Welcome to The Document Foundation Planet

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.


Friday
18 July, 2025


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A document format is a tool for sharing knowledge and, as such, should be as simple and accessible as possible in relation to the complexity of the document content itself. This remains true even when the format is based on an XML schema that is hidden from users when the document is displayed on screen.

Unfortunately, while an XML schema can be simple, it can also be unnecessarily complex, bloated, convoluted and difficult to implement without specific knowledge of its features. This is true even if the on-screen documents are identical. In this case, complexity is an intentional tactic used to lock users into a vendor, as is the case with the Microsoft 365 document format.

An XML schema comprises the structure, data types and rules of an XML document and is described in an XML Schema Definition (XSD) file. This tells the PC what to expect and checks that the data follows the rules. In theory, XML and XSD together form the basis of the concept of interoperability. However, in practice, an XML schema can be made so complex that it becomes a barrier rather than a bridge.

An “artificially complex” XML schema goes beyond the level of complexity needed to display even the most intricate content on screen. In fact, it is completely disconnected from the actual complexity of the content, to the extent that even a simple sentence such as “To be, or not to be, that is the question” becomes an inextricable sequence of tags that users cannot access.

This artificial complexity is characterised by a deeply nested tag structure with excessive abstraction, dozens or even hundreds of optional or overloaded elements, non-intuitive naming conventions, the widespread use of extension points and wildcards, the multiple import of namespaces and type hierarchies, and sparse or cryptic documentation.

In the case of the Microsoft 365 document format, the only characteristic not present is sparse or cryptic documentation, given that we are talking about a set of documents totalling over 8,000 pages. All the other characteristics are present to a greater or lesser extent, making life almost impossible for a developer trying to implement the schema.

To illustrate how this translates into a lock-in strategy, consider a railway system where the tracks are accessible to all, but the main train manufacturer imposes its own incredibly complicated control system. In theory, anyone could build a train compatible with the tracks, but the control system specifications are so convoluted that only the main train manufacturer can ultimately offer rail services.

The worst thing is that passengers don’t realise they are being held hostage by technical constraints that they cannot understand until ticket prices rise or the number of cities served declines. At this point, the main manufacturer can dictate its terms, which passengers are forced to accept.

This is very similar to what is happening in the world of information technology, where Microsoft is effectively forcing its customers to switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11 against their will


Thursday
17 July, 2025


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LibreOffice 24.8 has now reached the end of life, so all users have to update their free office suite to the latest release

Berlin, 17 July 2025 – The Document Foundation announces the release of LibreOffice 25.2.5, the fifth maintenance release of the LibreOffice 25.2 family for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux OSs, available for download at www.libreoffice.org/download [1].

LibreOffice 24.8 has reached the end of life, which means that this release – which includes dozen of fixes and enhancements that further improve reliability, performance and interoperability – is suggested for production environments, and all users should update their installation as soon as possible.

LibreOffice 25.2.5 is based on the LibreOffice Technology, which enables the development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions – either from TDF or from the ecosystem – that fully support the two ISO standards for document formats: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) and the closed and proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX).

Products based on the 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 recommends a LibreOffice Enterprise-optimized version from one of the ecosystem companies, with dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs and security patch backports for three to five years.

English manuals for LibreOffice 25.2 Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw and Math are available for download at 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.

Downloading LibreOffice

All available versions of LibreOffice for the desktop can be downloaded from the same website: www.libreoffice.org/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice project by making a donation: www.libreoffice.org/donate.

[1] Fixes in RC1: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.2.5/RC1. Fixes in RC2: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.2.5/RC2.


