TDF Community Blog

LibreItalia Conference 2025 in Gradisca d’Isonzo

2025-10-272025-10-27

Libreitalia Conference 2025 was organized by Marco Marega – a LibreItalia and TDF Member – in Gradisca d’Isonzo, near the border with Slovenia, in Gorizia’s province. Gradisca is a very nice fortified city surrounded be beautiful parks. The conference venue was the historical Monte di Pietà palace, that the municipality administration kindly allowed to use.

Gorizia, the administrative center, is a city divided in two parts, half in Italy (Gorizia itself), and half in Slovenia (Nova Gorica). Together, they are the 2025 European’s Capital of Culture.

The conference was very interesting, with members coming from many different cities. Furio Honsell – a councilman of Friuli Venezia Giulia region and also a former mayor of the city of Udine and rector of Udine University – was the special guest, introducing his regional law proposal to promote free software adoption in local administrations.

Italo Vignoli had two talks, one about the end of Windows 10 support and the other about the 20th anniversary of the ODF format. Marco Gaiarin had a brief talk about good practices for free software adoption. Giulia Bimbi spoke about Italian laws regulating free software adoption in public administrations.

Blerta Mecani and Moreno Cervesato of PNLUG, Pordenone Linux Users’ group, talked about their activities, with a special focus on their project leveraging Italian rules which permit to legally recover used PCs, install Linux on them and then donate them to schools.

Sonia Zorba and Andrej Sossi presented Trieste Linux Users group activities, and their game to learn command line.

Marco Marega opened the day introducing free software and LibreOffice to newbies.
In the afternoon, he explained – together with Gabriele Ponzo – how to contribute to the LibreOffice project, focusing on the tools used to localize the software’s UI and the documentation.

Marco did a very good job in organizing the event, and was very happy to see many community members meeting in his hometown. The conference was a great occasion to strengthen our community.

On November 22/23, some of the conference attendees will meet again in Pordenone, another administrative center of Friuli Venezia Giulia, at the Linux Arena within the Radioamatore2 fair.

Make your ODF files accessible: a simple guide for everyone

2025-10-24

People without disabilities have no problem viewing documents on a computer screen, but there are people with visual impairments or who are blind who use screen readers and keyboard navigation. ODF files have everything they need to be accessible to these people too, and this is a short guide to creating documents that they can use without any problems.

In the context of digital document management, accessible means that a document can be consulted without any constraints related to the ability to see or move one’s hands with dexterity. This means that people can quickly find what they are looking for (headings, lists, indexes), understand the meaning of graphs and images thanks to descriptions, tables are simple and clear, and they can read the text because the contrast is good and the links make sense even out of context.

To achieve this result, which does not discriminate against people based on their physical characteristics, it is necessary to follow a few simple rules when creating a document. Obviously, we are talking about LibreOffice, although the rules also apply to other office suites (although in this case the document format will be proprietary and not standard).

1. Use styles for headings (not just bold text)

Screen readers use headings to move around the page.
To do this, select the heading and choose Heading 1 from the styles drop-down menu, Heading 2 for sections, and Heading 3 for subsections.
Avoid skipping numbers, but always follow the order 1, 2, 3.

2. Create lists using the appropriate buttons

This way, screen readers count the items correctly.
To do this, highlight the items and click on the Bulleted List or Numbered List button. Avoid typing dots or numbers manually.

3. Add alternative text to every image, graph or icon

This way, people who cannot see the image will still receive the message.
To do this, right-click on the image, select Properties, select Options, and fill in the Alternative (text only) field.
For example: in the case of an image, ‘team photo: from left to right, Mr. X, Mr. Y, and Mr. Z’; in the case of a graph, ‘sales increased every month, and the fourth quarter was the highest with £X million’.

4. Create simple tables

Complex tables are difficult for screen readers to read.
To do this, use the first row for headers (for example: Name and Date), and avoid merging or splitting cells.
Avoid using tables solely to order elements within the page.

5. Create self-explanatory links

A link such as “click here” tells a screen reader nothing.
To do this, write the action related to the link as if it were the link itself.
For example: “Download the budget report (in ODF format)”.

