This is a feed aggregator that collects what LibreOffice and Document Foundation contributors are writing in their respective blogs.
To have your blog added to this aggregator, please mail the website@global.libreoffice.org mailinglist or file a ticket in Redmine.
Berlin, 20 February 2025 – LibreOffice 24.8.5, the fifth minor release of the LibreOffice 24.8 family of the free open source, volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), MacOS (Apple and Intel) and Linux, is available on our download page.
LibreOffice is the only office suite that respects the privacy of the user, ensuring that the user is able to decide if and with whom to share the content they create. It even allows deleting user related info from documents. In addition, it has a feature set comparable to the leading product on the market.
Also, LibreOffice offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen sizes by using all the space available on the desktop to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away.
The biggest advantage over competing products is the LibreOffice Technology engine, the single software platform on which desktop, mobile and cloud versions of LibreOffice – including those from ecosystem companies – are based.
This allows LibreOffice to produce identical and fully interoperable documents based on two ISO standards: the open and neutral Open Document Format (ODT, ODS, ODP) and the closed and fully proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX), which hides a large amount of artificial complexity, and can cause problems for users who are confident that they are using a true open standard.
End users looking for manuals can download the LibreOffice 24.8 guides from the following link: books.libreoffice.org/.
LibreOffice for Enterprise
For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners, with three or five year backporting of security patches, other dedicated value-added features and Service Level Agreements: www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.
Every line of code developed by ecosystem companies for enterprise customers is shared with the community on the master code repository and improves the LibreOffice Technology platform. Products based on LibreOffice Technology are available for all major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud.
In fact, LibreOffice’s mature code base, rich feature set, strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and LTS options make it the ideal solution for organisations looking to regain control of their data and break free from vendor lock-in.
LibreOffice 24.8.5 availability
LibreOffice 24.8.5 is available from www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 (no longer supported by Microsoft) and Apple MacOS 10.15. Products for Android and iOS are at www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/.
End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org. They can support the project by donating at www.libreoffice.org/donate.
Enterprise deploying LibreOffice can also donate, although the best solution for their needs would be to look for the enterprise optimized versions of the software (with Long Term Support …
I live in Lagos, Nigeria, and I spend my time dabbling into user experience design with research, although these days, I’m diving deeper into research. I’m a big fan of books, especially well-written fiction. Music is also a huge part of my life. Let’s just say I love anything that sounds good and sing-alongs during work.
I am an Outreachy intern working on improving the LibreOffice Writer templates with guidance from my mentor, Heiko Tietze. I have spent the last month understanding the community’s pain points by carrying out a survey, analysing their responses and working to create functional templates that they need. Currently, I am iterating on priority templates like DIN 5008 Business Letter, resume and academic writing templates.
I am also doing some more research on template standards and reflecting on how to create templates that would help users. My top priority is to understand styling and implement it in the templates I am creating and also curate template contents that fits into prospective user preferences.
During my Outreachy contribution phase, I had a list of open-source projects I could choose from, but at the time, I wanted to test the limits of my capacity. As a UX designer with no coding background, the first task for this project was to submit a patch on Gerrit.
Every other contributor left the task obviously because of the task complexity and I remember one of my mentors, Ilmari telling me that the competition had become less tense due to the number of contributors dropping the project. It was a challenge that pushed me out of my comfort zone as it was my first time interacting with code. That was it for me. Completing that task gave me a sense of achievement and made me even more excited to continue with the project.
Ah, it was challenging at first. I also dealt with anxiety because there was so much to do and I didn’t know where to start but later, the bits started coming together. Luckily for me, I have a mentor who has been supportive since I started the project back in December and who has made my experience seamless. Whenever I face a blocker, I know I have a mentor who is always ready to provide me with resources and connect me with other members of the community that have resources that would be useful for each project phases.
I have decided to continue contributing to adding more templates to Writer and helping improve other aspects of user experience through user research and design after my internship ends. I like it here. Working on templates in Writer is challenging no doubt – but I think I like the way it stretches …
LibreOffice inherits a gigantic code base from its ancestors, StarOffice and OpenOffice. Here I discuss some notes for the newcomers on how to better understand the existing LibreOffice code, and improve the patches.
