TDF is Google Seasons of Doc Mentoring Organization

The Document Foundation has been accepted as organization for the Google Seasons of Docs, a project whose goals are to give technical writers an opportunity to gain experience in contributing to open source projects, and to give open source projects an opportunity to engage the technical writing community.

For technical writers who are new to open source, the program provides an opportunity to gain experience in contributing to open source projects. For technical writers who’re already working in open source, the program provides a potentially new way of working together.

During the program, technical writers will spend a few months working closely with the LibreOffice community, bringing their technical writing expertise to the project’s documentation, and at the same time learn about the open source project and new technologies. At the same time, LibreOffice documentation team members will work with the technical writers to improve the project’s documentation and processes.

LibreOffice is an advanced office suite covering may areas of knowledge, from maths and sciences, engineering, financials, editing, drawing, printing and more. LibreOffice is also that kind of application that is used cross-industry, a very rich opportunity for technical writing.

Olivier Hallot, LibreOffice documentation coordinator, will lead the GSoD project, supported by Sophie Gautier and by members of the LibreOffice documentation team such as Drew Jensen, who has immediately created a banner to visually support this community effort.

All information about the Google Summer of Docs project are on the GSoD website. An outline of the project’s different steps is available on the GSoD timeline. The next deadline in the process for The Document Foundation is May 28th, as we we have to find interested technical writers to discuss our ideas, which are summarized on the following TDF wiki page. The list includes some of our project’s permanent challenges, but should not be limited to these items.

LibreOffice contributors who are interested in becoming a mentor for the GSoD project should get in touch with Olivier Hallot by sending him a message or by subscribing to the documentation mailing list.

Announcing the First Latin America LibreOffice Conference

This is the first ever LibreOffice conference covering Latin America, a rapidly-growing area for free and open source software.

Berlin, April 2nd, 2019 – The Document Foundation announces the LibreOffice Latin America Conference 2019, held at the Facultad Politécnica de Universidad Nactional de Assunción (FPUNA) in Asunción, Paraguay on July 19th (Friday) and 20th (Sat).

LibreOffice Latin America Conference will be the first event gathering LibreOffice users, advocates and contributors (not only development, but also localization, PR/marketing, documentation, quality assurance, … etc.) from different countries in Latin America, to exchange and share experiences and knowledge.

An exclusive translation sprint to Guarani will be held in parallel during the event with supervision of LibreOffice volunteer developers.

During the conference, we will discuss LibreOffice related business such as supporting and training, migrating to LibreOffice and the ODF true standard format, developing, and any other community activity in Latin America. In addition, we will have guests from the core team at The Document Foundation, which is a charitable foundation and the home of LibreOffice.

“The event will be an important opportunity for the consolidation of LibreOffice and free open source software in the region, bringing experiences from other countries for discussions and software development in Latin America” commented Alcides Javier Torres Gutt, professor at FPUNA. “FPUNA is proud to host the event for the Paraguayan FOSS communities, as well as advancing in the creation of a real LibreOffice with Guarani user interface”.

“The Document Foundation is a global organization, and as such wants to tighten the relationship with local communities in areas like Latin America, where there are huge growth opportunities for free open source software. A conference is the best way of putting together LibreOffice advocates, and sharing experiences and best practices at continental level” said Italo Vignoli, Marketing and Communication specialist at the Document Foundation.

Contact the conference organizers at mail address latinoamerica@global.libreoffice.org.

Open Document Editors DevRoom at FOSDEM 2019: Call for Papers

FOSDEM LogoFOSDEM is one of the largest gatherings of Free Software contributors in the world and takes place each year in Brussels (Belgium) at the ULB Campus Solbosch. In 2019, it will be held on Saturday February 2, and Sunday February 3.

The Open Document Editors DevRoom is scheduled for Saturday, February 2 (from 10:30AM to 7:00PM, room UB2.147).

We are inviting proposals for talks about Open Document Editors or the ODF standard document format, on topics such as code, localization, QA, UX, tools, extensions and adoption-related cases. Please keep in mind that product pitches are not allowed at FOSDEM.

