LibreOffice 7.6 Community: A New Version of the Free Office Suite
LibreOffice 7.6 Community, the latest major version of the volunteer-supported free office suite for desktop, is now available for download. This version marks the end of the traditional numbering system, with future versions set to be named based on the calendar date. The Document Foundation (TDF) will adopt this new numbering system starting in 2024, with the next major release being LibreOffice 2024.02.
LibreOffice stands out as the only open-source office suite that rivals the functionality of the most widely used proprietary products in this category. Over the past twelve years and five development cycles, the focus has been on refining existing features rather than introducing entirely new ones. This approach has led to continuous improvements in code quality, user interface optimization, hardware and software platform support, and interoperability with various file formats.
Key Features of LibreOffice 7.6 Community
General:
– Support for touchpad gestures for zooming in and out in basic view.
– Theme support for documents, including import and export in ODF and OOXML formats.
– Enhancements for using fonts, especially right-to-left and Asian scripts.
Writer:
– New Page Numbering Wizard in the Insert menu for adding page numbers to headers or footers in one step.
– Paragraph Style dropdown list on the Formatting toolbar now shows styles used in the document.
– More flexible creation of image lists based on paragraph styles.
– Ability to edit bibliography entries directly in the list and have citations in the text link to corresponding entries.
– Highlighting of paragraph and character styles and direct formatting in the text.
– Subword checking: Multiple-word entries can now be used in Hunspell dictionaries.
Calc:
– Support for the „?“ number format in ODF, representing a digit replaced by a space if it is a non-significant zero.
– User-defined print areas are now preserved when copying sheets to another document.
– Solver settings are saved with the document, and unused page styles are exported.
– Support for drawing styles for shapes and comments, including a specific style for comments to customize the appearance of new comments and text formatting within them.
– New compact layout for pivot tables.
– Automatic filter for sorting by color, taking into account colors specified by the number format.
– Import Text dialog (CSV or unformatted text file) allows preventing detection of numbers in scientific notation (if the „Detect special numbers“ option is turned off).
Impress and Draw:
– New navigation panel for switching slides during presentations.
– Objects can be listed in the Navigator in front-to-back order, with the topmost object at the beginning of the list.
– Support for text annotations when importing PDFium library format, with export support for text annotations as well as annotations in the form of handwriting, broken lines, and polygons.
– Improved text scaling algorithm similar to MS Office, distinguishing between spacing scaling (e.g., between paragraphs) and font size scaling.
Contributors to LibreOffice 7.6 Community
The latest features in LibreOffice 7.6 Community were developed by 148 contributors, with 61% of code commits coming from 52 employees of three companies represented in the TDF advisory board – Collabora, Red Hat, and allotropia. TDF developers contributed 7%, and the remaining 24% came from 89 individual volunteers.
Additionally, 202 volunteers – supported by hundreds of others working on translations – are credited with changes related to localization in 160 languages. LibreOffice 7.6 Community is available in 120 different language versions, making it more accessible than any other free or proprietary software. This broad language support enables over 5.4 billion people to use it in their native language and another 2.3 billion in their second language.
LibreOffice for Businesses
For companies looking to use LibreOffice professionally, TDF recommends utilizing applications from the LibreOffice Enterprise group offered by partners for desktop, mobile, or cloud environments. These solutions come with additional features and services, including long-term support, professional assistance, custom development, and other value-added benefits. Products developed on the LibreOffice Technology platform are available for major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux, and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS), and the cloud.
Migration to LibreOffice
TDF has prepared a migration protocol outlining the transition from proprietary office suites to LibreOffice for businesses. The protocol involves deploying a long-term support (LTS) version from the LibreOffice Enterprise applications along with consulting and training provided by certified professionals offering value-added services and comprehensive solutions. More information can be found at: https://cs.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support.
LibreOffice – with its advanced source code, rich feature set, strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility, and long-term support from certified partners – is an ideal solution for companies seeking to regain control over their data and reduce dependence on proprietary vendors, products, and formats.
Interoperability with Microsoft Office Suite
LibreOffice 7.6, utilizing the LibreOffice Technology platform for office work in desktop, mobile, and cloud environments, brings a range of improvements and new features for users who share documents with or transition from the MS Office suite. Users in this category should stay updated on new versions as each release brings noticeable enhancements over the previous one.
Some of the significant improvements include:
– Writer: Fixes for frames in DOCX files, addressing issues like invisible frames, merged frames that should be separate, separate frames that should be merged, overlapping frames, unused parent styles, ignored or incorrect positioning, and unrotated frames.
– Writer: Character properties for paragraph marking from DOCX format are now saved in ODT files.
– Writer: Significant improvements for multipage floating tables, especially their import/export from/to DOCX/DOC/RTF formats.
– Calc: Fixed XLSX export for cell border color formatted conditionally.
LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility among office suites, from native support for the Open Document format (ODF) – surpassing proprietary formats in security and robustness – to excellent support for MS Office files and filters for a range of previously used formats, ensuring users retain access to their old documents.
Microsoft files do not adhere to the ISO-approved standard and still use a proprietary format that was deemed not recommended by ISO in April 2008. The internal structure of the format used poses challenges in LibreOffice. In contrast, the default LibreOffice format (Open Document) is truly open and standard.
Availability
LibreOffice 7.6 Community can be downloaded from https://cs.libreoffice.org/download. The minimum requirements are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple macOS 10.15 for proprietary operating systems. Products for Android and iOS utilizing LibreOffice Technology are available here: https://cs.libreoffice.org/download/android-viewer.
Users prioritizing application reliability should opt for the stable version, where new features are thoroughly tested. The Document Foundation maintains a range of LibreOffice 7.5 versions, with the current 7.5.5 Community version incorporating several months of bug fixes.
The Document Foundation does not provide technical support, but users can seek advice from the volunteer community through email conferences or the Ask LibreOffice website: https://ask.libreoffice.org, available in Czech and Slovak.
LibreOffice users, open-source advocates, and community members can financially support The Document Foundation at https://cs.libreoffice.org/donate.
Source and Image: LibreOffice, Document Foundation
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