This is the third and final post on the topic of the artificial complexity of the OOXML format. This complexity is the result of careful design aimed at preventing interoperability. Developers have to deal with a veritable “maze” of tags, even for the simplest content. This binds users to the Microsoft ecosystem, providing the first example of standard-based lock-in.

The PPTX case

To demonstrate the difference in complexity between Impress and PowerPoint XML schemas in ODF and OOXML formats, I created a simple eight-slide presentation summarising the most common types: title and subtitle, centred text, bulleted list, table, vector image, photo, colour graphics and video. I created the same file using both software programmes, starting from a basic template without a background to prevent interference with the slide format and, consequently, the XML schema.

This is the PDF file of the presentation (the first seven slides are identical, while the video on the last slide is replaced by a static image):

To perform the analysis, I duplicated and renamed the two files, replacing the original extension with ‘ZIP’, and then unzipped them to create two folders containing all the files from their respective XML schemas.

The LibreOffice folder is very similar to the one created by Calc and Writer, containing five subfolders – three of which are identical to those of the ODS and ODT files – and five files. manifest.rdf is missing, but all the others are present and have the same characteristics. The Media and Pictures folders were added to contain multimedia content and images. Once again, all the content is located in the content.xml file, while the other files contain instructions for displaying the slides correctly and for displaying elements other than text.

Therefore, despite the diversity of the three applications (Calc, Writer and Impress), we are faced with an extremely consistent internal file structure, as one would expect from a standard that aims to simplify life for users and developers. This consistency is a key benefit and simplifies the reproducibility of the standard format.

The Microsoft 365 folder contains three subfolders and the [Content_Types].xml file, as with the XLSX and DOCX files examined in the last two weeks. One of the folders has a different name, but this relates to the application and does not increase complexity. Opening the ‘[Content_Types].xml’ file provides information about the other files, including those in the subfolders.

In this case, the content is located in eight slide*.xml files (where the asterisk is a sequential number) inside the slide folder within the ppt folder. These folders and files are completely different to those in the XLSX and DOCX files, but information relevant to displaying slides on screen is scattered throughout them. Again, there are no technical reasons for the differences in the XML schemas of the three files other than to make their internal structures more complex. This unnecessary complexity is also reflected in the XML files describing the contents of the presentation.

The ODP file

As with …

Berlin, 9 October 2025 – LibreOffice 25.8.2, the second minor release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for personal productivity in office environments, is now available on our download page for Windows, macOS and Linux.

This release includes over 60 bug and regression fixes over LibreOffice 25.8 [1] to enhance the software’s stability and robustness. It also solves several interoperability issues with the proprietary Microsoft Office/365 document format and improves the user interface and file opening and saving processes.

LibreOffice is the only office suite with a feature set comparable to the market leader. It also offers a range of interface options to suit all user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen form factors by optimising the space available on the desktop to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away.

LibreOffice 25.8.2 is available at www.libreoffice.org/download/.

For users who don’t need the latest features and prefer a version that has undergone more testing and bug fixing, The Document Foundation maintains the LibreOffice 25.2 family, which includes several months of back-ported fixes. The current release is LibreOffice 25.2.6.

The Document Foundation does not provide technical support for users, although they can get it from volunteers on user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support the Document Foundation by making a donation on our donate page.

[1] Fixes in RC1: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.8.2/RC1. Fixes in RC2: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.8.2/RC2.

LibreOffice has been available for Linux since we started the project in 2010. The official builds from The Document Foundation (the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice) are designed to be self-contained and distribution agnostic – that is, they should work on as many distributions as possible.

To achieve this, we test on various Linux distributions, and now we consider Amazon Linux 2023 as another platform supported by LibreOffice. Amazon has provided resources for regular and automated CI (continuous integration) testing of LibreOffice builds against Amazon Linux 2023, including crash-testing runs, via the AWS Open Source Credits programme.

As part of this, and for the general benefit of other users, TDF has started to provide 64-bit ARM Linux builds (aarch64) in RPM format. We’ve worked on improving 64-bit ARM support for various platforms in recent years, including for Windows and on Apple silicon Macs, given that the chips are becoming increasingly used in desktops and servers.

