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Updates from the Document Liberation Project

We mostly focus on LibreOffice on this blog, but The Document Foundation also oversees the Document Liberation Project (DLP), which develops software libraries to import and export many different file formats. If you have some old documents or spreadsheets from legacy office software, for instance, the DLP can help you to access that data – giving control back to you.

Many well-known free and open source programs use DLP libraries, such as Inkscape, Scribus, Calligra and of course LibreOffice. A few days ago, there were some DLP updates, so here’s a quick summary:

libvisio 0.1.7

libvisio is a library that helps software to import documents from the Microsoft Visio diagramming and vector graphics application. It turns this:

Into this:

In libvisio 0.1.7, various conversion fixes were made, and a few memory leaks were plugged thanks to OSS-Fuzz. Check out the full release notes here.

libabw 0.1.3

Meanwhile, libabw was also updated. This is a library to import documents from AbiWord, a free software word processing tool. In libabw 0.1.3, a memory access error was fixed thanks to OSS-Fuzz, while expanding entities by the XML parser were disabled as well as a preventative measure.

Learn more and get involved!

The Document Liberation community is always looking for help: if you have old documents or files in legacy formats that you can’t open (or which don’t look right when opened in free software tools), let the project know! You can help the community to better understand file formats by submitting examples, and test new releases.

To learn more about DLP, check out this short video:

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Annual Report 2018: LibreOffice development

In 2018, 17,473 commits were made to the LibreOffice source code, from 223 authors. Here’s an overview of what they worked on…

Behind the scenes of LibreOffice 6.2

Throughout the second half of 2018, the developer community worked on a new major release: LibreOffice 6.2. Details about the end-user-facing new features are provided on this page, and in the following video – so in the rest of this blog post, we’ll focus on developer-related changes.

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So, let’s get technical!

In terms of system requirements, the macOS minimum version was bumped up to 10.9 (and will be 10.10 in LibreOffice 6.3). Similarly, binary Linux x86 (32-bit) releases from The Document Foundation were deprecated, so there will be no Linux x86 builds produced by TDF after LibreOffice 6.2. However, this does not mean that Linux x86 compatibility will be removed; Linux distributions can still opt to build 32-bit binaries. See here for more details.

On the user interface front, there were other changes. Two new VCL plugins (qt5 and kde5) were implemented (with the KDE5 plugin extending the Qt5 one), to provide integration with KDE Plasma 5 and other Qt5-based desktop environments. These were mainly implemented by Katarína Behrens (CIB) and Jan-Marek Glogowski (City of Munich).

If the kde5 and the gtk3_kde5 plugins are installed, the desktop detection will now prefer the kde5 one. The qt5 plugin must be explicitly selected via SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=qt5, as it’s never selected automatically.

Native copy and paste of spreadsheet data in Writer tables was implemented by László Németh (NISZ): previously, you could paste a copied table as image, object, plain text, and as RTF; the latter resulting in a new table in Writer. In LibreOffice 6.2 you can paste directly in an existing table.

Data Validation now supports custom formulas thanks to Marco Cecchetti (Collabora), while Edit > Track Changes > Show no longer severely impacts performance in documents with many tracked changes. The document view is now capable of hiding the tracked changes, so they do not have to be rearranged in the document model to be hidden – implemented by Michael Stahl (CIB).

LibreLogo, the programming interface for graphic design and education got unit testing, IDE and compiler fixes and improvements (László Németh – FSF.hu Foundation). Meanwhile, work continued on the native GTK3 UI, as demonstrated by Caolan McNamara (Red Hat) at FOSDEM 2018:

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Google Summer of Code

The Google Summer of Code (GSoC) takes place every year, and provides university students with funding to work on free and open source software. For 2018, seven LibreOffice developers were accepted into GSoC, and they worked on various features and updates. These improvements were presented in a session at the LibreOffice Conference in Tirana, Albania.

Daniel Silva showed his work on the revamped print dialog, which reorganised options into two tabs, to make them easier to find: a General tab, covering all components of the suite, and then a separate tab for component-specific features (ie those found in Writer, Calc, Impress and so forth). Altogether, this makes it easier for end users to find the options they need, without having to look through many different tabs.