Wednesday
16 July, 2025


face
  • Up hyper-early, got to work instead of trying to sleep: much more productive, another half a day's work.
  • Found some lost A/C folk, and helped them maintain our system.
  • Sync with Dave, Sarper, Thorsten, Mitch helped me unwind some Apple account horrors.
  • Published the next strip on a topic that plagues engineers: having a wonderful product or service is futile without a proper marketing & sales process.
    The Open Road to Freedom - strip#26 - Finding Leads>
		</center>
	</li>
	<li>
		Admin, TDF bits, plugged at the Linked-In backlog, sorry
	to have missed lots of interesting people due to an oversight.
	</li>
	<li>
		Monthly Productivity All-Hands, lots of good questions,
	sales call, out for a run with J, sync with Philippe.
	</li>
	<li>
		Band practice in the evening.
	</li>
</ul></div>
        </div>
      </div>
      
    </div>
    
    <hr class=

    Tuesday
    15 July, 2025


    face
    • Up early, cleared some mail, planning call, sync with Laser, Andras, snatched some lunch, monthly mgmt call.
    • Customer sales call, sync with Miklos, poked at some code, multi-partner call. Fixed a silly flicker issue in the COOL UI.
    • Supervised some EPQ-ness with Lily, lots of sanding and varnish.
    • Curious to read about randomness as an idea to "prevent meritocracies from devolving into court societies dominated by schemers and sycophants." - interesting.

    Monday
    14 July, 2025


    face
    • A day of 1:1's, marketing content review, topped off by minuting a PCC meeting.

    Sunday
    13 July, 2025


    face
    • Up earlyish, All Saints - played violin. H.N.M. off to assist leading at Lymington Rushmore camp.
    • Jocelyn & David over for pizza lunch & a chat. Ferried E. to & from Cambridge for a punting trip with Church.

    face

    Good software needs good documentation. But how do we define “good” in this sense? And what does the future hold? Find out in episode 4 of the LibreOffice Podcast! (This episode is also available on PeerTube.)

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    Saturday
    12 July, 2025


    face
    • Hot, up lateish, nailed the wall variously for H's bedroom lights; sogged & talked hardware hacking.
    • David over for BBQ in the afternoon, out for a walk on the heath together, relaxed with babes.

    Friday
    11 July, 2025


    face
    • Up, mail chew; bit of hacking, train, plane, car back home with some large amount of standing around included.
    • Got a bit of hacking done on the plane around translating ODF files. Lovely to be home and see everyone back!

    face

    When different systems, applications or organisations need to communicate with each other and actually understand what is being said, interoperability is key. It enables a hospital’s software to communicate with an insurance company, for example, or one vendor’s inventory system to synchronise with another’s logistics platform.

    At the heart of many of these data exchanges is XML.

    XML (Extensible Markup Language) may not be new or flashy, but it remains one of the most powerful tools for achieving reliable, structured interoperability across diverse platforms.

    Why is interoperability so hard?

    Systems are built using different programming languages, data models and communication protocols. Without a shared format or structure, exchanging data can result in a complex web of custom APIs, ad hoc conversions, and manual adjustments.

    To get systems working together seamlessly, you need:

    • A standardised structure for data.
    • A way to validate that structure.
    • A format that is language-agnostic and platform-neutral.

    XML ticks all these boxes.

    How XML enables interoperability

    1. Self-describing structure

    XML uses tags to clearly label data:

    <customer>
       <name>Maria Ortega</name>
       <id>87234</id>
    </customer>

    This means that a receiving system doesn’t have to guess what each field means, as it is explicitly defined. This reduces the risk of misinterpretation and supports automated parsing.

    2. Schema validation

    Using XSD (XML Schema Definition) or DTD (Document Type Definition), you can define the rules that an XML document must adhere to, such as which elements are required, which data types are valid and what the structure must be.

    This is critical for:

    • verifying incoming data
    • preventing malformed or incomplete exchanges
    • ensuring consistency across multiple systems

    3. Namespaces for avoiding collisions

    XML namespaces prevent tag name conflicts when data from different sources is combined.