6. Set the language

This allows screen readers to pronounce words correctly.
To do this for the entire document, select the language in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
To do this for a portion of the document, highlight the text and select the language in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

7. Use light colours and strong contrast

Screen readers have trouble reading low-contrast text.
To do this, use dark text on a light background, and never use colour alone to emphasise the meaning of a word.
For example: “Expired items are written in red and labelled as EXPIRED”.

8. Label all fields on any forms

This way, even visually impaired or blind people know what to type and where.
To do this, add a label immediately before the field (e.g., Email Address), and maintain a logical tab order (top to bottom, and left to right for Western languages).

9. Add a table of contents to longer documents

This makes navigation easier and faster.
To do this, place the cursor where you want it, select Insert, select Table of Contents, and accept the default settings.
For the table of contents, level 1/2/3 headings are used, so step 1 is extremely important.

Outcome and conclusions of the VI Latin American LibreOffice Congress

2025-10-23

Gustavo Pacheco send us this report on the activities of the sixth edition of the Latin American LibreOffice Congress, held in Habana, Cuba, from October 6 to 9, 2025:

Official photo Cibersociedad 2025 + Latin American LibreOffice Congress

With a completely different organizational model than in previous years, our conference was held as a prominent section within another broader event: the Cibersociedad 2025 congress.

Held every two years by the Union of Computer Scientists of Cuba, Cibersociedad aims to be a space for innovation and proposals for the construction of a more sustainable and equitable digital future.

For the events in 2019 in Asunción, 2022 in Brasília and 2023 in Mexico City, we had the support of universities, and in 2024 in Montevide, support local communities. But 2025 marked a new moment for the Latin American organizing committee. On this occasion, our relationship was established with an organization of professionals, the UIC, which contributed all its knowledge and structure to the planning of a joint event.

The idea arose from the proposal of the president of the UIC in 2023, Ailyn Febles, who, in contact with Gustavo Pacheco, presented the invitation to hold the conference in Cuba, motivated by the legacy left by Carlos Parra (1961-2022), an active member of both the UIC and theTDF.

As in 2023 we already had our congress confirmed for Mexico City, we would talk again during that year to align the possibilities.

In addition to the excellent event in Mexico City, at that time we also had the Montevideo congress. That one was an atypical event, as it was carried out as a contingency to the originally planned place, the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil, affected by the largest flood of the century in May 2024. The event was only saved from being canceled thanks to the support of the Uruguayan community. Thus, for the first time, the congress was held in a public space outside a university: a challenge also for local volunteers.

We did not reach the expected face-to-face audience, but we had a meeting with exceptionally high-quality participations. With the participation of Gastón Hannay in the graphic design activities, we achieved the objective of the congress to always bring, as a minimum, a new permanent volunteer for the project, in addition to interesting results from the participation among the members, such as the development of new formulas for Calc, by Xisco Fauli, based on the presentation of the practical experience of Ismael Fanlo with spreadsheet users.

With the results of 2024, we began planning for 2025 based on the premise of taking advantage of our participation in the event to visit universities, public institutions, third sector entities, local communities, etc., in their own organizational spaces. This idea was very well received by the then new president of the UIC, Omar Correa.

The initiative would also fit the way the event would be carried out. By incorporating our event into a larger one, we obtained the benefit of reducing the workload, however, we no longer had total autonomy in defining the programming. This year, we had a smaller number of speakers, none of them from Asia, which, as far as possible, we intend to improve in future editions.

In fact, since Cibersociedad is a broad event, the LibreOffice project programming was concentrated on the opening day, October 6, and in the special session “LibreOffice Congress and Technological Sovereignty”, on the 8th. With the remaining days available, we articulated a parallel agenda of activities, with visits and strategic meetings with managers and professionals from governmental and community areas.

Opening Session

We started Cibersociedad 2025 with Gustavo Pacheco representing the LibreOffice project in the Opening Session, together with the Minister of Communications of Cuba, Mayra Arevich, the president of the UIC, Omar Correa, the representative of the Central Committee of the PCC, Omar Pérez Salomón, and the president of the Scientific Committee, Tatiana Delgado.

