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
Our native language projects benefit enormously from volunteers around the world, who help make LibreOffice a success in many different locations. In our latest contributor interview, we talk to Lera Goncharuk who is active in the Russian community, helping out with translations and documentation. What is your IRC nickname, nationality and current location? I am “tagezi” in the IRC channels on Freenode, as well as The Document Foundation (TDF) wiki, but my friends call me Lera – that is a short version of my full name, Valerii. I was born in the USSR and lived in the Russian Federation the biggest part of my life. Now I live in Finland. Do you work for a LibreOffice-related company or just contribute in your spare time? I have been using Linux as my primary operating system since 2004 on a daily basis. And I started to use LibreOffice since the early days of the project’s formation, which came to replace OpenOffice.org. What areas of the project do you normally work on? Anything else you want to tackle? My main goal is translating documentation, wiki articles and news for the Russian community. But in addition, I have made a few patches for the
Berlin, March 6, 2017 – The Document Foundation’s Documentation Team announces the immediate availability of the new Getting Started with LibreOffice guide version 5.2. The guide was updated to include the developments of LibreOffice 5.2 and previous releases. The Getting Started guide is an introductory text for end users on using the LibreOffice office suite. It is written for individuals as well as organizations that deploy LibreOffice as their preferred office suite tool. The text allows users to get familiar with the features and resources of LibreOffice and shorten the time to become productive in office document edition. The guide is written in LibreOffice Writer in Open Document Format (ODF). The team worked to not only update the contents but also to clean the formatting used in the text with a double objective: One is to make the text suitable for computer aided translation (CAT) tools and the other is to generate an online version (XHTML) of the guide. The documents composing the Guide were formatted using styles only, avoiding direct formatting that has impact on CAT tools and on HTML export. For HTML export, the underneath template of the documents was adapted to handle the unmatched formatting properties between
Berlin, February 1st, 2017 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.3, one of the most feature-rich releases in the history of the application. The office suite is immediately available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and for the first time also for the private cloud. LibreOffice 5.3 represents a significant step forward in the evolution of the software: it offers an introduction to new features such as online with collaborative editing, which increase the competitive positioning of the application, and at the same time provides incremental improvements, to make the program more reliable, interoperable and user-friendly. “LibreOffice is backed by a fantastic community of developers”, says Michael Meeks, a member of the board of The Document Foundation. “In 2010, only a few people were betting on our capability of attracting a large number of code contributors, which are instrumental for the success of a large code base. In six years we have attracted over 1,100 new developers and, thanks to this large community, during the last two years we have had an average of 300 people active on the source code”. LibreOffice 5.3 highlights LibreOffice 5.3 offers a number of interesting new features in every area: a new cross-platform text layout
Information on the ODF standard and how to move your organization to ODF-compliant document solutions The document has been forked in a textual format (Pandoc’s Markdown) by Paolo Dongilli, to keep track of versions and changes, correct typos, add new content and easily fork it for localization purposes. It is available on GitHub: https://github.com/paolodongilli/ODF-Guidance. This guidance gives general information on the standard, as well as more detailed information for chief technology officers and government procurement officers. Table of Contents: Introduction to Open Document Format (ODF) Procure ODF solutions Base ODF solutions on user needs Validators and compliance testing Platforms and devices Accessibility Privacy and security Avoid macros in documents Integrate ODF with enterprise tools Extensions, plugins and custom solutions Collaborate on documents Change tracking in ODF Embed fonts in ODF documents Corporate styles and templates ODF spreadsheets and formulas Support and training Overview of productivity software Costs and benefits of ODF
LibreOffice 5.1.5 “still” announced, for enterprise class deployments Berlin, August 3, 2016 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.2, a feature-rich major release of the best free office suite ever created – targeted to early adopters and power users – with several user interface improvements and enterprise grade features. At the same time, LibreOffice 5.1.5 has been released, for enterprise class deployments and more conservative office suite users LibreOffice 5.2 provides document classification according to the TSCP standard, and a set of improved forecasting functions in Calc. In addition, multiple signature descriptions are now supported, along with import and export of signatures from OOXML files. Interoperability features have also been improved, with better Writer import filters for DOCX and RTF files, and the added support for Word for DOS legacy documents. Additional type argument values for interoperability with other spreadsheets, along with wildcard support in formula expressions for compatibility with XLS/XLSX and ODF 1.2, have also been added. In term of user experience, a single toolbar mode has been added to Writer and Calc to help users really focus on content, and some icons have been added to the default toolbars to make several frequently used functions – such as