    <doc xmlns:h=”http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/” xmlns:f=”http://www.w3schools.com/furniture”>
       <h:table>…</h:table>
       <f:table>…</f:table>
    </doc>

    Without namespaces, systems could misinterpret elements with the same name but different meanings.

    4. Cross-platform compatibility

    XML is plain text. Any system that can read a file can read it, whether it’s written in Java, .NET, Python or COBOL. This makes it ideal for long-term data exchange and integration between legacy and modern systems.

    XML in real-world interoperability

    Healthcare: HL7 CDA/FHIR

    Hospitals, clinics, insurance providers and pharmacies rely on XML-based formats to exchange clinical records, billing data and prescriptions. HL7’s CDA (Clinical Document Architecture) is a strict XML schema that is used worldwide.

    In government, XML is used for e-government forms and tax data.

    Tax filings, business registrations and compliance documents are often submitted in XML format. This ensures consistent structure across various jurisdictions and software vendors.

    Publishing: DITA and JATS

    XML standards are used for modular content creation and journal publishing to allow interoperability between authors, editors, publishers, and archive systems, even if they are using different tools.

    Finance: XBRL

    XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) uses XML to standardise financial reports, enabling regulators, investors and analysts to automatically process and compare data from


    Thursday
    10 July, 2025


    face
    • WeAreDevelopers for much of the day, a number of interesting talks interspersed by wandering the halls questing for document interested types.
    • Tech planning call; back to the hotel, and out for dinner with Sarper.

    face

    LibreOffice 25.8 will be released as final at the end of August, 2025 ( Check the Release Plan ) being LibreOffice 25.8 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) the third pre-release since the development of version 25.8 started at the beginning of December, 2024. Since the previous release, LibreOffice 25.8 Beta1, 178 commits have been submitted to the code repository and 101 issues got fixed. Check the release notes to find the new features included in this version of LibreOffice.

    LibreOffice 25.8 RC1 can be downloaded for Linux, macOS and Windows, and it will replace the standard installation.

    In case you find any problem in this pre-release, please report it in Bugzilla ( You just need a legit email account in order to create a new account ).

    For help, you can contact the QA Team directly in the QA IRC channel or via Matrix.

    LibreOffice is a volunteer-driven community project, so please help us to test – we appreciate it!

    Happy testing!!

    Download it now!


    Wednesday
    09 July, 2025


    face
    • Mail chew, dug through work, Thorsten arrived, caught up, checked-in at Berlin Messe Sud, out to visit Nextcloud, chat with Jos & Frank, Niels around and out for dinner.
    • Published the next strip: Blake Enterprises to the rescue:
      The Open Road to Freedom - strip#25 - Blake Enterprises (BE)

    Tuesday
    08 July, 2025


    face
    • Planning call, sync with Laser, COOL Days retrospective: it rocked, lunch, met up with Robert.

    face

    Flag and text saying Danish Ministry switching from Microsoft Office/365 to LibreOffice

    Following the example of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, which is moving 30,000 PCs from Microsoft Office/365 to LibreOffice, the Danish Ministry of Digitalisation is doing the same.

    Caroline Stage Olsen, the country’s Digitalisation Minister, plans to move half of the employees to LibreOffice over the summer, and if all goes as expected, the entire Ministry will be free from Microsoft Office/365 later in the year.

    In a LinkedIn post, Olsen summarised the reasons for switching to LibreOffice:

    We must never make ourselves so dependent on so few that we can no longer act freely. Because far too much public digital infrastructure is today tied up with very few foreign suppliers. This makes us vulnerable. Also financially.

    That is why we are now testing in parallel at the Ministry of Digitization how it works in practice when we work with open source solutions. Several municipalities are doing the same.

    Not because we think it’s easy – but because we know it’s necessary to lead the way if we want to create more competition and innovation – and reduce our dependence on the few.

    We in the LibreOffice project welcome this move, and look forward to seeing more governments and organisations getting control of their digital sovereignty and using public money for public code.


    face

    Writer has some support for interdependent (or hierarchical) tracked changes: e.g. the case when you have a delete on top of an insert. See the first post for background.

