Thanks to your generous donations, and contributions from our ecosystem of certified developers, we released two major releases of LibreOffice in 2018: 6.0 on January 31, and version 6.1 on August 8. In addition, 14 minor releases were also made available throughout the year, for the 5.4, 6.0 and 6.1 branches. Meanwhile, several Bug Hunting Sessions were held in preparation for the new major releases. These typically took place on a single day between set times, so that experienced developers and QA engineers could help new volunteers to file and triage bugs via the IRC channels and mailing lists. The Bug Hunting Sessions for LibreOffice 5.4 were held on April 27, May 28 and July 3 – while those for LibreOffice 6.2 took place on October 22, November 19 and December 21. LibreOffice 6.0 On January 31, LibreOffice 6.0 was officially released after six months of development. This included a new ePUB filter, for saving documents as eBooks, while support for opening QuarkXPress documents was added as well. Other new features included: a revamped special characters dialog; OpenPGP support for signing and encryption on all desktop platforms; a brand new web browser-based help system; and better flexibility when using custom
Today we talk to Ahmad Haris, who helps out with LibreOffice events in Asia, and has recently joined The Document Foundation’s Membership Committee. (Click here to learn more about the benefits of membership.) Here’s what he had to say… Where do you live, how can people find you on the web, and what are your interests outside of LibreOffice? I live in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia. However, I was born in East Java (the opposite side). I’m active on Facebook, Twitter, and sometimes Google+ and IRC (last one only for meetings with GNOME Foundation Members). When I’m not working on LibreOffice, I play the guitar, or ride my motorcycle 🙂 What have you been doing in the LibreOffice community? I helped to organize the Indonesia LibreOffice Conference 2018 in March this year. (See the full report here.) That’s my biggest contribution so far. Before that, I just using and testing the software. How did you get involved? In 2008, I was migrating a city (Central Aceh – Aceh Province) and a province (Yogyakarta Province) here in Indonesia to use Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). At that time I used OpenOffice.org. I was helping the government to use it for
LibreOffice Documentation Team has just released the LibreOffice 6.0 Writer Guide, with a general Introduction to LibreOffice Writer followed by the following chapters: Working with Text (basics), Working with Text (advanced), Formatting Text, Formatting Pages (basics), Formatting Pages (advanced), Print Export Email, Introduction to Styles, Working with Styles, Templates, Images & Graphics, Lists, Tables of Data, Mail Merge, TOCs Indexes Biblios, Master Documents, Fields, Forms, Spreadsheets Charts Objects, Setting Up Writer and Customizing Writer, for a total of 448 pages. LibreOffice 6.0 Writer Guide is available from TDF Wiki as ODT and PDF, both the complete book and individual chapters, and from ODF Authors as ODT of individual chapters. LibreOffice 6.0 Writer Guide is also available as a printed book from Lulu, by Friends of Open Document Inc., an Australia-based volunteer organisation with members around the world which will be using profits from the sale to benefit the LibreOffice community.
The Annual Report of The Document Foundation for the year 2017 is now available in PDF format from TDF Nextcloud in two different versions: low resolution (7.4MB) and high resolution (31.5MB). The annual report is based on the German version presented to the authorities in April. The 48 page document has been entirely created with free open source software: written contents have obviously been developed with LibreOffice Writer (desktop) and collaboratively modified with LibreOffice Writer (online), charts have been created with LibreOffice Calc and prepared for publishing with LibreOffice Draw, drawings and tables have been developed or modified (from legacy PDF originals) with LibreOffice Draw, images have been prepared for publishing with GIMP, and the layout has been created with Scribus based on the existing templates. Pictures have been kindly provided by members of the LibreOffice community from Albania, Brasil, Germany, Italy, Japan, Taiwan and Turkey. TDF Annual Report will soon be available on Lulu for print-on-demand. In addition, some printed copies will be available at LibreOffice Conference in Tirana.
Berlin, January 31, 2018 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.0, a major release and a dramatically improved free office suite, which celebrates the 7th anniversary of the availability of the very first version of LibreOffice. Today LibreOffice is more powerful, simple and secure, and offers superior interoperability with Microsoft Office documents. LibreOffice 6.0 is immediately available for Windows, macOS and Linux, and for the cloud. The new major release adds a large number of significant new features to the core engine and to individual modules (Writer, Calc and Impress/Draw), with the objective of providing users with the best in terms of personal productivity. A video summarizing the top new features of LibreOffice 6.0 is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHBve8v13VY. Power The Notebookbar, although still an experimental feature, has been enriched with two new variants: Grouped Bar Full for Writer, Calc and Impress, and Tabbed Compact for Writer. The Special Characters dialog has been reworked, with the addition of lists for Recent and Favorite characters, along with a Search field. The Customize dialog has also been redesigned, and is now more modern and intuitive. In Writer, a Form menu has been added, making it easier to access one of the most
Berlin, January 22, 2018 – The Document Liberation Project announces five new or improved libraries to export EPUB3 and import AbiWord, MS Publisher, PageMaker and QuarkXPress files. The libraries have been originally developed for the LibreOffice 6.0 major release, but can be used by any other software thanks to the OSI (Open Source Initiative) compliant license. libe-book exports LibreOffice ODT files to EPUB3. At the moment it offers just basic features, but development is still undergoing and new features will be added before the next major release. The library can be downloaded from https://sourceforge.net/projects/libebook/. A description of the architecture and the features is available here: https://vmiklos.hu/blog/basic-epub3-export.html. libabw imports AbiWord documents, and can be downloaded from http://dev-www.libreoffice.org/src/libabw/. The library home page is at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DLP/Libraries/libabw. libmspub imports MS Publisher documents, and can be downloaded from http://dev-www.libreoffice.org/src/libmspub/. The library home page is at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DLP/Libraries/libmspub. libpagemaker imports PageMaker 6/7 documents, and can be downloaded from http://dev-www.libreoffice.org/src/libpagemaker. The library home page is at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DLP/Libraries/libpagemaker. libqxp imports QuarkXPress 3.1/4.1 documents and templates and can be downloaded from http://dev-www.libreoffice.org/src/libqxp/. The library home page is at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DLP/Libraries/libqxp. The Document Liberation Project was created to empower individuals, organizations and governments to recover their data – hidden inside obfuscated proprietary
