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

• November kicked off with a new Month of LibreOffice. This is a campaign we run twice a year, in which we award sticker packs (and the chance to win some bonus merchandise) to all contributors in the LibreOffice project. Thanks to everyone who took part – instructions for claiming your stickers will be posted here soon!

• Also early in the month, we posted some more videos from the recent online openSUSE + LibreOffice Conference 2020. There are talks on PDF improvements, debugging, the encryption API, LibreOffice/Collabora Online, and more. Check them out to learn about the technology behind the software.

• Our Turkish community reported back from the Linux and LibreOffice Migration at Eyüpsultan Municipality. They said: “Open source software has many advantages, including flexibility, high performance, major savings on licensing fees, independence from any particular company, and compliance with open standards. The benefits of open source software are recognized all over the world.”

• On November 9, we talked to Arnaud Mez from our French-speaking community. He’s helping to spread the word about LibreOffice and free software in Congo, organising talks and “sprint” events. A big thanks to Arnaud for all his contributions!

• And talking of contributions: we’re always eager to have help in our Design and Marketing communities. Everyone is welcome to help out, like Barbara Tostes did by making a Blender 3D model of the LibreOffice 7.0 branding. This can be used in videos, animations and other projects. Looking good!

• Over in the Documentation project, community members announced the LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.0. This was a team effort of Steve Fanning, Gordon Bates, Kees Kriek, Annie Nguyen, Samantha Hamilton, Olivier Hallot and Jean Hollis Weber, coordinated by Felipe Viggiano.

• More docs news: Paul Sutton has created some LibreOffice tutorial videos, aimed at beginners, and shared them on his website. He plans to make regular updates, so if you’re introducing someone to LibreOffice, check it out!

• Finally, we chatted to Yusuf Keten, who has added new features to LibreOffice as part of the Google Summer of Code. He’s also decided to become a Member of The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice – so, welcome Yusuf!

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

Today we’re talking to Yusuf Keten, who added new features to LibreOffice as part of the Google Summer of Code…

To start, tell us a bit about yourself!

I was born on February 25, 1998 in Istanbul, Turkey. Currently I’m a third-year Computer Engineering student at Hacettepe University in Turkey. I really like coding. Nowadays, I am working on computer graphics. Also, I have academic projects about GPGPU programming. I am contributing to LibreOffice in my free time because of my enthusiasm for open source culture.

Apart from programming, I like to spend my time playing electric guitar, drawing. Also, I describe myself as a coffee lover! You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Why did you decide to become a member of The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind LibreOffice??

I came across TDF when I attended a LibreOffice Bootcamp given by Muhammet Kara. He explained what TDF does, and its values. I was really impressed, because supporting an open source project is a wonderful mission. Also, there are lots of talented people in TDF. Therefore, I wanted to be part of this great organization and contribute to TDF’s activities.

What are you working on in LibreOffice right now?

I have been working on User Experience topics for nearly a year. I created a new Additions dialog as during my Google Summer of Code work. It provides an interface for adding any extension types such as fonts, templates etc. with only one click. Also, users can search extensions based on how many votes they have, downloads and comments. Check out my GSoC report.

Anything else you plan to do in the future?

In my GSoC project, there are still some bugs and missing features. I would like to fix these bugs and add these features. Also, I may add other new features to LibreOffice, if they is needed.

Even though I worked on User Experience parts until now, I may work on computer graphics aspects of LibreOffice in the future – because I’m improving my skills in this area.

We at TDF would like to share our appreciation for Yusuf for all his contributions! We’re really happy to have him on board as a member. Indeed, everyone in the community who’s active in our projects is welcome to become a member!

Are you using Apache OpenOffice? Have you recently tried to open a .odt, .ods or .odp file and received this error message? “This document was created by a newer version of OpenOffice. It may contain features not supported by your current version.”

In this case, the document probably wasn’t created in OpenOffice, but in LibreOffice, a successor project. LibreOffice 7.0 introduced support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.3, which includes many new features and benefits.

LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice share the same roots, and while Apache OpenOffice’s last major release (4.1) was back in 2014, LibreOffice has since been developed much further with extra features and updates.

LibreOffice is still free and open source software, of course, so to get the most out of newer documents, download LibreOffice and give it a try!

LibreOffice’s documentation community creates handbooks, guides, tutorials and other resources to help users get the most out of the software. Everyone is welcome to join the team and help out – it’s a great way to build up experience for a possible career in technical writing!

Paul Sutton is producing a series of blog posts and videos aimed at newcomers to LibreOffice, explaining some of the basics. He also has some extra videos here – check them out.

A big thanks to Paul for his work, and making his content available under a Creative Commons license, for everyone to share! Follow him on Twitter and Mastodon.

We’re just over half-way through the Month of LibreOffice, November 2020, in which we award sticker packs to all contributors in our projects and community! (Plus, a bonus chance to win extra merchandise: a mug, T-shirt or hoodie.)

So how’s it going? Well, we’ve already awarded 262 sticker packs:

Is your name/username not on that page yet? Do something about it! There are many ways to help out – you don’t need to be a programmer. Let’s see…

How to get your stickers

There are many ways you can help out – and you don’t need to be a developer. For instance, you can be a…

• Handy Helper, answering questions from users on Ask LibreOffice. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim your shiny stickers.

• First Responder, helping to confirm new bug reports: go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 10 and LibreOffice 7.0.3”.

• Drum Beater, spreading the word: tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter or Mastodon! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim your stickers.

• Globetrotter, translating the user interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.

• Code Cruncher, contributing source code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started.

• Docs Doctor, writing documentation: Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.

Join in! We’ll be posting regular updates on this blog and our Mastodon and Twitter accounts until the end of the month…

The LibreOffice Documentation Team is happy to announce the availability of the LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.0, the most comprehensive guide for the Calc module, updated to the latest version of LibreOffice.

The Guide is available in PDF format and contains 545 pages, covering all basic and advanced features of the spreadsheet module of LibreOffice, and is a must-read book for exploiting the maximum of LibreOffice Calc.

The LibreOffice Calc Guide 7.0 is a team effort of Steve Fanning, Gordon Bates, Kees Kriek, Annie Nguyen, Samantha Hamilton, Olivier Hallot and Jean Hollis Weber, coordinated by Felipe Viggiano. Felipe joined the team this year and quickly helped the team to advance with the guide review and update.

“When searching for Calc help online, I noticed that it was possible to contribute with the LibreOffice documentation, and immediately requested to join the Documentation Team, where Mr. Olivier Hallot has been a great advisor ever since. The team’s reception was exceptional and working with such skilled writers has been awesome, giving me a rich opportunity to learn a lot about document production”, said Felipe Viggiano, coordinators of the Calc Guide. “Now I plan to contribute with other publications from Doc Team and help in the Calc Guide translation to Brazilian Portuguese”, he completed.

Felipe Viggiano, Calc Guide 7.0 Coordinator

The new Calc Guide 7.0 is available at the documentation website at https://documentation.libreoffice.org and the source files are on the LibreOffice wiki at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications#LibreOffice_Calc_Guide .

The Documentation team is a group of enthusiastic authors all over the world that contributes to the much demanded LibreOffice user guides, LibreOffice Help module, tutorials, reference guides and much more.

Happy documenting!