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The door to digital sovereignty is open, please come in For decades, a community of developers, activists, researchers and public officials has quietly worked on the idea that free and open-source software based on open standards is not only the best technical choice, but also the only one compatible with
The LibreOffice documentation team is proud to announce the immediate availability of the Calc Guide 26.2. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, this guide covers all aspects of the LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet module—from creating simple shopping lists to performing advanced data analysis and complex calculations. “We examine the Calc
The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice, has a new developer in its team. Neil Roberts started work this month and will initially focus on LibreOffice’s scripting support. Let’s hear from him… Tell us a bit about yourself! I’m from the UK but I escaped to France after the
I came here due to a (decades-spanning, arguably perverse) love affair with the LibreOffice code body. Less so for a love of organizational bodies.
So I mostly remained passive and watched the coup d’état unfold at the Document Foundation. Where some folks apparently felt the need to have us all thrown out. Oh my.
Should I have been more involved around the apparent issues at TDF? Maybe. But then again, I’m a naive little nerd who loves fixing dysfunctional code way more than navigating dysfunctional political setups. (And to be fair, I tried to do my duty, and did serve a term on the membership committee. Back when that was likely more pleasant than what it would be today.)
Luckily, the code and the fun will most certainly live on, one way or another. Not least at https://collaboraonline.github.io/.
Happy hacking, once more,
sberg
Whenever a user, a government, a school or a business chooses the format in which to store and exchange its digital documents, it is not merely making a technical decision, but is placing a bet on the kind of digital infrastructure on which it will depend in the future. In
Berlin, 26 March 2026 – The Document Foundation today announces the simultaneous release of LibreOffice 26.2.2 and LibreOffice 25.8.6. These two maintenance updates are respectively targeted to technology savvy and power users, and to users in production environments. Specific options are available from ecosystem companies for enterprise deployments. Thanks to
A donation banner is not an attack to users The announcement that LibreOffice 26.8 will feature a donation banner in the Start Centre has prompted a flood of responses, ranging from positive from many FOSS supporters, who understand the need for funding, to mild apprehension to extreme alarm from others.
Every year, on the last Wednesday in March, the open-source community celebrates Document Freedom Day. It’s an excellent opportunity to pause for a moment and ask a question that seems technical but is actually deeply political: who controls your documents? The answer depends almost entirely on the file formats
Brazil’s Lei 15.211/2025, also known as the Estatuto Digital da Criança e do Adolescente (EDCA), came into force on 17 March 2026. It is one of the world’s most comprehensive digital child protection laws, with profound implications for the Brazilian education system. School administrators, IT managers, and education policymakers now
The Software Freedom Law Center of India writes: Ever lost access to a file because the software stopped working? That’s what happens when your data is trapped in proprietary formats. Proprietary formats give corporations the power to decide how and when you access your own data. Open Standards take that
Germany has made ODF mandatory as the standard format for documents within its sovereign digital infrastructure. The decision is incorporated into the Deutschland-Stack, the framework governing the development, procurement and management of digital systems for public administration at all levels. This is neither a pilot project nor a recommendation from
A major update has been merged into the FirebirdSQL/firebird-odbc-driver repository (PR #276), introducing a comprehensive Google Test suite to establish a strong regression testing baseline for the project. Authored by fdcastel, this addition is a crucial stepping stone before making future bug fixes or CI/CD improvements. Key Highlights: Extensive Coverage: The PR adds a
General Activities LibreOffice 26.2.0 was announced on February 4 LibreOffice 25.8.5 was announced on February 19 LibreOffice 26.2.1 was announced on February 26 Olivier Hallot (TDF) added help for Writer’s text dragging and dropping options, Calc’s “Enter key for paste & clear clipboard” option and “Reject silently” in Calc’s Data
Implementing Firebird 4 Protocol Versions 16 and 17 is crucial for utilizing the advanced features, security enhancements, and performance improvements introduced in Firebird 4.0 and 4.0.1. Using updated clients that support these protocols prevents performance degradation and ensures access to modern functionalities. Key Features Supported by Protocol 16 (Firebird 4.0)Wire Protocol Encryption:&
General Activities Olivier Hallot (TDF) improved Writer help for hyphenation zones and controlling section visibility, fixed the help example for Calc’s SUMIF function, clarified the topic of fixed colours in the help for document themes, expanded the help for Calc’s sort options, explained in help the option for removing cross-document
Not too long ago, a change landed, that brought Biff12 clipboard format support in Calc v.26.2 – thanks Laurent!
It was an easyhack that I authored some time ago; and Laurent volunteered to implement that long-standing missing feature. The small detail was, that the feature was Windows-specific (it is trivial to get the wanted clipboard content there, simply copying from Excel), while Laurent developed on another platform.
