LibreOffice 7.0 released
([Development] Aug 5, 2020 13:43 UTC (Wed) (corbet))
- Reference: 0000828071
- News link: https://lwn.net/Articles/828071
- Source link:
Version 7.0 of the LibreOffice office suite is out. It brings a long list of new features, including: " support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.3; Skia graphics engine and Vulkan GPU-based acceleration for better performance; and carefully improved compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files ". The plan to create a differentiated "enterprise edition" that was [1]discussed in July has been deferred and is not part of this release.
From :
"media-AT-documentfoundation.org" <media-AT-documentfoundation.org>
To :
corbet-AT-lwn.net
Subject :
LibreOffice 7.0
Date :
Wed, 5 Aug 2020 14:24:27 +0200
Message-ID :
<9a2afa4ebaf3cb62049b1ef09517ff79@phplist.com>
LibreOffice 7.0: the new major release of the best FOSS office suite ever
is available on all OSes and platforms, and provides significant new
features
Berlin, August 5, 2020 - The LibreOffice Project announces the availability
of LibreOffice 7.0, a new major release providing significant new features:
support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.3; Skia graphics engine and Vulkan
GPU-based acceleration for better performance; and carefully improved
compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files.
Support for ODF 1.3. OpenDocument, LibreOffice's native open and
standardised format for office documents, has recently been updated to
version 1.3 as an OASIS Technical Committee Specification. The most
important new features are digital signatures for documents and
OpenPGP-based encryption of XML documents, with improvements in areas such
as change tracking, and additional details in the description of elements
in first pages, text, numbers and charts. The development of ODF 1.3
features has been funded by donations to The Document Foundation.
Skia graphics engine and Vulkan GPU-based acceleration. The Skia graphics
engine has been implemented thanks to sponsorship by AMD, and is now the
default on Windows, for faster performance. Skia is an open source 2D
graphics library which provides common APIs that work across a variety of
hardware and software platforms, and can be used for drawing text, shapes
and images. Vulkan is a new-generation graphics and compute API with
high-efficiency and cross-platform access to modern GPUs.
Better compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. DOCX now saves in
native 2013/2016/2019 mode, instead of 2007 compatibility mode, to improve
interoperability with multiple versions of MS Office, based on the same
Microsoft approach. Export to XLSX files with sheet names longer than 31
characters is now possible, along with exporting checkboxes in XLSX. The
"invalid content error" message was resolved when opening exported XLSX
files with shapes. Finally, there were improvements to the PPTX
import/export filter.
LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite
arena, starting from native support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) -
with better security and interoperability features over proprietary formats
- to almost perfect support for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. In addition,
LibreOffice includes filters for many legacy document formats, and as such
is the best interoperability tool in the market.
Summary of Other New Features [1]
GENERAL
New icon theme, the default on macOS: Sukapura
New shapes galleries: arrows, diagrams, icons and more...
Glow and soft edge effects for objects
WRITER
Navigator is easier to use, with more context menus
Semi-transparent text is now supported
Bookmarks can now be displayed in-line in text
Padded numbering in lists, for consistency
Better handling of quotation marks and apostrophes
CALC
New functions for non-volatile random number generation
Keyboard shortcut added for autosum
IMPRESS & DRAW
Semi-transparent text is supported here too
Subscripts now return to the default of 8%
PDFs larger than 500 cm can now be generated
LibreOffice Technology
LibreOffice 7.0's new features have been developed by a large community of
code contributors: 74% of commits are from developers employed by companies
sitting in the Advisory Board, such as Collabora, Red Hat and CIB, plus
several other organizations, and 26% are from individual volunteers.
In addition, there is a global community of individual volunteers taking
care of other fundamental activities, such as quality assurance, software
localization, user interface design and user experience, editing of help
content and documentation, along with free software and open document
standards advocacy.
A video summarizing the top new features in LibreOffice 7.0 is available on
YouTube:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
and also on PeerTube:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
Products based on LibreOffice Technology are available for all major
desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), for the
cloud and for mobile platforms. They are released by The Document
Foundation, and by ecosystem companies contributing to software
development.