    This work is primarily for Collabora Online, but the feature is available in desktop Writer as well.

    Motivation

    With the already mentioned improvements in place, a few areas were still lacking: we didn't have UI for all cases where the DOCX import was possible already; combining tracked changes (redlines) were not complete (so you don't have to reject all parts of a logical redline one by one) and some of the undo/redo code didn't work as expected.

    Results so far

    Here is a sample case where the UI was missing to create something that was possible to import from DOCX: a format redline on top of an insert redline.

    If you had a document with an insert:

    Interdependent tracked change: just insert

    And you selected BBB to mark those characters as bold, we just updated the existing insert redline to be bold:

    Interdependent tracked change: old, format is not tracked separately

    But now we track a format change on top of the insert separately:

    Interdependent tracked change: new, format is tracked separately

    This is also visible if you open the track changes dialog, which explains that now you have part of the insert redline covered by a format redline:

    Interdependent tracked change: UI dialog now showing multiple redlines

    How is this implemented?

    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:

    Want to start using this?

    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 (25.8).


    Monday
    07 July, 2025


    face
    • Up earlyish, mail, 1:1's with Miklos, Thorsten, Naomi, Pedro, Eloy. Meeting with Philippe, and the finance team, catch up with Lily.

    face

    General Activities

    1. LibreOffice 25.2.4 was announced on June 6
    2. Olivier Hallot (TDF) added help for compact layout Pivot Tables, Writer table formula MOD and improved the help for Writer’s Send menu commands, font colour, text attributes for drawing objects, Calc shortcut keys, Calc’s LOOKUP function, Of-Pie charts and file conversion filters
    3. Pierre F. added help for Writer table formula INT
    4. Gábor Kelemen (Collabora) simplified code for VCL settings and did many other code cleanups
    5. Tomaž Vajngerl (Collabora) continued polishing support for embedded fonts in PowerPoint files
    6. Marco Cecchetti (Collabora) worked on LOKit used by Collabora Online
    7. Jaume Pujantell (Collabora) improved the import of ref fields in DOCX files
    8. Parth Raiyani (Collabora) makde it so the Layouts panel in Impress Sidebar now uses a native IconView widget instead of the ValueSet widget
    9. Miklós Vajna (Collabora) fixed a Writer list indent removal issue, implemented RTF export of section breaks right sections, fixed an issue with images inside shapes being sized incorrectly in RTF files and continued improving the handling of tracked changes that depend on each other
    10. Xisco Faulí (TDF) implemented Writer table formula MOD, added support for transparent fill colour in SVGs, removed the Euro converter wizard, added several new automated tests, upgraded many dependencies and did many code cleanups and optimisations
    11. Michael Stahl (Collabora) continued working on multi-user editing based on a conflict-free replicated data type (CRDT) and improved the stability of handling Writer comments within the Navigator
    12. Mike Kaganski (Collabora) fixed invisible tree view expansion triangles in Python script organizer, fixed an issue with storing selected encodings in the Text Import dialog, fixed a document read error, fixed an issue with accessing VBScript objects in macros, made menu command code more robust, fixed display of Cyrillic text in RTF files, fixed issues with pasting shapes between LibreOffice applications, fixed Manage Changes dialog not enabling Accept / Reject buttons initially, improved the display of Calc’s Number format dialog in the case of a selection containing different number locales, fixed an RTF table width issue, made bracketing of selected text more robust, fixed a Skia/Vulkan rendering issue affecting line numbers in Basic IDE, fixed an issue with Basic IIf function when used with array indexes, reduced console message noise when running LibreOffice from the command line and fixed several crashes. He also did many code cleanups and optimisations
    13. Caolán McNamara (Collabora) helped Heiko with vertical tabs, fixed crashes and many issues found by static analysers and did code cleanups and optimisations
    14. Stephan Bergmann (Collabora) worked on the WASM build
    15. László Németh added an indicator for justified lines with overly large word spacing
    16. Noel Grandin (Collabora) improved rendering speed of transparent shape fills dramatically, fixed a Windows GDI backend resource use issue seen in documents with lots of styles when the style preview is visible, made Skia rendering backend mandatory on macOS and improved the performance of style handling in Calc. He also did many code cleanups and optimisations
    17. Justin Luth (Collabora

