Next Wednesday, on March 26, we will celebrate Document Freedom Day 2025. During the day, we will mainly talk about the ISO Open Document Format, which was approved in 2005 by OASIS and in 2006 by ISO. Due to the global scale of the LibreOffice project, our events will be online.
There will be three webinars at 10:30 CET, 15:30 CET and 20:30 CET, with a presentation on the history of ODF and the great importance of the standard document format for digital sovereignty. To listen to the webinars, you can connect to https://jitsi.documentfoundation.org/dfd2025.
We will also be connected for question and answer sessions at 1 p.m. CET and 6 p.m. CET, to delve deeper into the topics of the webinar and to satisfy the curiosity of users, most of whom use a proprietary format without being aware of it, and are therefore victims of Microsoft’s lock-in strategies. These sessions will be in the same video room as the webinars: https://jitsi.documentfoundation.org/dfd2025.
Up early, to the venue. Enjoyed some talks,
catch-up with people. Gave my first-ever pico talk
of only two minutes - encouraging people to apply as
interns.
Heiko Tietze from LibreOffice’s Design community tells us about UI and UX improvements in the suite, how decisions are made, and more. (Also available on PeerTube).
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Slept poorly, up early, breakfast with Eloy.
To the (beautiful) venue to setup - good stuff.
Talked to, and gave stickers to the cream of
European research universities and got positive and
useful feedback from them on their COOL usage.
Group photo, Karate display.
Caught up with people; out to talk with
Frank & Niels.
Up early, bid 'bye to J. Mail chew, planning
call, admin, lunch; train to Gatwick then Munich;
plugged away at admin on the train.
Ate early at Gatwick, plane to Munich - got
lots of work done on the road, hacked and analyzed
profiles on the plane for fun; back to admin on the
train into the center of Munich. Worked late.
Up early, took Mary to Church, J. at Burwell
Baptist promoting YFC. Spoke - if even the English
complain of speaking too quickly - something must be
done!
Home, lunch, slept, prepped music & ran the
evening service with Charlie speaking; back - rested.
Up early, mail chew, poked at code. Dug out pictures
for N. for her portfolio. Length partner call focused on
process. Lunch.
Good call with Marija and the team, dug at admin,
and a little coding. Got a couple of thread shutdown/restart
related background save problems fixed in COOL 25.04 - such
a nice feature for users.
Now, Stephane Fermigier from EuroStack – which promotes European technological sovereignty and open source – has posted an update, citing an article in the German c’t Magazin. It discusses various reasons for the migration to LibreOffice and Linux, including:
Digital Sovereignty – Schleswig-Holstein is actively reducing its dependence on a single, non-European tech giant
Public Money, Public Code – Improvements made to open source software, like accessibility enhancements to LibreOffice, are available to the public
Public Procurement as a Lever – Schleswig-Holstein is not only improving its own IT infrastructure but also sending a strong signal to the market, potentially encouraging other public administrations to follow suit
In Fermigier’s post he also points to a recent talk from the LibreOffice Conference 2024 in Luxembourg (see below – video also available on PeerTube). Meanwhile, Dirk Schrödter, Head of the State Chancellery of Schleswig-Holstein, posted some thoughts on LinkedIn, including:
This is not just about technological independence but also about economic aspects. At present, our administrations and businesses are trapped in a system characterized by monopolistic structures and high licensing fees. […] It is a core responsibility of our state to be able to influence the operational processes of its IT systems at all times and to ensure the data security of its citizens and businesses. […] The necessary conclusion can only be: Open Source software must become the standard in our digitalized administration.
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LibreOffice 25.2 is our new major stable release, with many new features. This video which shows a few of them (also available on PeerTube) is in English but has subtitle translations in 17 languages, thanks to our awesome localisation communities! (You can see their work on this wiki page.)