Meanwhile, Mert Tümer worked on the LibreOffice Android Viewer as part of GSoC: he produced 23 patches, made up of nine new features and 14 bug fixes. Some of the new features include Export to PDF, printing, customising worksheets, and better language support.

Saurav Chirania implemented a logger for user interface testing, which logs interactions and stores them in a file, while Vikas Mahato worked on features for importing data from external sources, along with transformations for the data (38 types of transformation were implemented). Finally, Hrishabh Rajput worked on updating listbox widgets to separate read values from input values, Kshitij Pathania added some improvements to the Notebookbar, and Shobhan Mandal focused on adding support for Python in the LOEclipse plugin.

A big thanks to everyone who contributed code last year! Why not join them?

You don’t need to be the world’s best C++ wizard to get involved – just some C++ knowledge and willingness to explore the codebase is great!

We have Easy Hacks to get your started, so check out this page for inspiration. Cheers!

What is the Open Document Format (ODF), and how is it developed?

Regina Henschel is a long-time member of the LibreOffice community, and has worked on ODF, the native file format of the suite. At our recent German community meetup, we talked to her about how ODF is developed, and how users can help to improve it…

Tell us a bit about ODF…

Open Document Format is LibreOffice’s native file format. (If you have a file with a .odt, .ods, .odp or .odg extension, then it’s an Open Document Text, Spreadsheet or Presentation file or Graphic respectively.)

ODF is developed by OASIS, then submitted to ISO (the International Organization for Standardization), and then adopted as a standard. There is also a working group at ISO, which by the way also works on OOXML – which can then ask questions about development, and so on.

For ODF we are now working on version 1.3. We had a “feature freeze” last summer. We have come so far that everything we wanted to have in it is available in the “editor version”. Now we’re going to fine-tune it, then we’ll be back in summer – so that was a whole year. Then comes the coordination process at OASIS, so it usually takes two years until a new version of the standard is ready.

How do you decide which new features to add?

The feature has to be well defined, and that depends a little on how good the proposal you get is. There are some suggestions like: “We want to have a feature for Fourier transformations” – but nothing else! And then we say: as long as there is no implementation that actively handles it, we’ll postpone it for later. It’s not worth it, for a standards body to deal with a proposal like this, if there are no applications that are actually interested in it.

ODF exists as a “strict” standard, for features that are fully standardized, and then there is an “extended mode” in which you can try out new features in applications. They then run under their own namespace, and if that works, organizations can make a suggestion for OASIS, eg: “This feature works well for us, so please include this in the strict standard.”

Then others can say: “Yes, we want to do something similar, but it would be better for us if we didn’t call it X, but Y instead”. Or: “We need an additional attribute to make it work for us”, for example. In situations like that, the proposals are discussed.

For example, in LibreOffice, it’s now possible to specify the size of charts, independent of their labels. In the old standard, you could only set the size including the label. This means that when data changed and the label changed, the effect was that the size of the chart changed. So that’s been fixed in ODF 1.3.

There are also bugfixes, where there are things that are simply wrong, or that are not clear enough for implementation. For example, one thing that was really incorrect was to put the units “at” and “atm” on the same level – that was definitely wrong. And one time, a matrix form was wrong as well. So we work on fixes for these.

Can normal end-users help out?

Yes, you can be a “normal person”, so to speak, without being on any committee – you can still send something to the Technical Committee. There is a mailing list, and also a homepage, where you can get informed about the work of the committee. There you can also find a link to the mailing list – but you have to register, because of spam. Messages on this list are then read and answered by the Committee.

The second way to get involved is when the Committee is about to make a new version of ODF. This will then be made available for voting – and then there will be an official time for comments. There the regulations are a bit stricter; this is not voluntary, but the committee has to actually work on these comments. That should then give a qualified answer.

The next step where official participation takes place is at ISO. They have the same disclosure process again, where comments are collected accordingly. Then the Technical Committee gets a long list from ISO: “We have received these comments, please discuss them.”