    Sunday
    06 July, 2025


    face
    • Up early, off to All Saints with N. lead family service worship, chatted, home for pizza.
    • Rested variously through the afternoon.

    Saturday
    05 July, 2025


    face
    • Up early, watered the garden, out to Fountains Abbey with the parents, lovely walk through the ruins, and down by the river. Ice-cream & walked back, a lovely day for it.
    • Had a fine lunch together, and drove home. Helped to unpack H's luggage, went shopping with J. and N. practiced music for tomorrow.

    Friday
    04 July, 2025


    face
    • Breakfast together, out by bus to Harrogate to visit their Turkish Baths with J. - a digital detox - alternated cold & hot rooms and pools etc. Fun. Stopped in at EE shop on the way to try to unwind their horrible web experience. Lunch at a cafe.
    • Home by bus, helped Father to drim the hedge, and admired various tools in the garage together.
    • Had tea, and talked together until late.

    face

    In my last article, I mentioned XML several times, perhaps assuming that all users had a basic understanding of it. Rereading it, I realised that an introduction to XML was needed for non-technical users, those who use XML every day without realising it, when they open a document, check the weather, place or receive an order online, or issue a digital invoice. XML works silently behind the scenes.

    But what exactly is XML and why should it matter to non-techies? I will try to explain it in simple terms.

    XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language, a way of organising information in a format that is easy for both people and computers to understand, helping different applications communicate and exchange data using a common language. Put simply, XML is a digital container that clearly labels information.

    For example, this is a shopping list in XML format:


    <groceryList>
      <item>
        <name>Bread</name>
        <quantity>1 loaf</quantity>
      </item>
      <item>
        <name>Milk</name>
        <quantity>2 litres</quantity>
      </item>
    </groceryList>

    Labelling helps computers and software understand exactly what each piece of information means.

    In a hyperconnected world like ours, where apps and systems share data, XML allows that data to move between very different systems, such as credit card management apps and online shops. Without a common language like XML, communication between these systems would be much more complicated and slower, or even impossible.

    So, XML is integrated into most everyday activities, even though it is completely hidden from users:

    • All documents created by all office suites use XML, in some cases to facilitate transparency and interoperability, and in other cases to create a hidden layer of complexity with the aim of preventing transparency and interoperability.
    • All apps that provide weather forecasts obtain updates by reading XML data issued by weather agencies.
    • Almost all e-commerce applications use XML to manage communication between the website, the payment system, the bank and the shipping service.
    • All blogs and news sites use XML to automatically transmit new content to readers.

    XML is clear and easy to read because it organises data in an orderly manner with labels that are understandable to both humans and computers; it is flexible, as it is not limited to a single type of information and can be customised for different scenarios, from cooking recipes to flight schedules; and it is compatible with all platforms.

    To appreciate the value of XML, you don’t need to have a deep understanding of the language, just know that it exists and that – when used properly, as in the case of the ODF format – it has the potential to help users achieve and protect their digital sovereignty.

    Of course, it is equally important to know that XML can be used in exactly the opposite way, as is the case with Microsoft 365’s OOXML format (and previously Office), to limit users’ digital sovereignty and perpetuate lock-in through artificial file complexity.