LibreOffice for End Users
LibreOffice 7.0 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open
source office suites, and as such is targeted at technology enthusiasts,
early adopters and power users. The Document Foundation does not provide
any technical support for users, although they can get help from other
users on mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
For users whose main objective is personal productivity and therefore
prefer a release that has undergone more testing and bug fixing over the
new features, The Document Foundation maintains the LibreOffice 6.4 family,
which includes some months of back-ported fixes. The current version is
LibreOffice 6.4.5.
LibreOffice in Business
For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends sourcing
LibreOffice from one of the ecosystem partners, to get long-term supported
releases, dedicated assistance, custom new features and other benefits,
including SLA (Service Level Agreements):
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
The work
done by ecosystem partners is an integral part of LibreOffice Technology.
For migrations from proprietary office suites and training, professional
support should be sourced from certified professionals who provide
value-added services which extend the reach of the community to the
corporate world, and offer CIOs and IT managers a solution in line with
proprietary offerings. Reference page:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
In fact, LibreOffice - thanks to its mature codebase, rich feature set,
strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and long-term
support options from certified partners - represents the ideal solution for
businesses that want to regain control of their data and free themselves
from vendor lock-in.
Availability of LibreOffice 7.0
LibreOffice 7.0 is immediately available from the following link:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
Minimum requirements for proprietary
operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple macOS 10.12. Builds
of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are available as Docker images
from TDF:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
LibreOffice Technology based products for Android and iOS are listed here:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...,
while for App Stores
and ChromeOS are listed here:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can
support The Document Foundation with a donation at
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
LibreOffice 7.0 is built with document conversion libraries from the
Document Liberation Project:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
[1] A more comprehensive list of LibreOffice 7.0 new features is available
on the Release Notes wiki page:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
Press Kit
The press kit with press release and high-resolution images and
screenshots, is available here:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
--
This press release was sent to corbet@lwn.net by
media@documentfoundation.org
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[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/
From :
"media-AT-documentfoundation.org" <media-AT-documentfoundation.org>
To :
corbet-AT-lwn.net
Subject :
LibreOffice 7.0
Date :
Wed, 5 Aug 2020 14:24:27 +0200
Message-ID :
<9a2afa4ebaf3cb62049b1ef09517ff79@phplist.com>
LibreOffice 7.0: the new major release of the best FOSS office suite ever
is available on all OSes and platforms, and provides significant new
features
Berlin, August 5, 2020 - The LibreOffice Project announces the availability
of LibreOffice 7.0, a new major release providing significant new features:
support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.3; Skia graphics engine and Vulkan
GPU-based acceleration for better performance; and carefully improved
compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files.
Support for ODF 1.3. OpenDocument, LibreOffice's native open and
standardised format for office documents, has recently been updated to
version 1.3 as an OASIS Technical Committee Specification. The most
important new features are digital signatures for documents and
OpenPGP-based encryption of XML documents, with improvements in areas such
as change tracking, and additional details in the description of elements
in first pages, text, numbers and charts. The development of ODF 1.3
features has been funded by donations to The Document Foundation.
Skia graphics engine and Vulkan GPU-based acceleration. The Skia graphics
engine has been implemented thanks to sponsorship by AMD, and is now the
default on Windows, for faster performance. Skia is an open source 2D
graphics library which provides common APIs that work across a variety of
hardware and software platforms, and can be used for drawing text, shapes
and images. Vulkan is a new-generation graphics and compute API with
high-efficiency and cross-platform access to modern GPUs.
Better compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. DOCX now saves in
native 2013/2016/2019 mode, instead of 2007 compatibility mode, to improve
interoperability with multiple versions of MS Office, based on the same
Microsoft approach. Export to XLSX files with sheet names longer than 31
characters is now possible, along with exporting checkboxes in XLSX. The
"invalid content error" message was resolved when opening exported XLSX
files with shapes. Finally, there were improvements to the PPTX
import/export filter.
LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office suite
arena, starting from native support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) -
with better security and interoperability features over proprietary formats
- to almost perfect support for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files. In addition,
LibreOffice includes filters for many legacy document formats, and as such
is the best interoperability tool in the market.
Summary of Other New Features [1]
GENERAL
New icon theme, the default on macOS: Sukapura
New shapes galleries: arrows, diagrams, icons and more...
