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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 4.3: today, you can’t own a better office suite

  • Better OOXML interoperability, and support of legacy Mac file formats

  • Better comment management, and highly intuitive spreadsheet handling

  • 3D models in Impress, and support for “monster” paragraphs

Berlin, July 30, 2014 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.3, the 8th major release of the free office suite since the birth of the project in September 2010. The application includes the combined effort of thousands of volunteers and hundreds of developers, and has reached a point of maturity that makes it suitable for every kind of deployment, if backed by value added services by the growing LibreOffice ecosystem.

LibreOffice 4.3 offers a large number of improvements and new features, including:

  • Document interoperability: support of OOXML Strict, OOXML graphics improvements (DrawingML, theme fonts, preservation of drawing styles and attributes), embedding OOXML files inside another OOXML file, support of 30 new Excel formulas, support of MS Works spreadsheets and databases, and Mac legacy file formats such as ClarisWorks, ClarisResolve, MacWorks, SuperPaint, and more.

  • Comment management: comments can now be printed in the document margin, formatted in a better way, and imported and exported – including nested comments – in ODF, DOC, OOXML and RTF documents, for improved productivity and better collaboration.

  • Intuitive spreadsheet handling: Calc now allows the performing of several tasks more intuitively, thanks to the smarter highlighting of formulas in cells, the display of the number of selected rows and columns in the status bar, the ability to start editing a cell with the content of the cell above it, and being able to fully select text conversion models by the user.

  • 3D models in Impress: support of animated 3D models in the new open glTF format, plus initial support for Collada and kmz files that are found in Google Warehouse, in order to add a fresh new look and animations to keynotes (support of this feature is currently on Windows and Linux versions only).

LibreOffice 4.3 also support “monster” paragraphs exceeding 65,000 characters (an example of an 11 years old bug solved thanks to the modernization of the OOo source code, which is an exclusive function of LibreOffice). In addition, the accessibility technology on Windows has become a standard feature, thanks to the improvements based on IBM’s IAccessible2 framework.

The entire list of new features and improvements of LibreOffice 4.3 is here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.3.

“The LibreOffice project shows that a large free software community can live and thrive without the patronage of a software vendor, to liberate PC desktops”, says Thorsten Behrens, Chairman of The Document Foundation. “Today, you can’t own a better office suite than LibreOffice, in term of features, interoperability, support for document standards and independence. After many years, LibreOffice brings the control of the PC desktop back into the hands of the users”.

According to the Coverity Scan service, joined by LibreOffice in October 2012, the quality of LibreOffice source code has improved dramatically during the last two years, with a reduction of the defect density per 1,000 lines of code from an above the average 1.11 to an industry leading 0.08 (for more information: http://softwareintegrity.coverity.com/register-for-libreoffice-scan-report.html).

People interested in technical details about the release can access the change logs here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.0/RC1 (fixed in RC1), here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.0/RC2 (fixed in RC2), here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.0/RC3 (fixed in RC3) and here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.3.0/RC4 (fixed in RC4).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.3 and LibreOffice 4.2.6 – which will be released on Friday – are available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions and templates to supplement the installation of the software and add specific features can be found here: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org. Money collected will be used to enhance the project both at global and local level.

About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an independent, self-governing and meritocratic organization, based on Free Software ethos and incorporated in Germany as a not for profit entity. TDF is focused on the development of LibreOffice – the best free office suite ever – chosen by the global community as the legitimate heir of OOo, and as such adopted by a growing number of public administrations, enterprises and SMBs for desktop productivity.

TDF is accessible to individuals and organizations who agree with its core values and contribute to its activities. At the end of June 2014, the foundation has just over 200 members and well over 3,000 volunteer contributors worldwide.

Media Contacts: https://www.documentfoundation.org/contact/.

The Document Foundation joins the OASIS Consortium

LibreOffice Conference in Berlin will host a dedicated ODF PlugFest

LogoBerlin, September 4, 2012 – The Document Foundation, the home of LibreOffice, has joined the Organisation for the Advancement of Standards in Information Society (OASIS). The international standards development consortium is the leader in many key digital standards, and one of the most respected names in the standards field.

The Document Foundation will primarily focus on the ODF Technical Committees, to represent the largest independent free software community focused on the development and the promotion of “the best free office suite” based on the Open Document Format. LibreOffice is available in over 100 native language versions, more than twice than any comparable software, and is therefore the most sophisticated, feature rich, complete and widespread ODF implementation worldwide.

“Open Standards create a level playing field for digital contents, and make innovation accessible”, explains Charles-H. Schulz, one of the members of The Document Foundation Board of Directors and a former director of OASIS. “The Document Foundation decision to join the OASIS Consortium strengthens the whole ODF ecosystem with the addition of the largest independent free software community focused on personal productivity and office suites, capable of reaching over 95% of the world’s population with the most accessible ODF implementation”.

“The Document Foundation has always been committed to Open Standards, which are a founding principle of the project”, says Olivier Hallot, an independent volunteer and a member of TDF Board of Directors. “Although the project was already represented at OASIS through several corporate and individual members, the Board of Directors has decided to step in to give voice to the end users and reduce the influence of corporate interests on the future of the Open Document Format”.

The Document Foundation will organize the second LibreOffice Conference in Berlin in mid October. The three day event, which is completely free, will include a dedicated ODF Plugfest, a vendor-neutral interoperability event gathering industry-wide experts of the OpenDocument Format (http://conference.libreoffice.org).

Donations are helping The Document Foundation in delivering a better free software, and in staying independent from corporate interests: http://donate.libreoffice.org.

About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing, meritocratic organization, which builds on ten years of dedicated work by the OpenOffice.org Community. TDF was created in the belief that the culture born of an independent foundation brings out the best in corporate and volunteer contributors, and will deliver the best free office suite. TDF is open to any individual who agrees with its core values and contributes to its activities, and warmly welcomes corporate participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals alongside other contributors in the community. As of August 30, 2012, TDF has over 140 members and over 2,000 volunteers and contributors worldwide.

Media Contacts

Florian Effenberger (based near Munich, Germany, UTC+1)
Phone: +49 8341 99660880 – Mobile: +49 151 14424108
E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org – Skype: floeff
Charles H. Schulz (based in Paris, France, UTC+1)
Mobile: +33 6 98655424 – E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org
Eliane Domingos de Sousa (based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, UTC-3)
E-mail: elianedomingos@documentfoundation.org – Skype: elianedomingos
Italo Vignoli (based in Milan, Italy, UTC+1)
Mobile: +39 348 5653829 – E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org
Skype: italovignoli – GTalk: italo.vignoli@gmail.com

ODF 1.2 has been approved as an OASIS standard

ODF 1.2, the document format adopted by LibreOffice, has been approved as an OASIS standard. Although we are still waiting the formal OASIS announcement, there have been a dry email by Chet Ensign and a more enthusiastic post by Rob Weir who provide several details about the story. Amongst the TC members who have contributed during the process, Rob lists two TDF founders – Thorsten Behrens and Charles Schulz – and an extremely active and well known LibreOffice core developer: Kohei Yoshida.

Standard document formats are key for liberating the user from the lock in of proprietary formats. ODF has been developed by OASIS based on OOo document format, and is now supported by most personal productivity software and many other computer programs. TDF is committed to supporting ODF and contribute to its development. ODF will be one of four main topics at the upcoming LibreOffice Conference in Paris.

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