Laurent had made the majority of work, before he was stuck, without being able to test / debug further changes. Then, he asked me, if there a way to continue on the platform he used.
At that time, I answered, that no, one would need Windows (and Excel) to continue the implementation. So I jumped in, and added the rest, and in the end, we have created the change in co-authorship.
But later, when part of my code turned out problematic, and I needed to fix it and create a unit test for it, I discovered a trick, that could put Biff12 data into system clipboard on any platform, without Excel – allowing then just paste, and debug everything that’s going on there. It relies on UNO API, and can be implemented e.g. in Basic:
function XTransferable_getTransferData(aFlavor as com.sun.star.datatransfer.DataFlavor) as variant
if (not XTransferable_isDataFlavorSupported(aFlavor)) then exit function
oUcb = CreateUnoService("com.sun.star.ucb.SimpleFileAccess")
oFile = oUcb.openFileRead(ConvertToURL("/path/to/biff12.clipboard.xlsb"))
dim sequence() as byte
oFile.readBytes(sequence, oFile.available()) ' changes value type of 'sequence' to integer
XTransferable_getTransferData = CreateUnoValue("[]byte", sequence)
end function
function XTransferable_getTransferDataFlavors() as variant
aFlavor = new com.sun.star.datatransfer.DataFlavor
aFlavor.MimeType = "application/x-openoffice-biff-12;windows_formatname=""Biff12"""
XTransferable_getTransferDataFlavors = array(aFlavor)
end function
function XTransferable_isDataFlavorSupported(aFlavor as com.sun.star.datatransfer.DataFlavor) as boolean
XTransferable_isDataFlavorSupported = (aFlavor.MimeType = "application/x-openoffice-biff-12;windows_formatname=""Biff12""")
end function
sub setClipboardContent
oClip = CreateUNOService("com.sun.star.datatransfer.clipboard.SystemClipboard")
oClip.setContents(CreateUNOListener("XTransferable_", "com.sun.star.datatransfer.XTransferable"), nothing)
end subThe first three functions are Basic implementation of XTransferable interface.
Running setClipboardContent will prepare the system clipboard on any platform, using a trick of implementing arbitrary UNO interface using CreateUNOListener; and after that, pasting into Calc would allow to see if things work (if content of /path/to/biff12.clipboard.xlsb is pasted, as expected), and make improvements. If I knew this trick back then, I would of course share it with Laurent; but I thought I’d put it here now, so maybe it helps me or someone else in the future. (Note that application/x-openoffice-biff-12;windows_formatname="Biff12" there in the code was the name introduced by Laurent in the discussed commit; indeed, that, and the actual data in the file, would depend on the exact format that you work with.)
If you have a commented text range, which gets deleted while track changes is on and you later save and load this with Writer's DOCX filter, that works now correctly.
This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Writer as well.
It was already possible to comment on text ranges. Comments were also supported inside deletes when track changes is enabled. These could be already exported to and imported from DOCX in Writer. But you could not combine these.
With the increasing popularity of commenting text ranges (rather than just inserting a comment with an anchor), not being able to combine these was annoying.
Here is how a commented text range inside a delete from DOCX now looks like, note the semi-transparent comment hinting it's deleted:
Commented text range, inside a tracked delete, in DOCX, Collabora Online
As a side effect, this also fixes the behavior in desktop Writer, which crosses out deleted comments:
Commented text range, inside a tracked delete, in DOCX, desktop
In the past, the "is this deleted" property was not visible in the render result:
Commented text range, inside a tracked delete, in DOCX, Collabora Online, old bad state
And it was also bad in desktop Writer:
Commented text range, inside a tracked delete, in DOCX, desktop, old bad state
This required changes to both DOCX import and export: a comment could be deleted or could have an anchor which is a text range, but you couldn't have both.
If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)
As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:
You can get a development edition of Collabora Online 25.04 and try it out yourself right now: try the development edition. Collabora intends to continue supporting and contributing to LibreOffice, the code is merged so we expect all of this work will be available in TDF's next release too (26.8).
In LibreOffice development, there are many cases where you want to validate some documents against standards: either Open Document Format (ODF) or MS Office Open XML (OOXML). Here I discuss how to do that.
Update: Article updated to reflect that odfvalidator 0.13.0 has just released.
ODF is the native document file format that LibreOffice and many other open source applications use. It is basically set of XML files that are zipped together, and can describe various aspects of the document, from the content itself to the way it should be displayed. These XML files have to conform to ODF standard, which is presented in XML schemas. The latest version of ODF is 1.4, which is yet to be implemented in LibreOffice.