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Olivier Hallot (TDF) improved the descriptions of new Calc functions shown in the UI, added a Help button to the Data Provider dialog, added help pages for new Calc functions CHOOSECOLS(), CHOOSEROWS(), VSTACK() and HSTACK(), added a help page for Calc’s Data Provider and improved help for Paste Special as well as labels and business cards
Tomaž Vajngerl (Collabora) continued working on PDF 2.0 support and refactored graphics and animation handling code in VCL toolkit
Miklós Vajna, Rashesh Padia, Darshan Upadhyay, Gökay Şatır, Attila Szűcs, Szymon Kłos (Collabora) worked on LOKit used by Collabora Online. Szymon also improved the user experience of the Currency dropdown by removing the need to click an OK button
Andras Timar (Collabora) fixed an issue with importing WEEKNUM() functions from XLSX files, made Excel style cell reference syntax be respected in non-English UIs and made it so in read-only documents one can’t invoke the Search and Replace dialog, reset cell attributes or fill down cells
Xisco Faulí (TDF) implemented new Calc functions CHOOSECOLS(), VSTACK() and HSTACK(), made UNIQUE() case-insensitive like its counterpart in Excel, added a couple of dozen automated tests, upgraded many dependencies and fixed a crash
Michael Stahl (allotropia) fixed rendering of overlapping tracked formatting and deletions in imported DOCX files, fixed losing tracked changes when paragraph has a frame anchored to it, fixed truncation of tables in sections split across pages and improved compatibility with MS Word in the case of hidden text
Mike Kaganski (Collabora) fixed an issue with the Alt+X Unicode conversion command when following a combining character, fixed Calc’s INFO() function giving unexpected results with some arguments, made BASIC’s Shell() function more robust and implemented a compatibility option for MS Word’s “Underline Trailing Spaces”. He also did many code cleanups and optimisations
Caolán McNamara (Collabora) fixed sheet identifiers going out of sync sometimes with XLSX export, fixed crashes, fixed many issues found by static analysers and did code cleanups and optimisations
Stephan Bergmann (allotropia) worked on the WASM build. He also adapted the code to compiler changes and did code cleanups
Noel Grandin (Collabora) made it faster to load and display XLS and XLSX files with lots of conditional formatting. He also did many code cleanups and optimisations, especially in the area of graphics handling
Justin Luth (Collabora) fixed an Excel compatibility issue with frozen cell zones, fixed unwanted empty paragraphs appearing in headings in DOCX files, fixed tabstops missing from paragraph styles in DOC import and made DOCX metadata compatible with MS Word (Word deviates from the OOXML specification in this area)
Michael Weghorn (TDF) continued cleaning up and reorganising accessibility-related code, made Sidebar, Quick Find and editable comboboxes more accessible, fixed a visual glitch when resizing the window in certain cases affecting …
Up lateish, brain-dumped a few ideas / tickets, got
suckered into E-mail. Practiced guitar, helped J. with
chainsaw on semi-buried stumps outside. Lunch.
Met up with David for a pleasant walk around the
back of Fulbourn partially on an old Roman road, and up
and round the Gog Magogs.
Pulled pork for dinner, caught up, watched movie,
relaxed.
We’ve added a great new Vue.js-3 ZetaJS demo (source)! It showcases word processing and spreadsheets inside a single web app. Calc is being used as a data source for an HTML app, filling letter templates in Writer. You can even upload custom data spreadsheets or document templates! And have you seen the nice Writer toolbar, all done with Vue.js?
We’ve also updated the existing demos, showcasing Chrome PWA support with the Ping Monitor demo – just click the little install button at the top-right of the address bar, to get the Ping Monitor “installed” on your desktop!
Talks
Meanwhile, our team was giving some great talks about our work for ZetaOffice and LibreOffice. Why not check out the recordings during your lunch break?
Look, we made some headlines! TheRegister was following up some earlier coverage about the WebAssembly port, after Thorsten gave Liam a demo during FOSDEM. Read up the full article here.
Next up
In case you’re around, meet us in two weeks at the FOSSAsia Summit in Bangkok, where Sarper Akdemir will give an update over our work. Dates are March 13-15.
If you’re based in Europe, you might instead enjoy Thorsten’s talk at the Chemnitz Linux Days (Germany) from March 22-23.
Everyone loves having shiny new features in LibreOffice. But how do we get them? Many are developed by volunteers and people in the ecosystem.
But another great source of new features is the Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a global, online program focused on bringing new contributors into open source software development. GSoC Contributors work with open source organisations on a 12+ week programming project under the guidance of mentors.
For the past two months, I’ve been working on adding more templates to LibreOffice Writer as part of my Outreachy project. My goal has been to create functional templates that users need the most.
I created these templates based on what you told us in our survey and your response was incredible!…
Extending our annual conference and opening it to intervention from international organisations and institutions was appreciated change, which provided our community with additional insights as well as creating more opportunities for cooperation between the many stakeholders involved with FOSS.
