TDF Community Blog

LibreOffice talks and presentations at FOSDEM 2018

2018-02-142018-02-14

FOSDEM is a major event in the free and open source software world – thousands of FOSS supporters get together to discuss new features, work on bugs, make new contacts, and just have a great time.

This year, many members of the LibreOffice community were there too, and gave talks and presentations in the Open Document Editors devroom. We’ve added the videos to a playlist, embedded below, so enjoy browsing through them to see what’s to come in LibreOffice! (Click the button in the top-left to switch between videos in the playlist.)

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We Love Free Software, and LibreOffice

2018-02-142018-03-02

The LibreOffice Mardi Gras Party for Help: What’s new and fun in online Help?

2018-02-122018-05-05

Starting with the recent release of the 6.0 family, LibreOffice has now a brand new online help system. Unlike the previous version – based on the transfer of help content to the Mediawiki framework hosted by The Document Foundation – the new help is a direct transformation of the help XML files into simple HTML files, with additions of some JavaScript magic and CSS wizardry.

But how do I get this new help online? Actually it is quite easy. Either you navigate in your browser to https://help.libreoffice.org/6.0/ from your desktop or smartphone or you just don’t install the local help packages in your computer. When the local help is not installed, LibreOffice calls the online help, passing parameters that includes the dialog box identification or UNO command, operating system language and version. Your default browser will open the correct page at the right line position.

What is new in this help online? By working on the XML transformation targeted at modern browsers, LibreOffice developers were able to insert many nice features in the pages. Here are a few, just for a start:

The top header contains two drop-down lists, one to select the module and the second to select the language of the pages. These two lists are there to let you navigate in all help domains. If you want to read the help content in another language, just select the language in the list. There are as many as 50 languages available (not every Help page is fully translated in some languages). (more…)

Sunday Marketing #5

2018-02-12

On Friday, we have announced LibreOffice 5.4.5 and LibreOffice 6.0.1. In both cases, it has been an earlier than scheduled – and expected – release, to solve a couple of issues which were considered significant enough to change the usually predictable release schedule. The first issue was related to security, and we decided to release a patched version to reduce the risk for LibreOffice users (details are available on dedicated channels). The second issue was related to the increase of crashes on Windows of the just announced LibreOffice 6.0.

The chart on the left shows the increase of crashes after January 31 announcement and the subsequent decrease after February 9 announcement (right-clicking on the image will allow opening the original image, which is easier to read). It is important to underline the fact that the chart is generated by our test system, which is stressing the software, and does not reflect the actual number of crashes experienced by end users. On the other hand, we received several reports of unexpected crashes, which confirmed data provided by the test system.

Although both issues were reported while a large number of developers and other community members were in Brussels for FOSDEM and for a series of internal meetings, they were immediately tackled by developers – who provided the patches – and triggered a new release process: production of the binaries for the different operating systems, test of the binaries to verify that issues were solved, upload of the binaries on mirrors, preparation of web pages relevant for the announcement (changelogs on the wiki, and download pages on websites), and draft of the announcement text for the announce mailing list, the blog post and the press release distribution. From the decision to the release, the entire process was completed in less than two days, confirming the maturity of the LibreOffice project in front of unexpected events.

Early availability of LibreOffice 5.4.5 and LibreOffice 6.0.1: all users are invited to update for improved robustness and security

2018-02-09

Berlin, February 9, 2018 – The Document Foundation announces the earlier than planned release of LibreOffice 5.4.5 and LibreOffice 6.0.1, to solve issues which have popped up after the launch of LibreOffice 6.0. In addition, the new release has been leveraged to integrate a security patch.

Although members of the LibreOffice core development team were attending FOSDEM in Brussels to talk about LibreOffice and meet the FOSS community, they have immediately reacted to QA reports and provided the necessary patches. This confirms the level of responsiveness achieved by LibreOffice project.

All LibreOffice users are therefore strongly invited to update to the new versions:

Power users, early adopters and technology enthusiasts should update from the recently installed LibreOffice 6.0 to LibreOffice 6.0.1,
All individual users and organizations of any size should update from any other version of LibreOffice to LibreOffice 5.4.5.

Organizations should deploy LibreOffice with the backing of certified developers, migrators and trainers (an updated list is available at https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

LibreOffice 5.4.5 bug and regression fixes are described here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.4.5/RC1 while LibreOffice 6.0.1 bug and regression fixes are described here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.0.1/RC1

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.4.5 and LibreOffice 6.0.1 are immediately available for download from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/. Donations help TDF to maintain its infrastructure, share knowledge, and fund the presence of volunteers at events, where they can meet with other free software advocates.

Several companies sitting in TDF’s Advisory Board (https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) provide either value-added LTS versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for migrations and training, based on best practices distilled by The Document Foundation.

Wednesday Community #4

2018-02-07

Last week, we have announced LibreOffice 6.0. Thanks to our incredible global community, we have been able to send press releases not only in English but also in other languages: Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese (Brasilian), Russian, Slovenian, Spanish and Traditional Chinese.

Below, the images of the first page of the PDF files you can download by clicking on the language name. I hope to be able to send next major announcement to more journalists in their native languages, to further improve the results we have obtained with the announcement of LibreOffice 6.0.