Home » LibreOffice » Page 57

Category: LibreOffice

Community Member Monday: 锁琨珑 (Kevin Suo)

Photo of Kevin Suo

Today we’re talking to 锁琨珑 (Kevin Suo), who’s doing great work improving LibreOffice and fixing bugs…

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I’m 36 years old, and I was born in the Gansu Province of China. I live in Beijing and I’m working as an Of Counsel in a leading law firm in Beijing. Some people may think that I’m a lawyer. No, I am not a lawyer – I am a professional accountant. My team work as local counsel on behalf of clients defending on Antidumping and Countervailing Duty investigations initiated by authorities (e.g., the U.S. Department of Commerce, the European Union etc) against companies and industries in China, and accountants play an important role in this field.

Although I am very busy at work every day, I love the internet, computers and programming. I can program using Python+Pandas and SAS, and tools such as these have greatly helped me in my daily data analysis work. I’m also a Linuxer. Many years ago I used Ubuntu, Debian, Arch Linux, and even Gentoo, but now I stick to Fedora Workstation. Currently 99.9% of my daily work is done under Linux, including those mission-critical work we submitted to the U.S. DOC and EU authorities.

I also know some HTML, CSS and PHP, and I have a server running at home with a WordPress instance and a Nextcloud instance. The server also servers as a mirror of some of the Libreoffice bibisect repositories (it is very slow to download from the TDF server here in China, so I need to mirror them).

What are you working on in the LibreOffice project right now?

I started using LibreOffice many years ago, probably when I was in college (when it was the OpenOffice.org era). After that, I became a contributor to LibreOffice. I started with localisation and quality assurance (QA), reporting, testing and confirming bugs. Then I learned and started bibisecting. Soon, I started building LibreOffice by myself, and then I started to learn C++ and fix some easy bugs. I am even surprised by myself, that before contributing to LibreOffice I only learned very little of the C language (when I was in collage, as an “elective course”), and at that time I never thought I might learn and use C++.

Most of the commits I have made to LibreOffice were related to the pdfimport feature in the sdext module. I think I got involved in this module very randomly – I wanted to know more about the the LibreOffice code base, then I read the sdext pdfimport module by chance, and found that to understand the code I first need to read the PDF specifications!

Then I read the specifications, learned some C++ online, identified some bugs which have affected me on my daily work, and then found that I was able to fix them! Also, as I am trying to fix more bugs, I now find that I need to learn something about Unicode! That is a lot of fun. You learn, you contribute, and then you learn more!

Some of you may know that, recently, I fixed a bug related to right-to-left text mirroring in the Draw/Writer pdf import (i.e. tdf#104597) which has impacted many RTL (right-to-left text) users for a long time. That bug came to my view, since someone added me to CC due to several of my patches in the sdext pdfimport module. I got interested in that bug because, although I am a Chinese, I learned some Arabic characters and words in the mosque when I was young. Yes, I am a Chinese muslim!

When did you get involved in LibreOffice, and what was it like?

I don’t remember when I get involved, but my first commit to the core repository was in year 2014. Many people have helped me, e.g. Eike Rathke, Noel Grandin, Caolán McNamara, Mike Kaganski etc. At the beginning I thought everything is difficult, but now I feel comfortable.

What advice would you give for others who want to help out with the code?

I would like to say that, to contribute to LibreOffice, you do not need to be a programmer. An accountant can also contribute, given that you are desired to learn!

LibreOffice project and community recap: November 2022

Recap banner

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

  • November was a Month of LibreOffice! This is something we do every six months, to say our thanks to everyone who contributes to the project – and encourage others to join in. 307 people won sticker packs – and a few others got some special bonus LibreOffice merchandise 😉

LibreOffice merchandise

  • Throughout the month, we edited and uploaded videos from our recent LibreOffice Conference 2022. All videos should be on this playlist now, apart from a couple which had problems with the sound:

Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

Regina Henschel

  • Early in November, we announced LibreOffice 7.3.7, which is planned as the last release in the 7.3 branch. Users still using this version should start looking at the LibreOffice 7.4 family, now at 7.4.2, which has been extensively tested by millions of users worldwide. And later in the month, we released LibreOffice 7.4.3.

LibreOffice 7.3 banner

  • FOSDEM, the biggest European free software event, is coming up – and the first in-person meeting since 2022. Of course, LibreOffice and The Document Foundation will be there, and we put out a Call for Papers for the LibreOffice Technology devroom. See you there!

FOSDEM logo

Indonesian community group photo

Muthuramalingam Krishnan

  • Did you know? You can dock colour palettes in many places in LibreOffice Draw. Harald Berger, from the German LibreOffice community, made a video demonstrating this:

Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

Stéphane Guillou

  • Earlier in 2022, together with more than 100 European organisations and companies, The Document Foundation signed the Open Letter about the universal right to install any software on any device. Join us and sign the letter today.

Impress Guide cover

Keep in touch – follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Mastodon. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join us and help to make LibreOffice even better!

Winners in the Month of LibreOffice, November 2022!