64-bit ARM chips commonly power cloud infrastructure, where LibreOffice is often used in headless (non-GUI) tasks, such as batch conversions of large numbers of documents. But some users run LibreOffice graphically too. With the updates we’ve been working on, LibreOffice is now available on more infrastructure and can be deployed on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). If there’s anything else users would like to see, submit an enhancement request and let us know!

Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…

• At the start of the month, the LibreOffice Conference 2025 took place in Budapest, Hungary. We had talks, workshops, fun social events and more. Thanks to all who attended See the schedule for information about the talks (and links to the slides, where available).

• Also towards the start of September, we announced LibreOffice 25.2.6, the sixth minor update to the previous branch of the suite.

• LibreOffice’s documentation is available in many languages thanks to our worldwide community of translators. The Czech team announced their translation of the Calc Guide 25.2 – excellent work!

• The Annual Report of The Document Foundation describes the foundation’s activities and projects, especially in regard to LibreOffice and the Document Liberation Project. We’ve been posting sections of the 2024 report here on the blog, and now the full version is available.

• Companies around the world use LibreOffice to reduce costs, improve their privacy, and free themselves from dependence on single vendors. We talked to Flotte Karotte, a German company with 50 employees that recently made a generous donation to support the LibreOffice project and community.

• In other event news, planning took place for the Open Source Conference 2025 in Luxembourg and we provided an overview of the LibreOffice-related talks.

• We spoke to Devansh Varshney, who added histogram chart support to LibreOffice and is working on improvements to the Basic IDE.

• Next, our Nepalese community reported back on their Software Freedom Day 2025 event. They had a talk about the importance of open formats, and a fun game too.

• LibreOffice turned 15 years old in September! This is a milestone not only for the software itself, but also for the global movement that it represents.

• And finally, we wrapped up September with a report on the Austrian Military moving 16,000 PCs from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice.

Keep in touch – follow us on Mastodon, X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky, Reddit and Facebook. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join our community and help to make LibreOffice even better!

From October 6 to 9, Havana, Cuba, will host the Latin American LibreOffice 2025 Conference, a meeting that will bring together contributors, developers, universities, and governments from the region to celebrate and strengthen free software.

This year, the Latin American conference will be held as part of the IV International Congress on Digital Transformation (Cibersociedad 2025) in Havana, Cuba. This integration reinforces LibreOffice’s crucial role in the digital transformation of Latin American communities, promoting open innovation, technological sovereignty, and collaboration between countries.

The event will take place at the iconic Hotel Nacional de Cuba and will feature an intense program of lectures, panels, and workshops dedicated to LibreOffice, its communities, and institutional adoption initiatives.

A meeting that connects communities and governments

The opening ceremony will pay tribute to Cuban volunteer Carlos Parra, who passed away in 2022.

It was thanks to his dedication, articulation, and love for the community that the opportunity arose to hold the Latin American LibreOffice Congress in Cuba—a dream he helped make possible.

Carlos was the link between the Cuban community and The Document Foundation, and his contribution will remain as a legacy of collaboration and commitment to digital freedom.

During the event, Adlair Cerecedo-Méndez will present the experience of Office GobMX, the LibreOffice-based suite developed by the Mexican government. Other highlights include the panel “LibreOffice is freedom,” with Olivier Hallot, founding member of The Document Foundation and Documentation Coordinator for the LibreOffice Project, as well as discussions on government migration, extensions, technical quality, and the rebirth of the Cuban community — with participation from Gustavo Pacheco (Brazil), Mauricio Baeza (Mexico), and Xisco Faulí (Spain).

Training and academic innovation

At the University of Information Sciences (UCI), the event will open space for young people and educators with the “LibreOffice and Universities” lab, led by Gustavo Pacheco, and the “Creating my first extension” workshop, conducted by Mauricio Baeza — a practical opportunity for those who want to learn how to expand LibreOffice and contribute technically to the project.

Regional meetings and plans for 2026

The congress will close with meetings between Latin American members of the LibreOffice community, addressing:

• the 2026 events calendar (including esLibre and the next Latin American Congress);
• academic projects such as Google Summer of Code and Outreachy;
• and new partnerships with other free software communities, such as GNOME Latam.

These sessions reflect the collective commitment to strengthening collaboration between countries and consolidating a more active presence for Latin America within The Document Foundation.