    In summary, XML is a silent enabler that ensures that users’ apps, services and data all speak


    Thursday
    03 July, 2025


    face
    • Up late, skipped breakfast, met up for lunch with Mark, really lovely to catch up with him.
    • Back for a call with T. prepping around JTAG; good to discover Scan Chain testing; amazing to be able to serialize the whole state of a chip before and after a 'clock' to check for consistency. Left H. having an interview.
    • Walked into town with J, to discover an appointment arriving, headed home quickly, call with Peter & Philippe. Helped to pack H's belongings into the car, bid 'bye and drove to M&D's in Knaesborough.
    • Out for a (non-alcoholic) pint in town, back for tea and saw M&D. back from dancing, enjoyed chatting with them until late.

    Wednesday
    02 July, 2025


    face
    • Up early, cooked breakfast, sync with Dave, chewed mail & tied up loose ends while J. shopped & babes slept.
    • Tried to manage multiple phones under EE's website - apparently this is the feature that is just beyond the edge of their capability to design & maintain; un-usable, website riddled with errors, missing content - billing pages that fail to load. Usually you would expect the piece where you can pay money to a telco to actually work even if nothing else is available; weird.
    • Published the next strip around how to stimulate donations for your non-profit:
      The Open Road to Freedom - strip#24 - stimulating donations
    • Dressed in glad rags, out to the Engineering Department with H. for drinks & celebration, met her supervisor. Back to H's, watched Capital then set off to the Cathedral green to queue for photos, and seats in the Cathedral.
    • Watched H. get her Degree conferred in a fine service. Caught the end of a partner call - met with H's friends, saw her old room.
    • Out to a Turkish restaurant to celebrate together, bed early.

    face

    LibreOffice project and community recap banner

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

    • We started the month with Episode 3 of the LibreOffice Podcast – this time looking at Quality Assurance (QA) in Free and Open Source Software. Watch it below – or on PeerTube.

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    Month of LibreOffice stickers

    Donate button

    Annual Report banner

    • The end of Windows 10 is approaching, so it’s time to consider Linux and LibreOffice! That’s the message behind the “End of 10” campaign, which we’re supporting.

    Old laptop with new software

    Colour wheel being created in LibreOffice Calc

    ODF logo

    LibreOffice booth at the Linux Arena event in Pordenone, Italy

    • Before LibreOffice there was OpenOffice, and before OpenOffice there was StarOffice. And how was StarOffice developed? We talked to Stefan Soyka, who worked on the suite in the early ’90s, and has some entertaining stories to tell 😊

    Stefan Soyka

    • New LibreOffice merchandise is here! We updated our Spreadshirt shop with new designs and many extra items. Buy something and support LibreOffice – some of the proceeds go back to the project!

    LibreOffice T-shirts, bags and more

    • Registration is now open for the LibreOffice Conference 2025. Join us from 4 – 6 September in Budapest – we’ll have technical talks, workshops, social events and more…

    LibreOffice Conference 2025 logo

    Guidebook covers

    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!


    Tuesday
    01 July, 2025


    face
    • Planning call, partner marketing call, intermitten progress reviews on-line with E.'s teachers.
    • Worked in the car cleaning up loose ends, while J. drove, then drove. Arrived, met up with H. & N. enjoyed some Greggs.

    face

    The LibreOffice community has great news: the Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, and Math User Guides are now available for version 25.2! 🎉

    Yes, you read that right! With every new LibreOffice release, our Documentation Team works hard to keep up — and this time, we’ve shortened the gap between the software launch and the guides’ publication even more.

    📚 These user guides are the ultimate reference for anyone using LibreOffice — whether at home, at work, or at school. From spreadsheets to presentations, from text documents to complex equations: it’s all covered, clearly and accessibly.

    🙌 The work is 100% community-driven! Jean Weber led the Writer guide, Peter Schofield coordinated the Impress, Draw, and Math guides, and Olivier Hallot headed the Calc guide.

    Big thanks also to Dione Maddern, Celia Palacios, Ed Olson, B. Antonio F., Mike Kaganski, and Vasudev Narayanan for their valuable contributions.