Opening Session Cibersociedad 2025

Immediately after the opening session, we had our first strategic meetings.

In addition to welcoming, the Minister of Communications of Cuba, Mayra Arevich, showed interest in the implementation process of LibreOffice by the Government of Mexico, presented by Adlair Cerecedo. Subsequently, the importance of the participation of the LibreOffice project in Cuba became even more evident with the publication of the minister in her profile after the conference of Olivier Hallot on LibreOffice and the most important aspects of the migration process. Through the minister, we were also received by the general director of the Joven Club project, Maidelys Pupo, on October 9.

It was also the moment to personally meet Professor Joaquín Pina, from the UIC of Havana. Professor Pina will be the focal point of contact for the Cuban community. On the initiative of Pina, Hanoi Calvo and Liber Luis González, an online group was formed with students and professionals linked to the UIC. This working group will aim to study and develop extensions for LibreOffice, with possible results for the next FLISOL, the most important decentralized Free Software event in Latin America, in April 2026.

We also had long conversations with the LPI representative in Latin America, Juan Ibarra. Ibarra is Paraguayan and already participated in a LibreOffice Conference in 2021. Through Juan, we were able to learn about LPI’s strategy for the Cuban market, which involves both the UIC and the universities.

Finally, the rector of the University of Computer Sciences (UCI), Raydel Montesino, informed us about the itinerary prepared for the visit to the UCI the following day.

Visit to the UCI

On October 7, our agenda was completely focused on the visit to the University of Computer Sciences (UCI).

To make the meeting possible, our request was:

to know the University, its courses, the profile of its faculty and students, and its relationship with Free Software projects;
hold a meeting with the members of the University’s board of directors, to assess the possibility of a joint long-term collaboration;
present LibreOffice to the students, preferably to those who had some relationship with free software projects.

After a 30 km journey from Havana, we arrived at the UCI, where we were received by the director of International Relations, Delly Lien González. The university has an infrastructure of more than 150 buildings, distributed in 268 hectares. Over 21 years, it has trained more than 16,800 engineers and technicians. The UCI is also the headquarters of Nova Linux, the reference Linux distribution in Cuba.

After the detailed presentation, we were invited to a meeting with the administration professors and the Nova Linux developers. In our presentation, we highlighted our interest in spreading LibreOffice in universities through the exchange of our knowledge and, in the case of the UCI, stimulating the formation of a study group focused on LibreOffice that can meet the needs of local users, based on the Nova Linux team. For its part, the UCI highlighted the technical training of the university and that yes, there is interest in this type of collaborative action, which we should detail in the coming weeks.

Meeting LibreOffice Latin America, UCI Board of Directors and Nova Linux.

Our next activity was a technical presentation for the UCI students. Xisco, Olivier, Mauricio and Adlair gave a presentation and then Gustavo spoke about the main topics of the Latin American LibreOffice Congress held in Cuba and the reasons for the visit to the UCI.

Gustavo Pacheco in the presentation for UCI students.

Xisco Fauli and Olivier Hallot present Show me the Code! for UCI students

Next, Olivier and Xisco presented the talk Show me the Code!, a technical introduction to LibreOffice with the main aspects of the development process.

Photo of the meeting of the LibreOffice project with the UCI students in front of the panel in tribute to José Martí.

At the end of the visit, after the photo with the group, professors Ailyn Estrada and Serguey González presented us with copies of the book Good Practices for Migration to Open Source, a UCI publication that very well illustrates the history and importance of open technologies in the institution.

Special Session – LibreOffice Congress and Technological Sovereignty

The third day of the event was dedicated to our programming with additional panels related to Free Software and Technological Sovereignty.

Within our space in the programming, we organized the presentations differently than in other years. On this occasion, apart from the initial introductory conference by Olivier, the topics were divided into panels with two speakers each. In this way, despite the breadth of the content, the dynamics of the activities were attractive to the participants:

Conference LibreOffice and the liberation of digital imperialism, Olivier Hallot

Olivier Hallot opens the special session of the LibreOffice project in Cibersociedad 2025

The first conference, proposed and presented by Olivier, was very important to update the knowledge of the public present. Through a clear presentation, Olivier mentioned the main characteristics of the product and the project, highlighting important topics related to the event, such as technological sovereignty and access to knowledge.