An event driven by volunteers

The Congreso Latinoamericano de LibreOffice is an event organized entirely by volunteers, who dedicate their time, energy, and knowledge to make this initiative possible. Our special recognition and thanks go to Daniel Rodriguez (Argentina), Gastón Hannay (Uruguay), Omar Correa (Cuba), Gustavo Pacheco (Brazil), and Juan González (Mexico), who have been working tirelessly to make every detail of this edition possible.

We also express our sincere gratitude to the University of Computer Sciences (UCI) and the Cibersociedad 2025 organization for opening their doors …

The complexity of the OOXML format is linked to its design and was deliberately created to make the format more difficult for non-Microsoft software developers to implement. Compatibility issues are caused by a veritable “maze” of tags used even for the simplest content, which binds users to the Microsoft ecosystem in the first example of standard-based lock-in.

The DOCX case

To demonstrate the difference in complexity between the XML schemas of Writer and Word text documents in the ODF and OOXML formats, I used two classic English theatre plays: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. I downloaded the text versions of these works from Project Gutenberg — a library of classic texts for which US copyright has expired — and deleted the introductions and conclusions added by Project Gutenberg, without making any other changes.

I then repeated this process for both documents.

I copied all the text and pasted it, without any formatting, into two newly created blank documents. For Writer, I used the template that I usually use for unstructured documents; for Word, I did not use a template. This means that, in Writer, the XML schema contains information about the template (margins, paragraph and font formatting), but this does not increase its complexity.

To perform the analysis, I duplicated and renamed the two files, replacing the original extension with “ZIP”, and then decompressed them to create two folders containing all the files of the respective XML schemas.

The LibreOffice folder contained three subfolders and six files with the same names as those in the ODS file examined last week, as would be expected of a standard aiming to simplify life for developers and users. All the content is actually in the content.xml file, while the other files contain instructions for displaying the text document correctly.

The Microsoft 365 folder contains three subfolders and the [Content_Types].xml file, as with the XLSX file examined last week. One of the subfolders has a different name, but this is related to the application and does not increase complexity. Opening the [Content_Types].xml file provides information about the other files, including those in the subfolders.

In this case, the content is in the document.xml file inside the Word folder, which contains folders and files that differ completely from those in the XLSX file. Again, there is no technical reason for this difference in the XML schemas of the two files other than to make their internal structures different and more complex.

Let’s now analyse William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and then Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

Here is the PDF of Hamlet:

The difference in complexity between the document.xml and content.xml files is striking when you compare their lengths: the content.xml file has 6,802 lines, while the document.xml file has 60,245 lines, compared to a text document of 5,566 lines.

Let us now compare the two files’ XML schemas from the beginning to the …

LibreOffice strives to be accessible for people with special needs or limitations, such as visual impairment or limited motor abilities. How does the software work towards this? What accessibility features are in the pipeline? And how can all users help out? We talk to Michael Weghorn about these topics – and more. (This episode is also available on PeerTube.)

Love LibreOffice development? Want to turn your passion into a paid job? We are The Document Foundation (TDF), the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice. We’re passionate about free software, the open source culture and about bringing new companies and people with fresh ideas into our community.

To improve the Base database application of LibreOffice, the office productivity suite for over 200 million users around the globe, we’re searching for a developer (m/f/d) to start work (from home) as soon as possible. This is what you’ll do:

• Work on the LibreOffice codebase (mostly C++)
• Focus on Base, its frontend and backend features and all the ways databases are used elsewhere in the software
• Fix bugs, implement new features, and improve the quality of database code in LibreOffice
• Document what you do, actively share knowledge in public with volunteers and contributors via blog posts, workshops and conference talks, so other developers and users have an easier time learning about your work

Examples of tasks:

• Polish the Firebird integration
• Improve the tool for migrating databases from HSQLDB to Firebird
• Make the new C++-based Report Builder production-ready
• Add support for SQLite databases

What we want from you:

• Very good C++ development skills
• Proven experience working with databases
• Good team-playing skills
• Speaking and writing English

Previous contributions to FOSS projects (show us your repos!) are a plus. A previously established relationship within the developer community, as well as with other teams such as QA is a plus, but it is not mandatory at the start and can be achieved during the work itself.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

Join us!

