The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.4.7

LibreOffice_FacebookBerlin, December 10, 2015 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.4.7, the seventh and final minor release of the LibreOffice 4.4 family, with a few key fixes over the previous version. LibreOffice 4.4.7 is the “still” version targeted to more conservative users and enterprise deployments.

The Document Foundation suggests to deploy LibreOffice in enterprises and large organizations with 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/4.4.7/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.4.7/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.4.7 is immediately available for download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-still/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

LibreOffice: Advent Tip #9

options

Libreoffice offers a number of different icon sets, which can be selected from the menu Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View. The default Linux icon set is called Human, while the default Windows icon set is called Tango.

Together with Galaxy and Oxygen, they have been the available options for quite a long time (although there have been several improvements to the design of the icons).

The modern Breeze and the monochromatic Sifr (the default icon set on MacOS X) are the new additions. Sifr has been introduced with LibreOffice 4.2, while Breeze has been announced with LibreOffice 5.0.

Last, but not least, there is a specific High Contrast icon set for specific applications.

Tango
Tango
Sifr
Sifr
Oxygen
Oxygen
Human
Human
Galaxy
Galaxy
Breeze
Breeze

 

 

LibreOffice: Advent Tip #8

PDF Options_001Hybrid PDFs are a peculiar feature of LibreOffice, and are extremely handy for interoperability. They are standard PDF files, which embed a standard ODF document.

Because of this characteristic, although they have a PDF extension they can be opened by LibreOffice as fully editable documents (please note that they cannot be opened with a double click on the icon, as any regular ODF document, but they must be opened from within LibreOffice by using the menu File > Open).

The process to create a Hybrid PDF is extremely simple. In fact, Hybrid PDFs are one of the options of the menu File > Export as PDF…, which is used to create any kind of PDF file – PDF, PDF/A, signed PDF, Hybrid PDF – with LibreOffice.

Once the dialog window is open, the Hybrid PDF option is the first one on the right hand column, and can be combined with every other PDF option (which will be recognized by any PDF reader, independently from the fact that the file embeds the ODF document).

TDF Freelance Job Opening (#201512-01) – User Experience Mentor

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks a

User Experience Mentor

to start work as soon as possible.

We are looking forward to integrate user experience deeper into our development processes. The role, which is scheduled for 20 hours a week, may include any of:

Main goals

  • acting as a peer of other UX volunteers
  • working with developers to find out what is technically possible and makes sense
  • growing the UX/design contributions and contributor base via outreach, and searching for good contributions in various forms (mailing lists, g+, irc, blog)
  • research in bugzilla, searching for consensus for ux-advice bugs

Main tasks

  • mentoring new contributors in the user experience community, to introduce them the existing workflows
  • volunteer inclusion: both UX/design, and also developers interested in hacking user interface
  • growing the contributor base and doing community outreach
  • organizing remote UX meetings (via phone, video conference or IRC) and in-person
  • establishing and fostering coordination and communication between developers, the user experience team, marketing and design, acting as a gateway between these

Other tasks

  • conducting surveys to improve the LibreOffice user experience and presenting results to the community
  • working on improving existing LibreOffice Glade-based dialogues and drafting/developing new ones
  • working with others on concepts, designs, strategies to evolve the LibreOffice user interface, drafting new user interface elements
  • prototyping
  • identification of EasyHacks to lower the entry barrier to the UX community
  • triaging ux-advice bugs in bugzilla

Tasks have to be carried out in joint cooperation with our existing developer, marketing and UX/design community, and with our Development Mentoring Lead.

The role requires the following:

  • experience using LibreOffice
  • experience in interacting with the LibreOffice community or another large open source project
  • working closely with our volunteer community on tooling, processes and means of collaboration
  • a track record in user experience and design
  • advantageous: teaching/mentoring

The work time during the day is flexible, apart from some fixed times when availability is required (e.g. during meetings, which usually take place at 1400 or 1500 UTC once per week).

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member, or never having contributed before, does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

The job is offered on a freelance basis. Work happens from the applicant’s home office, which can be located anywhere in the world.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, including curriculum vitae, your financial expectations, and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at no later than January 8, 2016. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

If you haven’t received feedback by February 8, 2016 your application could not be considered.

LibreOffice: Advent Tip #7

odf-guidance.odt - LibreOffice Writer_003LibreOffice Writer was born – as StarWriter – to produce lengthy documents, such as thesis and relations, and as such offers a number of specific features in this area. Two of the most important are Templates and Styles, which facilitate the creation of good looking documents, and make it easier to reproduce a standard document once the layout – including Styles – has been defined and consolidated. LibreOffice offers an almost hidden feature to produce a Template, which can be accessed from the menu File > Send > Create Master Document. This opens a “save as…” dialog window, which allows to save the open document as a Template.

LibreOffice: Advent Tip #6

AutoText_001LibreOffice offers an AutoText feature which can be accessed from the menu Edit > AutoText, which opens a simple dialog windows. The example shown in the image on the left is the well known Lorem Ipsum pseudo Latin blurb, which can be used to mimic a document layout, but the feature offers a number of pre-defined standard strings (for instance: 1st Reminder, 2nd Reminder, etcetera), plus several Business Cards layouts, plus a number of template elements (for instance: Header Brochure, Header Newsletter, etcetera). In addition, you can import a document to create your own AutoText elements. To insert the AutoText, you can either recall the dialog window or type the shortcut for the AutoText entry, and then press F3.