Panel Migration of the LibreOffice suite and the project of the Government of Mexico, Olivier Hallot and Adlair Cerecedo-Méndez

Gustavo Pacheco, Mauricio Baeza, Omar Correa, Adlair Cerecedo and Olivier Hallot.

Next, Olivier led the transition of the topic to the migration process to LibreOffice, where Adlair presented the details that, today, qualify the Mexican project as one of the most important projects in progress, not only in Latin America, but throughout the world.

Panel “Opportunities and Connections for the rebirth of the Cuban LibreOffice community”, Gustavo Pacheco and Mauricio Baeza

This panel originally had a propositional structure in which ideas for the reorganization of the Cuban community would be presented. However, the first days of activities in Havana were so intense that Gustavo and Mauricio decided to modify the focus of the panel and mention the results already achieved, among which are:

the work agenda proposed by Joaquín Pina focused on Flisol 2026;
the visit to the UCI and the possibility of collaborative projects with LibreOffice and Nova Linux;
the common interest between the technological projects of Cuba and Mexico with the support of the community;
the surprises related to the interactions of the event, such as the interest in the LibreOffice Training Certification, motivated by the presentation of Professor Yusniel Valdés, from Pinar del Río, on the use of LibreOffice for the teaching of computer science in primary and secondary schools in Cuba.

The example of the Brazilian community was also mentioned, through the four basic aspects to stimulate volunteer work: regular online meetings, friendly environment, clear and objective tasks and tutoring of the most experienced. Mauricio contributed the Mexican experience, detailing the importance of the 2023 conference and the LibreOffice project in the Social Service: the period in which young Mexicans carry out volunteer work with mentoring for a few months for the benefit of society in general.

Panel “Technical visions of the LibreOffice project: Quality Control and Extensions”, Xisco Fauli and Mauricio Baeza

Xisco Fauli began his presentation with an introduction to quality control, highlighting the collaborative tasks that provide the new volunteer with a quick technical understanding of the project.

Xisco Fauli and Mauricio Baeza.

Mauricio Baeza presented the development of extensions in LibreOffice with Python. This was a strategically important presentation for our event due to the interest shown in the group that Professor Joaquín Pina will coordinate.

Practical workshop: Show me code!, Olivier Hallot and Xisco Fauli

Olivier and Xisco finished the day repeating the technical presentation they had made the day before at the UCI. A technical introduction to LibreOffice with the main aspects of the development process, talking about the knowledge requirements, the infrastructure and the support resources of the project.

Explanation of Xisco Fauli about the Easy Hacks of LibreOffice.

Xisco Fauli, Mauricio Baeza, Adlair Cerecedo, Gustavo Pacheco, Mayra Arevich, Minister of Communications of Cuba, Olivier Hallot and Omar Correa, President of the UIC.

Joven Club

Taking advantage of the proximity, we visited the central headquarters of the Joven Club, in the central area of Havana. The general director of the project, Maidelys Pupo, explained to us that the Joven Club is a public organization with its own financing, created by Fidel Castro with the aim of implementing teaching centers in the areas of robotics, electronics and computer science for young people. In total, the Joven Club has more than 600 facilities in hundreds of Cuban cities. The biggest challenge today, according to Maidelys, is the infrastructure. There are difficulties in updating the equipment park. Even the simplest maintenance tasks take longer than expected.

Central Headquarters of the Joven Club project in Havana.

Under the local coordination of Niurbelis Maturell, the students of the Adalberto Gómez Núñez School presented scientific initiation projects in the areas of robotics and augmented reality.

Meeting with teachers and students of the Joven Club project

Later, the director of national computerization, Lexy Gaspar, joined us, who detailed the projects in progress, despite all the difficulties derived from the current economic situation in Cuba. Due to its capillarity throughout the country and for being a technical training center, the structure of the Joven Club is used by companies and government agencies for teaching and support in the area of technology.