As said, LibreOffice is a huge code base, containing ~10 million lines of mostly C++ code. There are different assumptions, conventions and coding styles across ~200 modules that LibreOffice has.
Therefore, it is important to first, study the existing code, through reading and debugging LibreOffice source code, to understand the things that it does, and the way you can implement your ideas, including bug fixes and adding new features.
And although implementing some ideas seem to be straightforward at first sight, it is meaningful to study the details.
First of all, you should understand the thing that you want to implement. No matter if it is a bug, a new feature, or just an EasyHack, you should understand what is requested, what works and what does not work. This requires careful reading of the Bugzilla pages.
Then, you should try to run LibreOffice to understand the exact place in the application where you want to change. LibreOffice user interface has thousands of dialog boxes, so you need to make sure that you understand the thing that you want to do.
And at last, you get into implementing something in the code. Here are some questions that you can ask yourself about the details, when reading the existing code:
git blame to see the last author of a specific linegit log to study the details by knowing the commit hash
git log
Or, you may be interested in the code behavior in the big picture:
You can do some small changes, before even getting into implementing your idea:
Then, you can work on the actual implementation. Ask yourself:
After understanding some of the basic details about the way things work, you may go into improving your implementation.
One week ago, we announced LibreOffice 25.2, our brand new major release. It’s packed with new features, and has many improvements to compatibility and performance too. So, what has happened in the week since then? Let’s check out some stats…
These are just stats for our official downloads page, of course – many Linux users will have acquired the new release via their distribution’s package repositories.
Combining our Mastodon, Bluesky, X/Twitter and Facebook posts about the announcement, and all the likes, shares, views and comments, we get 11,313. Thanks to everyone who spread the word on social media! 
On release day, we organised an “ask us anything” event on Reddit. Members of The Document Foundation and LibreOffice community joined in the discussions and answered questions from users and potential contributors.
Huge thanks to our worldwide community of volunteers, and certified developers, for all their work on this release!
La nueva versión principal ofrece un gran número de mejoras en la interfaz de usuario y la accesibilidad, además de las habituales funciones de interoperabilidad
Berlín, 6 de febrero de 2025 – LibreOffice 25.2, la nueva versión principal de la …
Berlin, 6. februar 2025 – LibreOffice 25.2, nova osrednja izdaja najboljšega odprtokodnega pisarniškega paketa za Windows (Intel, AMD in ARM), macOS (Apple in Intel) in Linux, ki jo podpirajo prostovoljci, je na voljo na naslovu https://sl.libreoffice.org/prenos LibreOffice je najboljši pisarniški paket za tiste uporabnike, ki želijo ohraniti nadzor nad svojimi lastnimi programskimi orodji in dokumenti, da zaščitijo svojo zasebnost in digitalno življenje pred komercialnim vmešavanjem in strategijami povzročanja odvisnosti velikih tehnoloških podjetij.
LibreOffice je edini pisarniški paket, zasnovan na potrebah uporabnika, ne le na pojavni všečnosti. Ponuja številne možnosti vmesnika, ki ustrezajo različnim navadam uporabnikov, od tradicionalnih do sodobnih, in kar najbolje izkorišča zaslone različnih mer, saj optimizira prostor, ki je na voljo na namizju, tako da je čim večje število funkcij le klik ali dva stran. Je tudi edino programje za ustvarjanje dokumentov, ki lahko vsebujejo osebne ali zaupne podatke, a tudi spoštuje zasebnost uporabnikov, s čimer zagotavlja, da se uporabnik lahko odloči, če in s kom je pripravljen deliti vsebino, ki jo je ustvaril, zahvaljujoč standardiziranemu in odprtemu zapisu, ki se ne uporablja kot orodje za povzročanje odvisnosti uporabnikov, ki vsiljuje periodične posodobitve programja. Vse to z naborom funkcionalnosti, primerljivim s tistim vodilnega programja na tržišču in daleč zmogljivejšim od vsega, kar ponujajo preostali tekmeci.