So this is a process that is very open. That’s one of the reasons why I decided to join the Committee. It’s not that something happens in secret, and then suddenly there’s a standard – but rather, the process is totally comprehensible.

The other thing that interested people can see is the archives of the mailing lists – and there are weekly teleconferences too.

Thanks to Regina for all her help over the years! ODF – and other open standards – are incredibly important, especially for long-term data storage. Indeed, the UK government recommends using ODF, and has guidelines for using the format in organisations and companies. Also check out this presentation from Regina at FOSDEM 2018.

LibreOffice 6.3 on Linux, a statement

Following the availability of LibreOffice 6.3 Beta, there have been speculations about 32-bit compatibility based on a the missing 32-bit binaries for Linux.

We have prepared a short and a long statement to clarify the situation.

TL;DR

  1. The Document Foundation is ending the provision of 32-bit binaries, and NOT 32-bit compatibility as a whole.

  2. Distro vendors or anyone running a more current 32-bit Linux system can still create 32-bit versions of LibreOffice, as developers have not in any way removed 32-bit compatibility from the source code. Additionally, we are not removing any 32-bit builds that were previously created.

  3. Most Linux users are sourcing LibreOffice from their distro repositories, which are usually compiled against the distro’s version of the various external libraries. We do not anticipate distros dropping 32-bit LibreOffice packages.

  4. TDF does not anticipate the same decision happening for LibreOffice 32-bit binaries for Windows any time soon.

LONG

  1. During the last two years, the number of downloads of the 32-bit Linux distribution-neutral binaries provided by The Document Foundation have decreased to a very low number. Today, the time needed to compile, test, maintain and distribute those binaries is not worth the effort, based on current download numbers. So, TDF is ending the provision of 32-bit binaries, and NOT 32-bit compatibility as a whole.

  2. Today, 32-bit packages are very much the domain of specific Linux distros rather than a general user need. So, we are leaving them to distros, who will upstream fixes. Indeed, distro vendors or anyone running a more current 32-bit Linux system can still create 32-bit versions of LibreOffice, as developers have not in any way removed 32-bit compatibility from the source code. Additionally, TDF is not removing any 32-bit binaries that were previously created.

  3. Most Linux users are sourcing LibreOffice from their distro repositories, which are usually compiled against the distro’s version of the various external libraries. LibreOffice by itself ships a number of external components to avoid dependencies, while distros link against the versions of those components which are part of the distro anyway. TDF does not anticipate distros dropping 32-bit LibreOffice packages.

  4. The Document Foundation does not anticipate the same decision happening for Windows 32-bit binaries any time soon. Of course, if downloads of Windows 32-bit binaries from TDF mirror servers drop to the same very low number as Linux 32-bit packages, TDF will reconsider the situation.

OASIS announces the ODF Advocacy Open Project

The ODF Advocacy Open Project we have pre-announced at FOSDEM is now a reality. Yesterday, OASIS has released the following press release, which is just the first step of a new sustained activity focused on supporting the adoption of ODF – the only true standard document format available on the market – by governments, public administrations and enterprises worldwide, to increase interoperability (and thus knowledge sharing), reduce hidden costs associated to document management, and get rid of vendor lock-in.

OASIS Introduces Open Projects Program to Bridge Open Source and Standards Development

AirBus, CIB, Fujitsu, IBM, Red Hat, Siemens, Software AG, The Document Foundation, and others sponsor Open Projects

Boston, May 8, 2019 – OASIS, a global nonprofit consortium, today announced the launch of Open Projects, the first-of-its-kind program that creates a more transparent and collaborative future for open source and standards development. Open Projects gives communities the power to develop what they choose–APIs, code, specifications, reference implementations, guidelines– in one place, under open source licenses, with a path to recognition in global policy and procurement.

The lines between open source and open standards have been blurring for some time, and communities in both arenas have been calling for more flexibility and options for collaboration. Open Projects is a new approach that addresses the need for change in everything from handling IP to governance and decision-making, from funding to establishing trust and assuring quality.

