Home » Technology » Page 4

Category: Technology

LibreOffice Technology being piloted at the European Data Protection Supervisor

LibreOffice Technology diagram

Data protection and privacy is very important to us – and our users – in the LibreOffice project, so we’re happy to see that the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) is piloting the use of LibreOffice Technology.

The EDPS is the European Union’s (EU) independent data protection authority, which monitors and ensures the protection of personal data and privacy when EU institutions and bodies process the information of individuals. From their announcement:

In February 2023, the EDPS has started piloting the use of the Open Source Software Nextcloud and Collabora Online (based on LibreOffice technology). Together, they offer the possibility to share files, send messages, make video calls, and allows collaborative drafting, in a secured cloud environment.

This pilot project is part of a wider initiative, looking at alternatives to large-scale service providers to ensure better compliance with EU regulation 2018/1725 (covering the processing of personal data). We look forward to seeing the progress and results.

Click here for the full announcement

LibreOffice and blockchain: What cool things are possible?

Update 18 November: Based on the majority of feedback, we will not continue the discussion or explore this topic any further, as it is rather clear that the LibreOffice community is not interested. Thanks to everyone who let us know what they think.

Archive text:

As you’re no doubt aware, LibreOffice is free and open source software, which means that anyone can delve into the code behind it, study how it works, and adapt it for their needs. And we’ve seen many examples of this, with LibreOffice’s core engine being adapted by the ecosystem to work on mobile devices and in web browsers, for instance.

Meanwhile, blockchain is technology that provides a distributed ledger, made up of growing list of records (blocks), that are securely linked together using cryptography. The most famous (or sometimes infamous!) example of blockchain technology is cryptocurrencies (eg Bitcoin), but it can also be used in many other ways such as in smart contracts, authentication and games.

Blockchain addresses are most commonly thought of as financial accounts, but they can also function as permissionless credentials. Zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs), which provide cryptographic proof that something is true (such as that an account has a certain property or that a user is authorizsd to perform a certain action) without revealing anything else, open up many interesting possibilities like private and decentralised groups, anonymous contributions, and more.

Recently, we had a chat with the Ethereum Foundation about possible ways for people to combine LibreOffice with blockchain technologies. (We’re not talking about putting blockchain into LibreOffice!) We’ve discussed some ideas – but we’d like to hear from you, LibreOffice users! In what ways could people find a combination of LibreOffice Technology and blockchain be useful? Think of document authentication, collaboration and so forth.

LibreOffice and Google Summer of Code 2022: 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 student developers into free and open source software development. Two projects were finished successfully. Students and mentors enjoyed the time, and here we present some of the achievements, which should make their way into LibreOffice 7.5 in early February 2023!

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

VBA Macros – Tests and missing APIs by Hannah Meeks

Mentors: Tomaž Vajngerl (Collabora), Thorsten Behrens (allotropia)

Hannah worked on an area that is important for power users dealing with Microsoft documents. Her work both improves VBA compatibility in LibreOffice and makes it easier to add missing functionality in the future.

Learn more about the VBA Macros improvements in the final report.

Extend Z compressed graphic format support by Paris Oplopoios

Mentors: Tomaž Vajngerl (Collabora)

Paris got off to a flying start with the originally defined goal, which was to add import functionality for Z compressed EMF and WMF graphics and thus to improve compatibility with Microsoft documents. In the end, he also implemented exporting of WMZ, EMZ and SVGZ graphics, replaced homegrown PNG export code with one that uses libpng and added automated tests for PNG export in addition to tests for the Z compressed formats.

Learn more about the graphics improvements 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!

Using LibreOffice Base to Teach Relational Database Management

Dominique Welt, Ph.D. Candidate and instructor at McGill University, writes:

This summer, my paper on using LibreOffice Base to teach relational database management was featured at the Twenty-eighth Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS). AMCIS is the Americas’ major conference for management information systems scholars. The paper draws from my experience using LibreOffice Base to teach relational database management at McGill University in 2021.

You can consult the paper and watch the video presentation using this link to the conference proceedings, which also features a video presentation.

LibreOffice 7.4.1 Community available for download

Berlin, September 15, 2022 – LibreOffice 7.4.1 Community, the first 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.

Most Significant New Features of LibreOffice 7.4

GENERAL
• Support for WebP images and EMZ/WMZ files
• Help pages for the ScriptForge scripting library
• Search field for the Extension Manager
• Performance and compatibility improvements

WRITER
• Better change tracking in the footnote area
• Edited lists show original numbers in change tracking
• New typographic settings for hyphenation

CALC
• Support for 16,384 columns in spreadsheets
• Extra functions in drop-down AutoSum widget
• New menu item to search for sheet names

IMPRESS
• New support for document themes

A video summarizing the top new features of the LibreOffice 7.4 Community major release is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC8M4UzqpqE and PeerTube: https://peertube.opencloud.lu/w/myZUTCytN28kuxDa5VXNgh. A description of all new features is available in the Release Notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.4.

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 7.4.1 Community

LibreOffice 7.4 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/.

For users who don’t need the latest features and prefer a release that has undergone more testing and bug fixing, The Document Foundation maintains the LibreOffice 7.3 family, which includes some months of back-ported fixes and is currently at version 7.3.6.

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.

Index of Training Videos about LibreOffice

In order to make it easier for users to find training videos about LibreOffice, we have created a comprehensive index updated to the end of April 2022 using the open source Zotero bibliography and reference management software.

The index is published on this blog in the Media Hub section (clicking on the Media Hub menu, you will open a drop down menu with Press Releases and Index of Videos).

At the moment, indexed videos are only in English (although there are also videos in other languages, which have still to be indexed), and have been grouped by topic: LibreOffice, LibreOffice Writer, LibreOffice Calc, LibreOffice Impress, LibreOffice Draw, LibreOffice Base, LibreOffice Math, LibreOffice Interviews and LibreOffice Talks.

The next task is to create an index of documents relevant for The Document Foundation and LibreOffice, covering topics such as open source software, open standards, change management, sustainability, interoperability, digital citizenship, migrations, openness, digital sovereignty and document formats, to mention only the most important. The objective is to provide educational materials to all LibreOffice stakeholders, as a background for training and presentations, or as a simple but comprehensive source of information.

Press Releases

The Document Foundation Releases LibreOffice 26.2.1 with Contributions from Community and Ecosystem Partners

Videos describing new features available on YouTube and PeerTube Berlin, 26 February 2026 – The Document Foundation today announced the…

Open Document Format

ODF is just the first of the advantages of LibreOffice

Comments continue to be posted on articles that refer to blog posts on OOXML and related topics, from users who…