Final outcome

The day after the closing of the congress was dedicated to evaluating the results, before the participants began the return trip. In general terms, the experience was very positive. After months of organization and planning work, we can affirm that the Latin American LibreOffice Congress has fulfilled its objectives. We spread the knowledge of the project, consolidated institutional relations and recovered the legacy of our member Carlos. We have excellent possibilities to continue with the growth of the local community of the LibreOffice project in Cuba, either by individual or institutional initiatives.

As a secondary result, the importance of the Mexico migration project became evident. This was one of the motivations why we received the invitation from Manuel Haro, from the Gnome Latam project, to participate in the CCOSS + Gnome LATAM Conference, on November 21 and 22 in Aguascalientes, Mexico.

As for the future, for the next editions, the same formula for success this year can be repeated.

Leaving the event space and presenting LibreOffice where users and potential collaborators are was fundamental to our success. We are not yet sure where the next edition will take place, but Bolivia, Chile and Colombia, in that order, emerge as possibilities. Whatever the place and the model, our event will continue with the objective of bringing, in the best possible way, the LibreOffice project to the local communities of Latin America.

LibreOffice and Google Summer of Code 2025: The results

2025-10-222025-11-03

This year, LibreOffice was once again a mentoring organization in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a global program focused on bringing more developers into free and open source software development. Seven projects were finished successfully. Contributors and mentors enjoyed the time, and here we present some of the achievements, which should make their way into LibreOffice 26.2 in early February 2026!

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

Import Markdown files into LibreOffice Writer by Ujjawal Kumar Chouhan

Mentors: Thorsten Behrens (Collabora), Ilmari Lauhakangas (TDF)

Requests to add support for the simple text formatting language known as Markdown to LibreOffice have been more and more frequent. These days Markdown is often encountered in forum posts, chat messages and readme files. In fact, the content of the website of The Document Foundation is written in Markdown.

Thanks to this project, LibreOffice now supports importing Markdown files and pasting Markdown content into Writer as well as pasting Markdown tables into Calc. The supported dialect is CommonMark with GitHub-style table syntax and the library used is MD4C.

Additionally, Collabora developers added support for exporting to Markdown from Writer.

Learn more about Markdown import in the final report.

New Dialog To Edit Table Styles by Karthik Godha

Mentors: Heiko Tietze (TDF), Rafael Lima

LibreOffice does not yet support proper styles for tables, but has a system for applying direct formatting to them. Before Karthik’s work, it was only possible to add new formatting templates, while now existing ones can be edited as well. At the time of writing this, the feature has not yet been merged into the code base, but hopefully it will appear in the next weeks.

Learn more about the table styles project in the final report.

Python code auto-completion by Manish Bera

Mentors: Xisco Faulí, Hossein Nourikhah (TDF)

Power users are sure to love the improvements brought to Python support by this project. Now Python IDEs are able to provide auto-completion for LibreOffice UNO API methods and properties, flag type errors and display information about parameters and types.

Learn more about the Python auto-completion project in the final report.

BASIC IDE code auto-completion by Devansh Varshney

Mentors: Jonathan Clark, Hossein Nourikhah (TDF), Rafael Lima

BASIC macro developers are not forgotten: this project implemented an object browser, allowing the macro author to see all the available and used methods and properties, including the whole UNO API. A helpful view for details is shown, reducing the need to dig through the API documentation. After this foundational achievement, the next goal is to add context-aware auto-completion to the BASIC IDE editor.

Learn more about the BASIC auto-completion project in the final report.

Rust UNO Language Binding by Mohamed Ali Mohamed

Mentor: Stephan Bergmann (Collabora)

Rust is a popular type safe programming language, which can now be used to write LibreOffice extensions or do any kind of scripting and processing via the UNO API.

Learn more about the Rust binding in the final report.

Implement report builder in C++ by Adam Seskunas

Mentors: Michael Weghorn, Hossein Nourikhah (TDF)

The Report Builder produces Writer documents from Base files. While it might not be the most popular feature in LibreOffice, there have been increasing concerns about the maintainability of the current Java-based tool. The first group of people to celebrate Adam’s reimplementation will surely be Linux package maintainers, who had even started omitting the feature entirely. At the time of writing this, the feature has not yet been merged into the code base.