“With Open Projects, we’re building a movement to transform the open source and standards world,” said Gershon Janssen, Chairman, OASIS Board of Directors. “We want to dissolve the barriers that separate communities. We want to empower groups with more control and streamlined governance. We want to support projects by giving them all the process they need–and not a bit more–so they can accomplish great things fast.”

Open Projects builds on the OASIS experience and reputation for producing quality work that’s been trusted and supported by governments and industries worldwide for more than 25 years.

“For many, open source has become a means of establishing de facto software standards. However, de facto standards are not recognized by many governments and institutions,” said Chris Ferris, IBM Fellow and CTO Open Tech for IBM. “OASIS Open Projects provides an important new opportunity to leverage the rapid innovation of open source in the process of developing open standards. The potential to achieve ISO, IEC, or ITU standards approval is a huge value for many important open source initiatives.” Ferris, who also holds a leadership position on the Hyperledger Fabric project, played an instrumental role in defining the OASIS Open Projects program and now serves on its Advisory Council.

The Open Projects program is being advanced by some of the most accomplished, regarded minds in open source today.

As part of the program announcement, OASIS is launching the first two Open Projects – Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) and OpenDocument Format (ODF) Advocacy.

The OSLC Open Project advances a suite of standard REST APIs to connect data and achieve the digital thread across domains, applications, and organizations. It is sponsored by AirBus, Austrian Institute of Technology, Bank of America, Boeing, Dassault, Fujitsu, IBM, Koneksys, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Red Hat, Siemens, Software AG, and Tasktop.

“OSLC helps create standard REST APIs that solve industry integration challenges,” said Andrew Berezovskyi of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. “Open Projects enables the OSLC community to produce deliverables that meet requirements from various stakeholders without being hindered by the weight of foundation bureaucracy or the baggage that comes with financial, legal, technical, and marketing administration.”

The ODF Advocacy Open Project promotes the world’s leading document standard. After being approved as an OASIS Standard, ODF was recognized by ISO/IEC and endorsed by governments around the world as a way to ensure permanent access to data and eliminate the risk of vendor lock-in. The ODF Advocacy Open Project is sponsored by CIB and The Document Foundation.

“ODF guarantees perennial access to data that can be transferred in a transparent way between different apps, computers and operating systems, getting rid of hidden interoperability costs, vendor lock-in issues and license fees,” said Italo Vignoli, Co-Founder, The Document Foundation.

Additional Open Projects for blockchain and other areas will be announced in the coming months. Further details about OASIS Open Projects are available here or email info@oasis-open-projects.org.

MITRE names The Document Foundation as a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA)

Berlin, March 15, 2019 – MITRE announced that The Document Foundation, the home of LibreOffice, has been approved as CVE Numbering Authority (CNA). The Document Foundation is at the center of one of the largest free open source software ecosystems, where enterprise sponsored developers and contributors work side by side with volunteers coming from every continent. The nomination is the result of significant investments in security provided by the LibreOffice Red Hat team under Caolán McNamara leadership.

What is CVE?

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) is a reference list of public cybersecurity vulnerabilities, with entries that describe those vulnerabilities and provide references for them. These references are often used as the vulnerability names, especially in security updates. To date, LibreOffice has a track record of rapid response to all reported threats.

What is a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA)?

A CNA is an organization that can assign and announce CVE entries within a particular scope. Some CNAs are organizations providing CVEs for their products such as The Document Foundation.

How will The Document Foundation assign CVEs?

The Document Foundation Security Team provides a forum for all of the vendors and individuals who contribute to LibreOffice development to co-ordinate the work of protecting our users from threats related to the application.

As a CNA, The Document Foundation Security Team now has the ability to assign CVE IDs to vulnerabilities affecting our products, the ability to control the disclosure of vulnerability information without pre-publishing, and notification of vulnerabilities in our products by researchers who request a CVE ID from us.

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

Relaunching ODF Advocacy as ODF News

I decided to start the current campaign, with one blog post per week focusing on the different aspects of Open…