The length of talks should be limited to a maximum of 25 minutes, as we would like to have questions after each presentation, and to fit as many presenters as possible in the schedule. Exceptions must be explicitly requested and justified. You may be assigned LESS time than you request.

All submissions have to be made in the Pentabarf event planning tool: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM19.

While filing your proposal, please provide the title of your talk, a short abstract (one or two paragraphs), some information about yourself (name, bio and photo, but please do remember that your profile might be already stored in Pentabarf).

To submit your talk, click on “Create Event”, then make sure to select the “Open Document Editors” devroom as the “Track”. Otherwise, your talk will not be even considered for any devroom at all.

If you already have a Pentabarf account from a previous year, even if your talk was not accepted, please reuse it. Create an account if, and only if, you don’t have one from a previous year. If you have any issues with Pentabarf, please contact ode-devroom-manager@fosdem.org.

The deadline is Monday, December 24, 2018. Accepted speakers will be notified by Thursday, December 27, 2018. The schedule will be published on Monday, December 31, 2018.

Recording Permission

We will record and stream all main tracks, devrooms and lightning talks live. The recordings will be published under the same licence as all FOSDEM content (CC-BY). If, exceptionally, you believe there is a legitimate reason why your presentation should not be streamed or recorded, you must seek our agreement before submitting it.

In the “Submission notes” field, please indicate that you agree to have your presentation recorded and published under the same license as all FOSDEM content (CC-BY). For example: “If my speech is accepted for FOSDEM, I hereby agree to be recorded and to have recordings – including slides and other presentation related documents – published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 International License. Sincerely, Name”.

LibreOffice 5.4 released with new features for Writer, Calc and Impress

Berlin, July 28, 2017 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.4, the last major release of the LibreOffice 5.x family, immediately available for Windows, macOS and Linux, and for the cloud. LibreOffice 5.4 adds significant new features in every module, including the usual large number of incremental improvements to Microsoft Office file compatibility.

Shorter, sweeter documents make interoperability easier

Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”, LibreOffice developers have focused on file simplicity as the ultimate document interoperability sophistication. This makes ODF and OOXML files written by the free office suite more robust and easier to exchange with other users than the same documents generated by other office suites.

Thanks to the efforts of developers, the XML description of a new document written by LibreOffice is 50% smaller in the case of ODF (ODT), and around 90% smaller in the case of OOXML (DOCX), in comparison with the same document generated by the leading proprietary office suite. Additional details in the file simplicity backgrounder: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/5Oe8guDN0XSS7h8.

LibreOffice 5.4 highlights

  • A new standard colour palette has been included, based on the RYB colour model.
  • File format compatibility has been improved, with better support for EMF vector images. This helps when you’re importing detailed diagrams from other office software.
  • Imported PDF files are rendered with much better quality, also when inserted into a document, while exported PDF files – from Writer and Impress – support embedded videos (and linked videos if opened with Acrobat Reader).
  • LibreOffice 5.4 supports OpenPGP keys for signing ODF documents on Linux. If you already use GPG/PGP for signing emails, it ensures the authenticity of your ODF documents regardless of the mode of transport or storage.

WRITER

  • In Writer, you can now import AutoText from Microsoft Word DOTM templates.
  • When you’re exporting or pasting numbered and bulleted lists as plain text, their full structure is preserved.
  • In the Format menu, you can now create custom watermarks for your documents.
  • New context menu items have been added for working with sections, footnotes, endnotes and styles.

CALC

  • Calc now includes support for pivot charts, which use data from pivot tables. When the table is updated, the chart is automatically updated as well.
  • Comments are now easier to manage, with menu commands to show, hide and delete all comments.
  • When applying conditional formatting to cells, you can now easily change the priority of rules with up and down buttons.
  • Extra sheet protection options have been added, to optionally allow insertion or deletion of rows and columns.
  • Lastly, when you’re exporting in CSV format, your settings are remembered for the next export operation.