You can find more about ODF in these links:
There are various tools to do the validation, but the preferred one is the ODF Toolkit Validator:
Compiled binaries of ODF Toolkit can be downloaded from the above Github project:
Then, you can use the ODF validator this way:
$ java -jar odfvalidator-0.13.0-jar-with-dependencies.jar test.odt
You may also use the online validator, odfvalidator.org, to do a validation.
Online odfvalidator toolPlease read this disclaimer before using:
This service does not cover all conformance criteria of the OpenDocument Format specification. It is not applicable for formal validation proof. Problems reported by this service only indicate that a document may not conform to the specification. It must not be concluded from errors that are reported that the document does not conform to the specification without further investigation of the error report, and it must not be concluded from the absence of error reports that the OpenDocument Format document conforms to the OpenDocument Format specification.
MS Office Open XML (OOXML) is the native standard for Microsoft documents format. It is also a set of XML files zipped together, and conform to some XML schemas.
You can find out more about OOXML here:
There are tools to do the validation, and the one is used in LibreOffice is Office-o-tron. One can use it with below command to validate an example file, test.docx:
$ java -jar officeotron-0.8.8.jar ~/test.docx
Office-o-tron can be downloaded from dev-www.libreoffice.org server of LibreOffice, and this is currently the latest version:
It is worth noting that Office-o-tron can be also used to validate ODT files.
To go beyond the current ODF standard, new features are sometimes introduced as “ODF extensions”, then are gradually added to the standard. You can read more in TDF Wiki:
In these cases, you may see validation errors for such extensions. For example:
test.odt/styles.xml[2 …
LibreOffice 26.2 will be released as final at the beginning of February, 2026 (check the Release Plan). LibreOffice 26.2 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) brings us closer to the final version, which will be preceded by Release Candidate 3 (RC3). Since the previous release, LibreOffice 26.2 RC1, 137 commits have been
Happy new year 2026! I hope that this year will be great for you, and the global LibreOffice community, and the software itself! I hereby discuss the past year 2025, and the outlook for 2026 in the development blog.
At The Document Foundation (TDF), our aim is to improve LibreOffice, the leading free/open source office suite that has millions of users around the world. Our work is community-driven, and the software needs your contribution to become better, and work in a way that you like.
My goal here, is to help people understand LibreOffice code easier via EasyHacks and tutorials, and eventually participate in LibreOffice core development to make LibreOffice better for everyone. In 2025, I wrote 14 posts around LibreOffice development in the dev blog (4 of them are unpublished drafts).
Focus of the development blog for 2026 in this blog will be:
You can provide feedback simply by leaving a comment here, or sending me an email to hossein AT libreoffice DOT org.
We provide mentoring support to the individuals who want to start LibreOffice development. You are welcome to contact me if you need help to build LibreOffice and do some EasyHacks via the above email address. You may also refer to our Getting Involved Wiki page:
Let’s hope a better year for LibreOffice (and the world) in 2026.
General Activities LibreOffice 25.8.4 was announced on December 18 Olivier Hallot (TDF) added a help page for Markdown in Writer, JSON in Calc, updated or improved help for View and Appearance options, accessibility options, sort criteria in Calc, file conversion filters, ODF versions, handling of empty cells in Calc, Data
The bullet support in Impress got a couple of improvements recently, some of this is PPTX support and others are general UI improvements.
This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Impress as well.
Probably the most simple presentations are just a couple of slides, each slide having a title shape and an outliner shape, containing some bullets, perhaps with some additional images. Images are just bitmaps, so let's focus on outliner shapes and their outliner / bullet styles.
What happens if you save these to PPTX and load it back? Can you toggle between a numbering and a bullet? Can you return to an outliner style after you had direct formatting for your bullet?
The first case was about bullet editing of this document:
Outliner shape with 3 outliner styles
If you pressed enter at the end of 'First level', then pressed <tab> to promote the current
paragraph to the second level, nothing happened. The reason for this was that our PPTX export was
missing the list styles of shapes, except for the very first list style. And the same was missing on
the import side, too. With this, not only the rendering of the bullets are OK, but also adding new
paragraphs and using promoting / demoting to change levels work as expected.
The second case was about this document, where the second level had a numbering, not a bullet:
Outliner shape with a numbering on the second level
We only had UI to first toggle off a numbering to no numbering, then you could toggle on bullets. Now it's possible to do this change in one step.
The last case was about styles. Imagine that you had a master page with an outline shape and some reasonably looking configuration for the first and second levels as outline styles:
Outliner shape with two outline styles
Notice how the last paragraph has a slightly inconsistent formatting, due to direct formatting. Let's fix this.
Go to the end of the last bullet, which is currently not connected to an outline style, toggle bullets off and then toggle it on again. Now we clear direct formatting when we turn off the bullet, so next time you turn bullets on, it'll be again connected to the outline style's bullet configuration and the content will look better.
