Category: Releases

LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.4 introduces OOXML, PDF, and configuration management improvements

Michael Meeks Leave a comment
Today’s release of LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.4 combines Collabora’s latest compatibility, deployment management, and document integrity features with a host of improvements from the LibreOffice community. Redesigned toolbars, menus, rulers, and dialogues make these powerful additions more attractive and efficient to use.

Manage complex user needs with ease

LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.4 allows system administrators to quickly apply per-user configurations to large-scale deployments thanks to extended support for Windows Server ADMX Group Policy templates. Developed by Collabora, this facility allows multiple users on a single machine to have separate local settings, managed centrally by an administrator. These include over 25,000 options such as those relating to language, security, and file formats.

LibreOffice-from-Collabora in Group Policy Editor
LibreOffice-from-Collabora in Group Policy Editor

Better Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility

Today’s release extends support for OOXML documents created by Microsoft Office 2007 by anticipating and accommodating non-OOXML-compliant formatting generated by that application, resulting in more accurate rendering of documents.

Timestamping: secure document integrity

Fresh support for the Time Stamp Protocol (TSP) allows for independent verification of PDF document integrity. Required for submission of legal documents in Switzerland and other regions, this provide a convenient, automated way to prove that a document existed with particular content at a given time and date. Free TSP services mean anyone can use this feature to show important documents were created at a certain time.

Adding a new timestamp authority
Adding a new timestamp authority

Selecting a certificate for timestamping
Selecting a certificate for timestamping

A smoother user experience

A wide range of user interface improvements led by Collabora’s Jan Holešovský deliver a more elegant and intuitive experience. A new welcome center, complete with fresh templates, speed up creation of new documents, while new contextual colour selector, toolbar linespacing menu, bullet and numbering previews, improved sidebar management and icons combine to a streamlined document editing workflow. Clearer page numbers, tooltips, word count, and measurement rulers make the panels more crisp.

lofc-44-colour-picker-2
Easily accessible colour picker
Dropdown item numbering menu
Dropdown item numbering menu
Dropdown colour selection menu
Dropdown colour selection menu
Drop down line spacing menu
Drop down line spacing menu
New start centre with fresh templates
New start centre with fresh templates
Dropdown bullet point menu
Dropdown bullet point menu

Ever-better performance

Collabora engineers deliver performance improvements to loading, saving, and mail-merging documents:

  • Exporting to OOXML is significantly faster thanks to low-level data serialisation improvements
  • Mail merge in Writer using large contact lists significantly more efficient
  • Use of a new JPEG image library delivers 2x benefit during handling of those images
  • Storing documents which include images is faster, thanks to smarter document saving

Mail merging documents is significantly faster
Mail merging documents is significantly faster

LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.3 released

Michael Meeks Leave a comment

Collabora Office

Today we release LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.3, featuring a plethora of new features from Collabora and the community. Together with all features from LibreOffice 4.3 tested and hardened, we’ve also included important back-ported improvements from the latest LibreOffice 4.4 Fresh.

Packed with features

Huge improvements over LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.2

With more than 40 new improvements tested and included from The Document Foundation’s LibreOffice 4.3, LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.3 offers benefits across the board, including performance, user interface, and interoperability features. For the full list included from LibreOffice 4.3, see The Document Foundation’s 4.3 release notes.

DrawingML import/export

Greatly improved OOXML shapes in LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.3
Greatly improved OOXML shapes in LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.3
  • Brand new support for import / export of DrawingML shapes and TextFrames to DOCX files comes from Collabora Productivity Engineer Miklos Vajna. The result is drastically improved rendering of shapes and TextFrames contained within DOCX documents.

Improvements to document comments

  • Import and export of nested comments is now supported in ODF, DOC, DOCX and RTF documents.
  • Comments can now be printed next to the text in the right margin as they appear on screen.
  • All comments in a document can adopt the same style in a single click via the “format all comments” feature.

The freshest features back-ported

As well as all the features from LibreOffice 4.3, LibreOffice-from-Collabora also include five back-ported features from the latest LibreOffice 4.4 Fresh. These include:

Improvements to Track Changes

New changeset toolbar with fresh icons
New changeset toolbar with fresh icons
  • A new “track changes” toolbar, complete with new icons, provides easy access to ten different functions, including “show / hide changes”, “record changes”, and “compare document”.
  • The “Accept Change” and “Reject Change” commands now automatically jump to the next change.

New style menu options

Style menu dropdown with new options
Style menu dropdown with new options
  • The style drop-down menu now offers an additional sub-menu for each style offering to edit or update the style that is selected.

Digital signatures

PDF documents can now be digitally signed
PDF documents can now be digitally signed
  • PDF documents can now be digitally signed with a certificate, proving the identity of the document author.

Read only mode

A new warning message on a 'read only' document
A new warning message on a ‘read only’ document
  • Documents opened in read only with show a highlighted warning message during viewing, informing the user that the file cannot be edited, with the option to switch to edit mode.X

Latest LibreOffice Viewer for Android brings faster, smoother reading

Michael Meeks Leave a comment

Collabora’s LibreOffice Viewer for Android brings a major performance update in today’s release.

As part of our ongoing development of the separate LibreOffice editor app, user interface rendering has been overhauled ‘under the hood’, with the focus on faster and more accurate fetching of tiles (images which combine to form the visible Android interface).

Where scrolling complex documents used to lag, browsing is now smooth. Where occasional waiting for document sections was required, tiling now prioritises the most important sections, and renders them faster.

This work by Collabora Engineer Tomaž Vajngerl is critical for responsive editing in the LibreOffice editor project, which shares the same codebase as the Viewer application.

Today’s update is the latest of Collabora’s weekly Android updates.