The following videos represent a selection from the several tracks dedicated to topics that are complementary to LibreOffice and the ecosystem of organisations and communities that use it and support it.
Use the icon in the top-right to navigate the playlist – or see the direct links to individual videos underneath.
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The Nepalese community mentored CS50 students in Nepal create their very first resume for securing internships!
Our Nepalese community writes…
LibreOffice is a powerful open source office suite for many users worldwide. One of the major components is the word processing software, LibreOffice Writer, which is a highly effective tool for all levels of users.
We in the Nepalese community recently conducted a CV writing session titled “LibreOffice Writer – Creating Reusable CVs”, delivered by our Liaison for the Nepalese community, Mr Suraj Bhattarai. This session was one of the guest sessions for the first and second year CS50 students at IOE Purwanchal Campus, who went through the CS50 AI course this time. The purpose of the session was to help them articulate their learning from the CS50x and CS50 AI timeline into a presentable resume, together with their other strengths, to get their very first internship into the tech industry.
Suraj shared key insights when writing resume/CVs; he mentioned that the fact that fancy CVs or Canva templates are not yet a trend among hiring managers who happen to be millennials. What sells for a peak career or a first internship is a standard resume template. Apart from online options that generate downloadable CVs after the user simply fills out major details, the offline space has no significant help rather than making one in friendly software like LibreOffice Writer.
Suraj additionally shared that professional CVs/resumes for the purpose of very first internships are always simple, includes no crazy pictures, do not summarise in two or more columns, and mainly focus on experience and education – that’s it! This is equally true at every other level of careers. And for the very specific Applicant Tracking System (ATS), friendly resumes are always the best choice to go with!
He concluded that LibreOffice Writer is a powerful word processing software program that ships with many offline resume/CV templates. Also, more variations and template options could be downloaded from the official extensions site or this third-party one – the best one that resembles your very CV/resume preference. With this powerful word processing program, you can even create your very own template and publish it for millions of other LibreOffice Writer users online or offline.
In the final minutes of the session, Suraj hosted a CV/resume building competition using LibreOffice Writer. The 10 minute-challenge was hands-on for the students to experience LibreOffice Writer and get comfortable with it. A total of 38 students showcased their resumes/CVs following tips from the session. Among them, based on the writing style, formatting, and tone of language, the top three were awarded LibreOffice T-shirts as a gesture.
With videos describing new features on YouTube and PeerTube
Berlin, 27 February 2025 – LibreOffice 25.2.1, the first minor release of the new LibreOffice 25.2 volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux is available for download from our website [1]. 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. 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.
For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners – for desktop, mobile and cloud – with a wide range of dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs and backports of security patches for several years: www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.
English manuals for LibreOffice 25.2 Writer and Impress can be downloaded from books.libreoffice.org/en/. End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on the user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org.
Videos describing the new features of the LibreOffice 25.2 family are available on PeerTube and YouTube.
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In one month, on March 26, we will celebrate Document Freedom Day 2025. For the first time in a while, the LibreOffice project will play a major role in organizing the event.
During the day, we will mainly talk about the ISO Open Document Format, which was approved in 2005 by OASIS and in 2006 by ISO. Due to the global scale of the LibreOffice project, our events will be online.
There will be three webinars at 10:30 CET, 15:30 CET and 20:30 CET, with a presentation on the history of ODF and the great importance of the standard document format for digital sovereignty.
In addition, we will be connected for question and answer sessions at 1 p.m. CET and 6 p.m. CET, to delve deeper into the topics of the webinar and to satisfy the curiosity of users, most of whom use a proprietary format without being aware of it, and are therefore victims of Microsoft’s lock-in strategies.
In addition to online events, there will also be physical events organized by local open source communities. All events should be registered on the Document Freedom Day web page.
If you are planning to organize one of these events, please contact us at media@documentfoundation.org. We can help you by sending you LibreOffice and Open Document Format leaflets/flyers and stickers.
Firebird Project is happy to announce general availability of Firebird 5.0.2 — the latest minor release in the Firebird 5.0 series.This minor release offers bug fixes as well as a few improvements, please refer to the Release Notes for the full list of changes.Binary kits for Windows, Linux, MacOS and Android platforms are immediately available for download.
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.
In one month, on March 26, we will celebrate Document Freedom Day 2025. For the first time in a while, the LibreOffice project will play a major role in organizing the event.