LibreOffice je edinstven zaradi platforme LibreOffice Technology, edine na tržišču, ki omogoča skladen razvoj namiznih, mobilnih in oblačnih različic – tudi tistih, ki jih ponujajo podjetja iz ekosistema – ki lahko izdela identične in povsem združljive dokumente na osnovi dveh obstoječih standardov ISO: odprtem zapisu ODF ali Open Document Format (ODT, ODS in ODP), in lastniški vrsti datotek Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX in PPTX). Slednje v sebi skrivajo mnogo umetne (in nepotrebne) zavezane kompleksnosti, kar lahko povzroča težave uporabnikom, ki so prepričani, da uporabljajo standardiziran zapis.
Končnim uporabnikom je na voljo tudi tehnična pomoč prve ravni prostovoljcev na uporabniških dopisnih seznamih ter spletišču Ask LibreOffice: https://ask.libreoffice.org
The new major release provides many user interface and accessibility improvements, plus the usual interoperability features
Berlin, 6 February 2025 – LibreOffice 25.2, the new major release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux is available on our download page. LibreOffice is the best office suite for users who want to retain control over their individual software and documents, thereby protecting their privacy and digital life from the commercial interference and the lock-in strategies of Big Tech.
LibreOffice is the only office suite designed to meet the actual needs of the user – not just their eyes. It offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen sizes, optimising the space available to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away.
It is also the only software for creating documents (that may contain personal or confidential information) that respects the user’s privacy, ensuring that the user can decide if and with whom to share the content they create, thanks to the standard and open format that is not used as a lock-in tool, forcing periodic software updates. All this with a feature set that is comparable to the leading software on the market and far superior to that of any competitor.
What makes LibreOffice unique is the LibreOffice Technology Platform, the only one on the market that allows the consistent development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions – including those provided by companies in the ecosystem – capable of producing identical and fully interoperable documents based on the two available ISO standards: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) and the proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX). The latter hides a huge number of artificial (and unnecessary) lock-in complexities that create problems for users convinced they are using a standard format.
End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on the user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: https://ask.libreoffice.org. LibreOffice Writer Guide can be downloaded from https://books.libreoffice.org/en/.
New Features of LibreOffice 25.2
PRIVACY
CORE/GENERAL
WRITER
The northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein is moving 30,000 PCs from Microsoft Windows and Office to Linux and LibreOffice. At the recent Univention Summit 2025 which took place on January 23 and 24 in Bremen, the LibreOffice project was present and met with the people overseeing the migration.
500 people attended the event, a mixture of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) providers and users from the public and private sectors. Many people who attended the LibreOffice stand were from foundations, state and federal organisations, as well as large companies that have plans to deploy FOSS.
Some of the topics at the stand were the Open Document Format 1.4, integration into third-party software, and training and support. Dirk Schrödter, Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister for Digitalisation, attended the stand and was informed about the upcoming LibreOffice 25.2 release. And the state’s CIO Sven Thomsen also joined us too.
We’re looking forward to following the migration to Linux and LibreOffice, and other federal states and organisations going the same path.
(Image credits: Staatsministerium.SH and Felix Kronlage-Dammers)
LibreOffice is used by 200 million people around the world. Every major release goes through extensive testing, with Alpha, Beta and Release Candidate versions – and there are regular monthly minor updates to fix issues too. The QA Team analyses bug reports from users, and here’s an example of how quickly they work when everything goes to plan:
When you want to interact with users, sometimes simple dialog boxes are sufficient: a simple yes or no, or some info box. But in other cases, you may need more complex message boxes. Here I discuss how to use VCL Weld to create a custom one.
You can create a simple message box, using predefined templates like Info box using a code snippet like this:
std::unique_ptr<weld::MessageDialog> xInfoBox(Application::CreateMessageDialog(pParent, VclMessageType::Question, VclButtonsType::YesNo, u"Are you sure?"_ustr)); xInfoBox->run();
And, this is the result, which is very simple, without any title bar:
Yes / No message box
There are other predefined types, which can be used in different scenarios:
enum class VclMessageType { Info, Warning, Question, Error, Other };
But, if you want custom message boxes, you should be using weld mechanism, with its CreateBuilder function.
