News: 0000828071

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LibreOffice 7.0 released

([Development] Aug 5, 2020 13:43 UTC (Wed) (corbet))


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/

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.

A waist is a terrible thing to mind.
-- Ziggy