Glow and soft edge effects for objects
WRITER
Navigator is easier to use, with more context menus
Semi-transparent text is now supported
Bookmarks can now be displayed in-line in text
Padded numbering in lists, for consistency
Better handling of quotation marks and apostrophes
CALC
New functions for non-volatile random number generation
Keyboard shortcut added for autosum
IMPRESS & DRAW
Semi-transparent text is supported here too
Subscripts now return to the default of 8%
PDFs larger than 500 cm can now be generated
LibreOffice Technology
LibreOffice 7.0's new features have been developed by a large community of
code contributors: 74% of commits are from developers employed by companies
sitting in the Advisory Board, such as Collabora, Red Hat and CIB, plus
several other organizations, and 26% are from individual volunteers.
In addition, there is a global community of individual volunteers taking
care of other fundamental activities, such as quality assurance, software
localization, user interface design and user experience, editing of help
content and documentation, along with free software and open document
standards advocacy.
A video summarizing the top new features in LibreOffice 7.0 is available on
YouTube:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
and also on PeerTube:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
Products based on LibreOffice Technology are available for all major
desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), for the
cloud and for mobile platforms. They are released by The Document
Foundation, and by ecosystem companies contributing to software
development.
LibreOffice for End Users
LibreOffice 7.0 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open
source office suites, and as such is targeted at technology enthusiasts,
early adopters and power users. The Document Foundation does not provide
any technical support for users, although they can get help from other
users on mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
For users whose main objective is personal productivity and therefore
prefer a release that has undergone more testing and bug fixing over the
new features, The Document Foundation maintains the LibreOffice 6.4 family,
which includes some months of back-ported fixes. The current version is
LibreOffice 6.4.5.
LibreOffice in Business
For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends sourcing
LibreOffice from one of the ecosystem partners, to get long-term supported
releases, dedicated assistance, custom new features and other benefits,
including SLA (Service Level Agreements):
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
The work
done by ecosystem partners is an integral part of LibreOffice Technology.
For migrations from proprietary office suites and training, professional
support should be sourced from certified professionals who provide
value-added services which extend the reach of the community to the
corporate world, and offer CIOs and IT managers a solution in line with
proprietary offerings. Reference page:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
In fact, LibreOffice - thanks to its mature codebase, rich feature set,
strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and long-term
support options from certified partners - represents the ideal solution for
businesses that want to regain control of their data and free themselves
from vendor lock-in.
Availability of LibreOffice 7.0
LibreOffice 7.0 is immediately available from the following link:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
Minimum requirements for proprietary
operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple macOS 10.12. Builds
of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are available as Docker images
from TDF:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
LibreOffice Technology based products for Android and iOS are listed here:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...,
while for App Stores
and ChromeOS are listed here:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can
support The Document Foundation with a donation at
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
LibreOffice 7.0 is built with document conversion libraries from the
Document Liberation Project:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
[1] A more comprehensive list of LibreOffice 7.0 new features is available
on the Release Notes wiki page:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
Press Kit
The press kit with press release and high-resolution images and
screenshots, is available here:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
--
This press release was sent to corbet@lwn.net by
media@documentfoundation.org
Unsubscribe
| Change your subscription options
| Forward this message
[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/
LibreOffice 7.0 released
"The plan to create a differentiated "enterprise edition" that was discussed in July has been deferred and is not part of this release."
Literally the only thing I cared about in this release.
Stop playing games. Sell support if you want to sell support. Don't try to make an open-source product look inferior, when your own history is from a closed-source commercial product that became infinitely more useful when it then became open-source.
Because one of the problems of open-source is "We'll take our ball and place elsewhere". And someone will. And just the naming history of StarOffice, OpenOffice, LibreOffice will tell you exactly how well that goes for the original project, and where the success ends up following - the fork without that nonsense that just does what people want an office suite to do.
LibreOffice 7.0 released
"The plan to create a differentiated "enterprise edition" that was discussed in July has been deferred and is not part of this release."
Literally the only thing I cared about in this release.
Stop playing games. Sell support if you want to sell support. Don't try to make an open-source product look inferior, when your own history is from a closed-source commercial product that became infinitely more useful when it then became open-source.
Because one of the problems of open-source is "We'll take our ball and place elsewhere". And someone will. And just the naming history of StarOffice, OpenOffice, LibreOffice will tell you exactly how well that goes for the original project, and where the success ends up following - the fork without that nonsense that just does what people want an office suite to do.