    💡 Each new edition is more than just an update — it’s a chance to improve clarity, add the latest features, and deliver the best experience possible for end users. These guides complement the built-in LibreOffice Help and are perfect for deepening your knowledge.

    📥 The guides are available now for free download in PDF, ODT (OpenDocument format), and HTML (for online reading). And soon, you’ll be able to order printed copies via LuLu Inc. 😉

    🔗 Get your guides now:

    Artwork: Eliane Domingos


    Monday
    30 June, 2025


    face

    LibreOffice Conference 20205 logo

    Registration is now open for the LibreOffice Conference 2025! Join us from 4 – 6 September in Budapest 😊 We’ll have technical talks, workshops, social events and more…

    Click here to learn more, and register


    Saturday
    28 June, 2025


    face

    To write this article, I went beyond the limits of my technical knowledge, which is that of an advanced user who has studied standard formats and their characteristics in depth, to understand why standard formats – one of the pillars of digital sovereignty – and proprietary formats – their opposite, and one of the biggest obstacles to digital sovereignty – are not perceived as a problem by most PC users, who continue to use Microsoft’s proprietary formats and place the access and availability of their content in the hands of the US company.

    To try to remedy this problem, I will try to explain as simply as possible, using non-technical language (which may shock developers, but this article is not aimed at them), some technical features of the Open Document Format (ODF), which make it the cornerstone of an open and vendor-independent ecosystem for office documents, defending the digital freedoms of all users and the governance of their content.

    I will begin by explaining how to unpack an ODF file, which is nothing more than a set of XML files and other files (for images and videos) contained within a ZIP folder, in order to examine its internal components and, in particular, the content.xml file, which is the one that contains the body of the document (i.e., the user’s intellectual property).

    The aim is not so much to assess conformity (compliance with specifications) and interoperability (the ability to exchange files consistently between tools), as these aspects will always be dealt with by specialists, but rather to understand the advantages for the user of the open and standard format over the closed and proprietary format (which is falsely standard, since it was approved by ISO/IEC in defiance of “their” definitions of standards).

    For this reason, I will make a brief concluding digression on the characteristics of the OOXML (Office Open XML) format used by Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365, again to clarify to users the risks they face and the harm they do to themselves and other users when they use DOCX, XLSX and PPTX formats, as well as the ‘gift’ they are giving to Microsoft, to whom they are effectively entrusting the management and future of their content.

    Analysing an ODF file

    Take any document you have created with LibreOffice. For convenience, I recommend starting with a text document created with LibreOffice Writer, with the ODT extension. Before doing anything else, duplicate the file, because an error in the procedure could make it unreadable, and move the original to another folder.

    Rename the copy, replacing the ODT extension with the ZIP extension, without deleting the dot. The file icon will become that of a compressed file. If it becomes white or empty, you have done something wrong or deleted the dot. Check all the steps until the icon becomes that of a compressed file.

    At this point, right-click on the icon and select “unzip” or “expand” to extract the contents of the compressed file into a folder with the


    Friday
    13 June, 2025


    face

    LibreOffice 25.8 will be released as final at the end of August, 2025 ( Check the Release Plan ) being LibreOffice 25.8 Beta1 the second pre-release since the development of version 25.8 started at the beginning of December, 2024. Since the previous release, LibreOffice 25.8 Alpha1, 782 commits have been submitted to the code repository and 154 issues got fixed. Check the release notes to find the new features included in this version of LibreOffice.

    LibreOffice 25.8 Beta1 can be downloaded for Linux, macOS and Windows, and it can be installed alongside the standard version.

    In case you find any problem in this pre-release, please report it in Bugzilla ( You just need a legit email account in order to create a new account ).

    For help, you can contact the QA Team directly in the QA IRC channel or via Matrix.

    LibreOffice is a volunteer-driven community project, so please help us to test – we appreciate it!

    Happy testing!!

    Download it now!

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