome to join the LibreOffice project, regardless of their location or language, and help us to spread the word and break down digital divides!