Learn more about the C++ Report Builder in the final report.

Rework Impress slideshow to use DrawingLayer primitives by Shardul Vikram Singh

Mentors: Thorsten Behrens, Sarper Akdemir (Collabora)

This is important modernising work happening under the hood of Impress. The project mostly completed the rework on Linux, laying a foundation for rendering modernisation on other platforms. The code itself lives in a separate feature branch for now and will not be merged for LibreOffice 26.2.

Learn more about the slideshow rework 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!

Coming up: LibreOffice event in Nepal

2025-10-16

Look! Our Nepalese community is preparing a very cool LibreOffice event for early December. More details to come – stay tuned to this blog 😉

End of 10. Ten reasons to switch from Windows to Linux on your desktop

2025-10-142025-10-14

Today, Microsoft is ending official support for Windows 10. This leaves users who want to continue using the operating system with few alternatives — especially if they have an old PC that is not compatible with Windows 11’s demanding hardware requirements — other than buying a new PC.

If you’re tired of struggling with your operating system instead of getting work done, it might be time to reconsider your setup. Linux isn’t just for servers and developers; it’s also a viable alternative to Windows for desktop use. Whether you’re looking for better performance, greater privacy, or a more intuitive user experience, Linux is the answer.

Here are 10 reasons why switching to Linux is a good idea:

No Forced Updates. Windows often interrupts your work with updates and sometimes restarts your system without permission. With Linux, you have full control over when and how you update. No surprises. No more restarts during a Zoom call!
It’s Really Free. Linux costs zero in any currency. Most distributions are open source, meaning you can download, install and use them for free forever, with no licence fees or activation keys. There are also no “Pro” versions that hide features which are only available for a fee.
Speed and Performance. Linux is generally faster than Windows, particularly on older PCs. It starts up faster, uses less RAM, and does not slow down due to background processes. Your old PC will be given a new lease of life and will continue to function well for years to come.
Privacy Built In. Unlike Windows, Linux does not track users, collect data about your connection or send your data to the cloud for “diagnostics”. What you do on your PC stays on your PC — as it should be with all operating systems.
No Useless Software. Windows comes with pre-installed software that you never asked for, such as games, shopping apps and trial versions. Microsoft also suggests Edge as if it were the only browser available. In contrast, Linux distributions allow you to choose exactly what to install, based on your needs.
Security Without Issues. Linux is less targeted by malware because it has more robust user authorisation systems, meaning that an antivirus is not always required. It is more secure from the outset, especially for experienced users.
You Own Your System. Linux enables you to customise every aspect of your desktop, from the user interface to the kernel. Windows locks you into its ecosystem, whereas Linux puts you in control.
Easy Application Management. Linux uses package managers that enable you to install and update apps from trusted sources with a single command. This makes it much cleaner, safer and faster than Windows.
Freedom of Choice. The fact that not all Linux systems are the same is a good thing, as it allows you to choose the distribution that best suits your needs. While Windows offers a single version, Linux offers dozens.
Community Matters and Helps. Linux boasts a global community of passionate users who love to help others. Stuck on something? Chances are someone has already solved your problem. The support is genuine and is often superior to that offered by Microsoft’s official channels.

In conclusion, Linux isn’t perfect. No operating system is perfect, but Linux is an interesting choice for users who want speed, privacy, control, and freedom from Big Tech’s impositions. It has come a long way since its days as a system for geeks, and is now more intuitive than ever.

If you’re ready to step outside your Windows comfort zone, Linux is certainly worth considering.

TDF Community Blog

Recent Posts

The Role of ODF in the Era of Digital Identity and Authentication

Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.4

Czech translation of LibreOffice Draw Guide 25.8

Videos from the Open Source Conference 2025 in Luxembourg

Relaunching ODF Advocacy as ODF News

Winners in the Month of LibreOffice, November 2025 – Grab your free sticker pack 😊