Below is the code from the source code sfx2/source/doc/QuerySaveDocument.cxx, which is inside sfx2 (framework) module. This dialog box is accessible across different modules, including Writer, Calc and Draw/Impress.
Let’s look into the code:
short ExecuteQuerySaveDocument(weld::Widget* _pParent, std::u16string_view _rTitle) { ... std::unique_ptr<weld::Builder> xBuilder( Application::CreateBuilder(_pParent, u"sfx/ui/querysavedialog.ui"_ustr)); std::unique_ptr<weld::MessageDialog> xQBox( xBuilder->weld_message_dialog(u"QuerySaveDialog"_ustr)); xQBox->set_primary_text(xQBox->get_primary_text().replaceFirst("$(DOC)", _rTitle)); return xQBox->run(); }
The code is using a UI file, named sfx/ui/querysavedialog.ui to create a message dialog, and then change the title of it.
QuerySaveDialog
If you look into the include file, include/vcl/weld.hxx inside Builder class, you may see functions like weld_… that are suitable to find various different UI elements from the UI, by mentioning the element ID. For example, to find a label with the ID equal to lable_id, you do this:
std::unique_ptr<weld::Label> m_pTextLabel label = m_xBuilder->weld_label(u"label_id"_ustr)
This is the result, when you try to close an unsaved document.
QuerySaveDialog running
This is not the only way you can create nice dialog boxes using VCL weld mechanism. There are some predefined message boxes that look nice which use weld mechanism, and are available for use via relevant C++ classes.
An interesting one here, is the QueryDialog, which is created by a factory method design pattern.
It uses a predefined dialog, using cui/uiconfig/ui/querydialog.ui as the UI file, and it contains a nice stock image! You can test it easily, by modifying a LibreOffice example, minweld.
IMPL_LINK_NOARG(TipOfTheDayDialog, OnNextClick, weld::Button&, void) { VclAbstractDialogFactory* pFact = VclAbstractDialogFactory::Create(); auto pDlg = pFact->CreateQueryDialog(getDialog(), u"Tips"_ustr, u"Tip of the day"_ustr, u"Are you sure you want to see the next tip of the day?"_ustr, false); sal_Int32 nResult = pDlg->Execute(); pDlg->disposeOnce(); if(nResult == RET_YES) { ++m_nCounter; m_pTextLabel->set_label(u"Here you will see tip of the day #"_ustr + OUString::number(m_nCounter) + "."); } }
Assuming that you have a working build of LibreOffice, you can simply run the minweld workbench by invoking …
The histogram says it all.
First, rapid growth between 2011 and 2014 to 30 million downloads, despite the fierce hostility of the project created to kill LibreOffice.
Then a few years of stagnation, at a time when it seemed that desktop office suites were destined to die, and fashion was driving users to the cloud.
Then the upswing, when even the most fashionable users realised that desktop office suites would never die and would coexist with the cloud.
In 2019, a series of attacks on the download counter – no data is collected other than the click on the DOWNLOAD button – led to a barely credible increase (the figure you see has already been cleaned up as much as possible).
After 2019, a slow but inexorable growth to over 35 million downloads – and 400 million downloads since 2011, with an average of 28.6 million downloads per year – in 2024.
Thanks to everyone: those who developed LibreOffice, those who helped improve it, and those who downloaded it to use it.
| Imprint Privacy Policy | |
|
The Document Foundation is not responsible for the content on planet.documentfoundation.org. However - if you have any concerns about content please contact act Uwe Altmann for moderation. Copyright information: Unless otherwise specified in the author's blog, all text and images on this website are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. This does not include the source code of LibreOffice, which is licensed under the "Mozilla Public License v2.0". "LibreOffice" and "The Document Foundation" are registered trademarks of their corresponding registered owners or are in actual use as trademarks in one or more countries. Their respective logos and icons are also subject to international copyright laws. Use thereof is explained in our trademark policy. |
 |
| this site runs a modified version of planet.opensuse (https://github.com/openSUSE/planet.opensuse.org) © 2010 Pascal Bleser and the openSUSE Community. | |