At the start of November, we began a new Month of LibreOffice, celebrating community contributions all across the project. We do these every six months – so how many people got sticker packs this time? Check it out…

Awesome work, everyone! Hundreds of people, all across the globe, have helped out in our projects and communities. We’re hugely thankful for your contributions – and, of course, everyone who’s listed on the wiki page can get a sticker pack, with these stickers and more:

How to claim

If you see your name (or username) on this page, get in touch! Email mike.saunders@documentfoundation.org with your name (or username) from the wiki page so that we can check, along with your postal address, and we’ll send you a bunch of stickers for your PC, laptop and other kit.

(Note: your address will only be used to post the stickers, and will be deleted immediately afterwards.) If you contributed to the project in November but you’re not on the wiki page, please let us know what you did, so that we can add you!

There is one more thing…

And we have an extra bonus: nine contributors have also been selected at random to get an extra piece of merchandise – a LibreOffice hoodie, T-shirt, rucksack or snazzy glass mug. Here are the winners (names or usernames) – we’ll get in touch personally with the details:

  • Aleksandar Popovic
  • vibrationoflife
  • Benyamin Limanto
  • Jürgen Kirsten
  • Tarcísio Ladeia de Oliveira
  • Omkar Acharekar
  • Jaroslav Kratochvil
  • Ettore Atalan
  • William Friedman

Congratulations to all the winners, and a big thanks once again to everyone who took part! Your contributions keep the LibreOffice project strong. We plan to have another Month of LibreOffice next year, but everyone is welcome to see what they can do for LibreOffice at any time!

Getting Started Guide 7.4 and Impress Guide 7.4 Available for Download

The LibreOffice Documentation Team announces the immediate availability of the Impress Guide 7.4 and Getting Started Guide 7.4

The Impress Guide 7.4 was coordinated by Peter Schofield and revised by Kees Kriek. The guide is available in PDF as well as in ODF formats. An online version is available in the bookshelf website.

Impress Guide 7.4

The Getting Started Guide 7.4 update was coordinated by Skip Masonsmith also with the revision of Kees Kriek and Jean Weber.

Getting Started Guide 7.4

The LibreOffice Community thanks Peter, Skip, Kees and Jean for their immense contribution to our documentation assets and knowledge.

Docmentation Team

The Guides can be downloaded or purchased in printed version from the Documentation website as well as the bookshelf project.

LibreOffice Conference 2022 videos: Arabic/Persian/Klingon support, wiki cleaning, project sustainability

Here’s another batch of talks from the recent LibreOffice Conference 2022! Watch the individual videos below, or click here to view the playlist.

 

Arabic/Persian Text Justification: An Overview, with Hossein Nourikhah

Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

 

The state of Right-to-Left language support in LibreOffice, with Eyal Rozenberg

Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

 

Let’s try NLP of Klingon language using LibreOffice, with Koji Annoura

Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

 

We keep the wiki squeaky clean, with Ilmari Lauhakangas

Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

 

Improve the project sustainability, with Italo Vignoli

Please confirm that you want to play a YouTube video. By accepting, you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.

Release of LibreOffice 7.4.3 Community

Berlin, November 24, 2022 – LibreOffice 7.4.3 Community, the third maintenance release of LibreOffice 7.4, the volunteer-supported office suite for personal productivity on the desktop, is immediately available from https://www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows (Intel and Arm processors), macOS (Apple M1 and Intel processors), and Linux.

LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite market segment, with native support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) – beating proprietary formats for security and robustness – to superior support for MS Office files, to filters for a large number of legacy document formats, to return ownership and control to users.

A description of all new features of the LibreOffice 7.4.x releases is available in the Release Notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.4

A video summarizing the top new features in LibreOffice 7.4 Community is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC8M4UzqpqE and PeerTube: https://peertube.opencloud.lu/w/myZUTCytN28kuxDa5VXNgh.

LibreOffice Technology Platform

Products based on the LibreOffice Technology platform – the transactional engine shared by all LibreOffice based products, which provides a rock solid solution with a high level of coherence and interoperability – are available for major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and Chrome OS), for mobile platforms (Android and iOS), and for the cloud.

For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with a large number of dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLA (Service Level Agreements): https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/. All code developed by ecosystem companies for enterprise customers is shared with the community and improves the LibreOffice Technology platform.

LibreOffice – thanks to its mature codebase, rich feature set, strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and LTS options from certified partners – is the ideal solution for businesses that want to regain control of their data and free themselves from vendor lock-in.

Availability of LibreOffice 7.4.3 Community

LibreOffice 7.4.3 Community is available from: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple macOS 10.12. LibreOffice Technology-based products for Android and iOS are listed here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/

Users still deploying the LibreOffice 7.3 family because of the additional testing and bug fixing, should switch immediately to LibreOffice 7.4.3, which has been extensively tested by millions of users worldwide, as the older version will reach the end of life and will not be maintained after November 30, 2022.

The Document Foundation does not provide technical support for users, although they can get it from volunteers on user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: https://ask.libreoffice.org
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate

Press Releases

Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.4

Berlin, 18 December 2025 – LibreOffice 25.8.4, the fourth minor update to the free office suite developed by volunteers for…

Open Document Format

The Future of Open Standards and the Importance of ODF

Open standards don't make headlines. Instead, they work quietly behind the scenes to define how information is created, shared and…