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LibreOffice project and community recap: September 2023

LibreOffice Conference 2023 group photo

Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…

  • We started the month by highlighting upcoming events: the LibreOffice Conference 2023 (which has now finished – more on that in a moment); the Latin American Conference, and LibreOffice Conf.Asia.

Conference logos

  • Next up, we had a bunch of LibreOffice Expert magazines to give away to schools and local communities. They’ve all been claimed now, but if you still want a copy, you can get one from the publisher.

LibreOffice Expert magazine

LibreOffice 7.6 banner

LibreOffice Writer 7.6 guide cover

  • This year, LibreOffice was once again a mentoring organization in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a global program focused on bringing more student developers into free and open source software development. Five projects were finished successfully. Students and mentors enjoyed the time, and we presented some of the achievements, which should make their way into LibreOffice 24.2 in early February 2024!

Google Summer of Code logo

  • The biggest event in September was the LibreOffice Conference 2023 in Bucharest, Romania. We had an awesome time, with talks, workshops and social meetups – more to come on this blog (including presentation videos) in the coming weeks!

LibreOffice Conference 2023 sponsor and supporter logos

Bug

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Important release of LibreOffice 7.6.2 Community and LibreOffice 7.5.7 Community with key security fix

A drawing of a generic "bug" with four colours on its back: red, green, blue, yellow.Berlin, 26 September 2023 – The Document Foundation is releasing LibreOffice 7.6.2 Community and LibreOffice 7.5.7 Community ahead of schedule to address a security issue known as CVE 2023-4863, which originates in a widely used code library known as libwebp, created by Google more than a decade ago to render the then-new WebP graphics format [1].

In addition to the CVE, the two new versions fix other bugs and regressions and are available immediately from www.libreoffice.org/download [2]. All users of LibreOffice are encouraged to update their current version as soon as possible.

The minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple MacOS 10.15.

For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with a wide range of dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs: www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.

The Document Foundation does not provide technical support to users, although it is available from volunteers on user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support the Document Foundation by making a donation at www.libreoffice.org/donate.

[1] Details of CVE 2023-4863: nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-4863. Bugzilla: bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=157231.

[2] Change logs for LibreOffice 7.6.2 Community: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/7.6.2/RC1 and LibreOffice 7.5.7 Community: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/7.5.7/RC1.

LibreOffice Conference 2023 in Bucharest

LibreOffice Conference 2023 will be hosted by the Universitatea Națională de Știință și Tehnologie Politehnica București, Facultatea de Automatică și Calculatoare (National University of Science and Technology, Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Faculty of Automation and Computer Science) at the PRECIS building from Wednesday 20 September to Saturday 23 Septembe. On Wednesday, the community will gather for the usual community meeting to discuss localisation and marketing activities at the local level. The conference will open on Thursday morning and continue with talks and workshops until Saturday lunchtime (schedule). Alongside this, there will be a technical workshop focusing on LibreOffice development.

The conference is sponsored by Collabora Office and Allotropia (main sponsors), dvloper.io and 1&1, with a significant contribution from The Document Foundation, and the technical support of IT Genetics. The event has been organized by a local team of volunteers, backed by 1&1 and supported by the team at The Document Foundation with the help of local NGOs Rosedu and Tech Lounge. More information on the conference website.

LibreOffice and Google Summer of Code 2023: The results

Google Summer of Code logo

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. Five projects were finished successfully. Contributors and mentors enjoyed the time, and here we present some of the achievements, which should make their way into LibreOffice 24.2 in early February 2024!

You can experiment with the new features by using daily builds and report any problems in our bug tracker.

Improving OpenPGP encryption experience in LibreOffice by Ahmed Gamal Eltokhy

Mentors: Thorsten Behrens (allotropia), Heiko Tietze (TDF), Hossein Nourikhah (TDF)

LibreOffice can encrypt documents using OpenPGP public key cryptography by making use of external applications such as gpg4win, GPGTools and gnupg. Thanks to Ahmed’s work, it is now easier to manage and search keys and faster to navigate large keyrings.

Learn more about the encryption experience improvements in the final report.

Selecting tests to run on gerrit patches based on machine learning by Baole Fang

Mentors: Thorsten Behrens (allotropia), Stéphane Guillou (TDF), Christian Lohmaier (TDF)

This project was inspired by Mozilla’s work on Firefox’s continuous integration. There is now a system in place that makes predictions on the test failure possibility of submitted code changes and decides the most efficient way to build the changes. As this kind of machinery is very new to everyone, we expect many tweaks to follow.

Learn more about the machine learning project in the final report.

Search Field in Options by Bayram Çiçek

Mentors: Andreas Heinisch, Heiko Tietze (TDF)

Screenshot of search in options

Searching through options is pretty standard in applications these days, so it is about time LibreOffice learned how to do it!

Learn more about the search feature in the final report.

Convert Writer’s Java UNO API Tests to C++ by Dipam Turkar

Mentors: Tomaž Vajngerl (Collabora), Xisco Faulí (TDF)

The idea here was to reduce the dependency on Java during the LibreOffice build process. Half of the tests for Writer were converted.

Learn more about the test conversion project in the final report.

Add APNG import/export support by Paris Oplopoios

Mentors: Tomaž Vajngerl (Collabora)

APNG is short for Animated Portable Network Graphics. It is not an official extension to PNG, but nevertheless has broad support in web browsers these days. Thanks to Paris’s work, LibreOffice now fully supports this format.

Learn more about the APNG feature in the final report.

Wrapping up

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!

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