Category: LibreOffice

LibreOffice Online is a cloud-based version of the suite that end users can access via a web browser. It uses the same underlying engine as the desktop app, so that documents look identical across the versions. But where did it come from, what happened in 2018, and how can you deploy it on your infrastructure? Read on to find out…

Some History

Development of LibreOffice Online started back in 2011, with the availability of a proof of concept of the client front-end, based on HTML5 technology, produced by SUSE. In 2015, this proof of concept was re-written into an initial Online Development Edition by Collabora, allowing advanced users to check out LibreOffice in the cloud for the very first time.

In 2016, the first source code release of LibreOffice Online, a cloud office suite which provides basic collaborative editing of documents in a browser by re-using LibreOffice desktop’s “core engine”, was added to the master branch for the announcement of LibreOffice 5.3.

This last development brought collaborative editing to LibreOffice Online, a feature which transforms the application into a state of the art cloud office suite – the first to natively support the ISO/IEC standard Open Document Format (ODF) with collaborative editing features.

The rendering fidelity of LibreOffice Online is equivalent to that of the desktop software, and interoperability matches that of LibreOffice thanks to the support of both standard and proprietary document formats. LibreOffice Online has been developed mainly by Collabora, a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community.

LibreOffice Online in 2018

The main feature in online office suites is collaborative editing, and LibreOffice Online is no exception. The server module, which is key for this feature, is improved with every new major release of LibreOffice, with a focus on performance and security.

The graphical user interface was enhanced with the release of LibreOffice 6.1 by exposing various dialogs in LibreOffice core to the web browser. These dialogs were:

• Writer: Find & Replace, Edit Style, Hyperlink, Special Character, Index Entry, Character, Paragraph, Bullets & Numbering, Table Properties, Spelling & Grammar, Word Count, Change Tracking Management, Insert Header & Footer, and Column Formatting
• Calc: Ability to Add Autofilter, Ability to Filter Items via Autofilter Popup, Format Cell, Sorting Functionality, Support for Hidden Tabs, Support for Chart Data Series Editing, and Data Validation
• Impress: Position & Size, Line and Area

The most significant improvements and new features announced at the time of LibreOffice 6.2 were the following:

• Performance: improvements of scroll wheel, zooming, disk space, session and cache management, reduction of latency and unnecessary animation, and avoidance of repeated re-layout of comments & red-lines
• Mobile: simplification of user interface, improvement of on-screen keyboard and cursor handling, addition of context toolbar and cleaning of other toolbars, and improvements to comment rendering
• Integration: insertion of remote graphic from integration, addition of configurable time-limit for document conversion, installation of sample webserver config snippets, and addition of hosting/capabilities endpoint to list online features
• Document signing: integration of Vereign compatible authentication and document signature, new LibreOfficeKit signing and certificate APIs, configuration to enable/disable the signature, and addition of a signing infobar
• Other features: opening PDF files in a new tab instead of downloading them, improving configuration options for track changes, addition of a new shape insertion toolbar and of missing configuration defaults, and cleaner and more attractive 404 error reporting

LibreOffice Online Positioning

LibreOffice Online is server software which – to be fully functional – must be integrated with a service that provides file storage and authentication. As such, it can be considered an enabling technology for the public cloud of ISPs, or the private cloud of enterprises and large organizations, when it is integrated – for example – with enterprise file sync and sharing software, or a groupware solution.

The Document Foundation does not plan to develop or deploy a public cloud solution similar to existing products from Google and Microsoft, because this would not be in line with the original mission of the project. The task is therefore open to ISPs and providers of open source cloud solutions, with many options already available on the market.

Given the mission-critical nature of LibreOffice Online, The Document Foundation will not be maintaining binaries for enterprises, because this would create expectations which could not be fulfilled by volunteer-based support. However, builds of the latest code, suitable for home users and those who wish to contribute to development – which is encouraged – are available as Docker images.

Thanks to your generous donations, and contributions from our ecosystem of certified developers, we released two major releases of LibreOffice in 2018: 6.0 on January 31, and version 6.1 on August 8.

In addition, 14 minor releases were also made available throughout the year, for the 5.4, 6.0 and 6.1 branches. Meanwhile, several Bug Hunting Sessions were held in preparation for the new major releases. These typically took place on a single day between set times, so that experienced developers and QA engineers could help new volunteers to file and triage bugs via the IRC channels and mailing lists. The Bug Hunting Sessions for LibreOffice 5.4 were held on April 27, May 28 and July 3 – while those for LibreOffice 6.2 took place on October 22, November 19 and December 21.

LibreOffice 6.0

On January 31, LibreOffice 6.0 was officially released after six months of development. This included a new ePUB filter, for saving documents as eBooks, while support for opening QuarkXPress documents was added as well. Other new features included: a revamped special characters dialog; OpenPGP support for signing and encryption on all desktop platforms; a brand new web browser-based help system; and better flexibility when using custom dictionaries.

In addition, LibreOffice 6.0 lets users perform mail merge operations using data from tables inside Writer itself, while in Calc, new commands were added to select unprotected cells on protected or unprotected sheets. Impress was also improved thanks to 10 new templates, designed for home and business use. This video summarises the improvements:

LibreOffice 6.1

Later in the year, on August 8, LibreOffice 6.1 was made available. This release included many new features such as Colibre, a new icon theme for Windows based on Microsoft’s icon design guidelines, which makes the office suite visually appealing for users coming from the Microsoft environment.

The image handling engine was reworked to be significantly faster and smoother thanks to a new graphic manager and an improved image lifecycle, with some advantages also when loading documents in Microsoft’s proprietary formats.

Then there was the reorganization of Draw menus with the addition of a new Page menu, for better UX consistency across the different modules, along with a major improvement for Base, only available in experimental mode: the old HSQLDB database engine has been deprecated, though still available, and the new Firebird database engine is now the default option (users are encouraged to migrate files using the migration assistant from HSQLDB to Firebird, or by exporting them to an external HSQLDB server).

Finally, Online Help pages were enriched with text and example files to guide the users through various features, and are now easier to localize. Check out the other short video:

This was all possible thanks to your donations! Support our community today, so we can keep improving LibreOffice, organising events and sharing knowledge. Thank you!