IMPRESS

  • In Impress, when you’re duplicating an object, you can now specify fractional angles. In addition, your settings are saved for the next duplication operation.

ONLINE

  • Finally, LibreOffice Online has been improved as well. Performance is better, while the layout adapts responsively to mobile devices. In addition, a read-only mode has been added.

A list of the most significant new features is presented in a short video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBNWOWJul4w). A page with a description of new features – and links to relevant resources – is available on the wiki at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.4.

LibreOffice 5.4 has also been improved “under the hood,” thanks to the work of hundreds of volunteers. This translates into an open source office suite which is easier to develop, maintain and debug. Although this is not visible to users, it is extremely important for enterprise deployments.

LibreOffice Online

LibreOffice Online is fundamentally a server service and should be installed and configured by adding a cloud storage and an SSL certificate. It might be considered an enabling technology for the cloud of ISPs or the private cloud of enterprises and large organizations. Builds of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are available as Docker images: https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online/. Background document providing the positioning of LibreOffice Online: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/uSdCYL2TgPa3yUI.

Enterprise deployments

LibreOffice 5.4 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open source office suites, and as such is targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users. For enterprise class deployments, TDF maintains the more mature 5.3 family – to be updated very soon with the announcement of the 5.3.5 release – which should always be supported by certified professionals (http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

Several companies sitting in TDF Advisory Board (http://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) are providing either value added Long Term Supported versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for migrations and training, based on best practices distilled by The Document Foundation. LibreOffice is deployed by large organizations in every continent. A list of the most significant migrations announced in the media is available on TDF wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/LibreOffice_Migrations.

Availability of LibreOffice 5.4

LibreOffice 5.4 is immediately available from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://www.libreoffice.org/donate.

LibreOffice 5.4 is built with document conversion libraries from the Document Liberation Project: http://www.documentliberation.org.

Press Kit

The press kit, with background documents and high-resolution images, is here: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/pfz28pVIhoZJ7uO.

LibreOffice 5.0.1 released, to keep the momentum going

libreofficsplashBerlin, August 27, 2015 – The Document Foundation (TDF) releases LibreOffice 5.0.1, the first minor release of the LibreOffice 5.0 family, with a number of fixes over the major release announced on August 5. So far, LibreOffice 5.0 is the most popular LibreOffice ever, based on the feedback from the marketplace.

LibreOffice 5.0.1 is targeted to technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users. For more conservative users, and for enterprise deployments, TDF suggests the “still” version: LibreOffice 4.4.5. For enterprise deployments, The Document Foundation suggests the backing of professional support by certified people (a list is available at: http://www.documentfoundation.org/certification/).

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change log here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.0.1/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.0.1/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Register for the LibreOffice Conference

Registration for LibreOffice Conference 2015, which will be hosted by the Danish city of Aarhus from September 23 to September 25, is open at the following page: http://conference.libreoffice.org/2015/registration/.

The LibreOffice community is growing, and the conference is the best opportunity to join the fun by meeting a large group of the people that have contributed to the project: developers, and volunteers who have localized the suite, chased the bugs, written the manuals, spoken at conferences, and advocated LibreOffice at global and local levels.

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.0.1 is immediately available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

First LibreOffice 5.0 Bug Hunting Session starts Tomorrow

Berlin, May 21, 2015 – The first LibreOffice 5.0 Bug Hunting Session starts tomorrow at 08AM UTC, to catch bugs and regressions on the first beta of the software, available from this link: http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/pre-releases/. The session will last until May 24, 2015.

On those dates, mentors will be available from 08AM UTC to 10PM UTC to help less experienced volunteers to triage bugs, on the QA IRC channel and via email on the QA mailing list.

Those who cannot join during the bug hunting session are always welcome to help chasing bugs and regressions when they have time. There will be a second bug hunting session in June, to test LibreOffice 5.0 Release Candidate 1.

More detailed information on the bug hunting session are available here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/BugHunting_Session_5.0.0.0.

LibreOffice 5.0 will be released at the end of July 2015.