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ODF Toolkit Project Announces Release 0.13.0: Last Release Supporting JDK 11

ODF logo

BERLIN, Germany — The ODF Toolkit community is proud to announce the official release of version 0.13.0. This release marks a significant transition point in the project’s history, representing the last release to support JDK 11, with the project pivoting toward modern Java long-term support (LTS) releases.

Release Highlights: Stability and Modernisation

The 0.13.0 release provides a stable, high-performance foundation for programmatic manipulation of ODF 1.2 documents.

  • Final JDK 11 Support: This is the definitive release for users operating on Java 11 environments.
  • Broad Compatibility: Validated across the Java ecosystem on Windows 10, macOS (Apple Silicon M3), and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
  • Automated Deployment: GitHub release artefacts are now built automatically with Temurin JDK, ensuring a transparent, reproducible supply chain.

FOSDEM 2026: Setting the Stage for 1.0.0

Following the release, the project’s core developers met in person at FOSDEM in Brussels, using the opportunity to align on the project’s next major milestone. During the event, the team finalised the roadmap for the upcoming 1.0.0 Release Candidate. Discussions focused on resolving the remaining blocking issues in the toolkit’s code-generation engine, paving the way for a more robust and extensible architecture.

Immediate Future: JDK 17 and Apache Jena 5

The project has already moved its development baseline to JDK 17 for the upcoming version, 0.14.0.

  • Apache Jena 5.6.0: The shift to JDK 17 enables integration with the latest Apache Jena library, significantly enhancing the toolkit’s ability to handle document metadata and RDF.
  • Early Access: A 0.14.0-SNAPSHOT release is now available for developers who want to test these new features.

Expanding the Core Team

The project continues to grow its community of maintainers. Following discussions between Michael Stahl, Oliver Rau, and Svante Schubert, Axel Howitz has been granted commit rights, strengthening the project’s long-term sustainability and development capacity. Axel’s contributions since joining last year have been instrumental in maintaining the project’s momentum toward its 1.0.0 goals.

Availability

The ODF Toolkit 0.13.0 is available via the official project page.

About the ODF Toolkit

The ODF Toolkit is a community-driven, open-source Java library for creating, scanning, and manipulating OpenDocument Format (ODF) files. By providing a lightweight API that operates independently of any office suite, it remains a preferred choice for server-side document automation.

European Commission’s use of Microsoft 365 breaches data protection law for EU institutions and bodies

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has found that the European Commission (Commission) has breached several provisions of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, the EU data protection law for EU institutions (EUIs), in its use of Microsoft 365, including those relating to the transfer of personal data outside the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). The EDPS is imposing corrective measures on the Commission.

In particular, the Commission has failed to provide adequate safeguards to ensure that personal data transferred outside the EU/EEA are afforded the same level of protection as that guaranteed within the EU/EEA.
Furthermore, in its contract with Microsoft, the Commission did not sufficiently specify the types of personal data to be collected and for what explicit and specified purposes when using Microsoft 365. The Commission’s breaches as data controller also relate to data processing, including the transfer of personal data, carried out on its behalf.

The EDPS has therefore decided to order the Commission to suspend, with effect from 9 December 2024, all data flows resulting from the use of Microsoft 365 to Microsoft, its subsidiaries and sub-processors located in countries outside the EU/EEA that are not covered by an adequacy decision.

In effect, the EDPS has confirmed what we have been arguing for years, namely that the only individual productivity solutions that also guarantee data protection and support the concept of Europe’s digital sovereignty – technological independence from the commercial decisions of high-tech companies, especially from the US – are FOSS solutions such as LibreOffice combined with a standard, open and independent data format such as the Open Document Format.

The EDPS, though, has also decided to order the Commission to bring the processing operations resulting from its use of Microsoft 365 into compliance with the EU Regulation 2018/1725. The Commission has until 9 December 2024 to demonstrate compliance with both orders.

The EDPS considers that the corrective measures it imposes (described in the document annex [1]) are appropriate, necessary and proportionate in light of the seriousness and duration of the infringements found.
Many of the infringements found concern all processing operations carried out by the Commission, or on its behalf, when using Microsoft 365, and impact many individuals.

Unfortunately, all the remedies identified by the EDPS relate to Microsoft 365, and therefore do not address the root of the problem by suggesting the use of FOSS solutions such as LibreOffice and the only truly standard, open and independent document format, the Open Document Format.

It is highly likely that Microsoft’s solution will be the usual ‘sticking plaster’ that hides the problem without addressing it, and that the lobbyists – who I am sure are already at work – will make it look appropriate in the eyes of politicians.

And if we continue to protest, knowing that we will not be heard because we do not have the same firepower as the lobbyists of the big US hi-tech companies who are present in Brussels with hundreds of professionals, we will always hear the same thing: “They all do the same…”.