Note how this even improves consistency: Writer was behaving the same way already, when toggling bullets off and then toggle on again resulted in getting rid of previously applied unwanted direct formatting.
If you would like to know a bit more about how this works, continue reading... :-)
As usual, the high-level problem was addressed by a series of small changes. Core side:
Developers and database administrators often operate under a common assumption: unlocking powerful new software features requires significant, time-consuming, and expensive development work. New capabilities frequently sit on the shelf, waiting for the budget and time to rewrite applications to take advantage of them.This assumption, however, doesn't always hold true. Recent versions of the
General Activities LibreOffice 25.8.3 was announced on November 13 Olivier Hallot (TDF) improved the help on sort options and keyboard shortcuts, added help for field variable formats, the Slide Properties Sidebar deck, named Calc formulas and Arabic fonts and right-to-left direction for Math. He also updated help for paragraph alignment
LibreOffice 26.2 will be released as final at the beginning of February, 2026 ( Check the Release Plan ). LibreOffice 26.2 Beta1 is the second pre-release since development of version 26.2 started at the beginning of June, 2025. Since the previous release, LibreOffice 26.2 Alpha1, 419 commits have been submitted
A modern C++ wrapper for the Firebird database API.Documentation | Repositoryfb-cpp provides a clean, modern C++ interface to the Firebird database engine. It wraps the Firebird C++ API with RAII principles, smart pointers, and modern C++ features.Features Modern C++: Uses C++20 features for type safety and performanceRAII: Automatic resource management with smart pointersType Safety:
After submitting a patch to LibreOffice Gerrit, one has to wait for the continuous integration (CI) to build and test the changed source code to make sure that the build is OK and the tests pass successfully. Here we discuss the situation when one or more CI builds fail, and how to handle that.
After you submit code to LibreOffice Gerrit, reviewers have to make sure that it builds, and the tests pass with the new source code. But, it is not possible for the reviewers to test the code on each and every platform that LibreOffice supports. Therefore, Jenkins CI does that job of building and testing LibreOffice on various platforms.
This can take a while, usually 1 hour or so, but sometimes can take longer than that. If everything is OK, then your submission will get Verified +1 .
Currently, these are the platforms used in CI:
gerrit_linux_gcc_releasegerrit_linux_clang_dbgutilgerrit_android_x86_64 and gerrit_android_armgerrit_windows_wslgerrit_macSome of the tests are more extensive, for example Linux / Clang also performs additional code quality checks with clang compiler plugins. Also, UITests are not run on each and every platform.
LibreOffice CI uses JenkinsThere can be multiple reasons for why a CI build fails, and give your submission Verified -1 . These are some of the reasons, and depending on the reason, solution can be different.
1. Your code’s syntax is wrong and compile fails
In this case, you should fix your code, and then submit a new patch set. You have to wait again for a new CI build.
2. The code’s syntax is OK, but it is not properly formatted
You should refer to the below TDF Wiki article and use clang-format tool to format your code properly.
3. Your code’s syntax is OK, but it logically not OK and fails some tests.
In this case, you should try fixing your code logic, and run the tests that fail and make sure they pass. After that, you may send a new patch set and wait for a new CI build.
4. Your code’s syntax and logic is OK, but some machine fails for other reasons like their disk being full or other software/hardware failures or hiccups
In this case, usually resuming the build can be a good option. You may ask on #libreoffice-dev or #tdf-infra IRC rooms for such a resume, or request access, if you submit many patches.
Resume build in LibreOffice CI5. Your code’s syntax and logic is OK, but there are issues from other patches.
In this case, intervention from other LibreOffice developers is needed. Informing people on #libreoffice-dev can help, and then you have to re-base your submission in case new patches fix the build issue.
The best way to know the reason of the build failure is to look into …
I fetched the release notes for FirebirdSQL/php-firebird and made a concise summary of the user-visible changes and upgrade impact for versions from PHP Firebird 5.0.2 up through 6.1.1-RC.2.I retrieved the release entries for 5.0.2, 6.1.1-RC.0, 6.1.1-RC.1 and 6.1.1-RC.2 and distilled the highlights and upgrade impact into a short, actionable summary below.Summary of changes (5.0.2 → 6.1.1-RC.2)-
The Firebird Book, Second Edition is made publicly available via the IBPhoenix digital store. Everyone can download the complete edition free of charge — no strings attached.If you'd like to support Helen’s legacy and the Firebird community, there is an optional pay‑what‑you‑like contribution. Funds will support the organization of the Helen Borrie Memorial Award, recognizing individuals with
LibreOffice 26.2 will be released as final at the beginning of February, 2026 ( Check the Release Plan ) being LibreOffice 26.2 Alpha1 the first pre-release since the development of version 26.2 started at the beginning of June, 2025. Since then, 4651 commits have been submitted to the code repository
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