All jobs at The Document Foundation are remote jobs, where you can work from your home office or a co-working space. The work time during the day is flexible, apart from a few fixed meetings. The role is offered as full-time (ideally 40 hours per week). While we prefer full-time for the role, part-time applications, or proposals to grow the hours over time, will be considered. Candidates that are resident in (or willing to relocate to) Germany will be employed directly by TDF. Otherwise, external payroll services will be used if available in the candidate’s country of residence.

Are you interested? Get in touch! We aim to schedule the first interview within two weeks of your application. You can also approach us any time for an informal chat, to learn about the role or in case of questions.

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, gender, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age. Don’t be afraid to be different, and stay true to yourself. We like you that way!

We’re looking forward to receiving your application, including information about you (your resume), when you are available for the job, and …

Like we’re seeing in Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark and many other government bodies and organisations, the Austrian military (Bundesheer) has migrated 16,000 PCs from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice.

As Heise reports, the main reasons behind the switch are to:

• strengthen digital sovereignty
• maintain independence of IT infrastructure
• ensure that data is processed in-house

The initial plan to move to LibreOffice was formed in 2020, and detailed planning and training of internal developers for improvements began in 2022. In 2023, a company in Germany was contracted to provide technical support and additional development.

The Austrian military’s migration reflects a growing demand for independence from single vendors. With free and open source software like LibreOffice, anyone can study and modify the source code to make improvements specifically for their setup and workflow. Government bodies and organisations can free themselves from vendor lock-in, spending taxpayer’s money on local companies to provide support and further development – rather than paying for license fees from overseas companies.

At the recent LibreOffice Conference 2025, representatives from the Austrian armed forces gave a talk about their switch from Microsoft Office, highlighting some of the new features and improvements that they have sponsored:

Click here to view the slides

Fifteen years ago, we announced our ambitious plan to provide the world with a fully free and open office suite created by and for the community. Today, we are celebrating 15 years of LibreOffice — a milestone not only for the software itself, but also for the global movement that it represents.

LibreOffice was born on 28 September 2010 when it was launched as a fork of OpenOffice. This was not just a technical split, but also a declaration of independence, transparency, and freedom. LibreOffice would be free: free to use, free to modify, and free from corporate constraints.

From day one, our mission has been clear: to empower people through open technology.

A community like no other

LibreOffice has never been alone. Throughout its journey, it has been supported by a community of thousands of contributors and dozens of companies who have contributed to development, design, localisation, quality assurance and other services to support its growth. Many have simply dedicated their time, skills and passion to creating something unique and better for everyone.

Over the years, the community has:

• Released dozens of major versions, each more powerful and significantly better than the last;
• Localised LibreOffice into over 120 languages, some of which are rare or at risk of disappearing, making it accessible to more than 5 billion people;
• Kept the source code open, making it more modern and secure thanks to countless improvements and rewrites;
• Organised conferences, workshops, and hackfests that have stimulated innovation and mentoring.

This is not just software. It is a living project, fuelled by real people and companies who are committed to its daily growth.

Why LibreOffice is more important than ever

In an era of cloud lock-in, creeping surveillance and disappearing ownership, LibreOffice remains a bastion of digital autonomy. It gives individuals, schools, non-profit organisations and governments the opportunity to own their tools rather than “renting” them under licence.

It supports ODF (Open Document Format), the only open document standard, which guarantees users transparent access to and management of their documents and perpetual control over their content. No subscriptions. No forced updates. No strings attached.

Looking back, moving forward

Fifteen years is a significant milestone, but LibreOffice is not slowing down. Thanks to continuous improvements to the user interface, increased compatibility, and greater integration with modern systems (including the cloud), the project is moving forward with the same energy with which it was launched.

Here’s what the future looks like:

• More powerful collaboration tools for teams and organisations
• Ever-improving compatibility with proprietary formats and native handling of the open document format standard
• A flexible user interface and user experience to meet the compatibility needs of users accustomed to the rigid interface of proprietary software
• Continuous performance and security improvements at all levels
• An ever-expanding network of volunteer contributors and partner companies around the world.

Join the celebrations!

This anniversary is about more than just LibreOffice; it’s about you too: the users, volunteer contributors, ecosystem companies, supporters and everyone who believes in open-source software …