[1] https://www.edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/press-releases/2024/european-commissions-use-microsoft-365-infringes-data-protection-law-eu-institutions-and-bodies_en

Announcing the ODF Toolkit 0.12.0 release

Open Document Format logo

ODF is the Open Document Format, the native format used by LibreOffice (and supported by many other apps too). It has various sub-formats such as .odt for text files, .ods for spreadsheets, and .odp for presentations.

Meanwhile, the ODF Toolkit is a set of Java modules that allow programmatic creation, scanning and manipulation of ODF files. And at the end of last month, the developers announced a new version: 0.12.0!

Big changes include a new ODF 1.3 mimetype “Text master template”, while the API for Text Selection was completely refactored. In addition, there were many fixes to improve reliability and security.

Check out the full announcement and link to the release notes here

Custom Shape Tutorial

Have you ever tried to draw special and complex shapes beyond the basic offerings of LibreOffice? A custom shape of the Fibonacci spiral defined by its equation and properties with handles to reshape size? Thanks to Regina Henschel, now you have a tutorial for drawing custom shapes of your own and use them in LibreOffice.

Currently, LibreOffice provides a lot of predefined custom shapes. They are grouped to the sets ‘Basic Shapes’, ‘Block Arrows’, ‘Symbol Shapes’, ‘Stars and Banners’, ‘Callouts’, and ‘Flowchart’. And all shapes from the ‘Fontwork Gallery’ are custom shapes too. But you can do more, much more.

Custom Shapes Tutorial

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Two ODF Toolkit releases in a row!

ODF is the Open Document Format, the native format used by LibreOffice (and supported by many other apps too). Then there’s the ODF Toolkit, a set of Java modules that allow programmatic creation, scanning and manipulation of ODF files. Svante Schubert writes with some updates:

We are happy to announce that there have been recently two ODF Toolkit releases in a row. These were our first releases at The Document Foundation (TDF), after the migration of the project to TDF in 2019:

  • With the 0.9.0 release, we have our last JDK 8 release (due to a switch of the Java Doc Taglet API we are using). After this release, we dropped the so-called “Simple API” (which was once forked from our ODFDOM doc Java Package by IBM, but not merged back, leaving lots of duplicated code that was unable to embrace our new change API). And the XSLT Runner Ant plugin will be removed in a future release, as we are no longer using Ant but Maven (to avoid maintenance of untested functionality).
  • With the 0.10.0 release, we support the next JDK 11 LTS version and our new change API that was implemented by myself for Open-XChange’s web office OX Documents – thanks to them, especially Malte Timmermann and Rafael Laguna for keeping the Apache License 2. Unfortunately, OX forked before I started there and it took me several months – and some sponsorship from a PrototypeFund project – to merge manually every file and enable all tests again (which some OX colleagues had disabled as they took too long…). (Please check out the PrototypeFund: Any German taxpayer may apply with an open-source project/idea!).

I would like to thank also all those numerous folks assisting us to make this work – especially recently in pushing this forward!

Especially, I would like to congratulate Michael Stahl for officially becoming the co-maintainer of this project. Michael has been my long term colleague (from StarOffice Hamburg times) and helps me constantly drop procrastination and/or fix issues I am no longer capable to realize as I looked too long at them. In addition, Michael and I also serve as editors of the OASIS ODF TC. There at the ODF TC, we envision having a faster turn-around of ODF spec deliveries and making their information set more readable for downstream software as we are. Thanks to allotropia software GmbH, Michael’s employer, for providing him with the time for working on these tasks!

So what’s next? Obviously, it’s more than time to release an ODF Toolkit 1.0.0.

Personally, I would like to get the code generation right, but keep as much compatibility to prior releases as possible. Michael and my aim is to work from the end of January on this release (any helping hand is most welcome) 😊

There is also ODF 1.3, to be embraced by a release in the near future.

In February, I will likely have an online talk at FOSDEM, at the LibreOffice dev room about our project and what I intend to do next year.

In a nutshell, I was able to receive some NGI Search funding for this project to enable search in ODF documents.

Aside from the obvious search API – focusing on one higher-level based on user semantic and likely having also one lower-level based on XML, I would like to refactor my “spaghetti feature code” in the SAX parser that made the implementation of the changes hard to maintain. Sorry for that, not my first and likely not my last mistake – but I am learning! 🙂

We’re going to work out a more elaborate picture for the FOSDEM presentation.

Until then, have fun with the ODF Toolkit!

Open Letter to Members of EU Parliament

Today, the Coalition for Competitive Digital Markets (https://competitivedigitalmarkets.eu/), a group of more than 50 technology companies from 16 different European countries, sent an open letter to members of the European Parliament to raise awareness about interoperability and to impose stricter rules on big companies – the so-called ‘big tech’ companies – that act as gatekeepers and prevent transparency and openness in digital markets.

Open Letter 6 December

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