Development is now focused on interoperability with Microsoft’s
proprietary file formats, and many new features are targeted at users
migrating from MS Office
Berlin, August 18, 2022 – LibreOffice 7.4 Community, the new major
release of the volunteer-supported free office suite for desktop
productivity, is immediately available from
https://www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon
and Intel processors), and Linux.
Most Significant New Features
GENERAL
• Support for WebP images and EMZ/WMZ files
• Help pages for the ScriptForge scripting library
• Search field for the Extension Manager
• Performance and compatibility improvements
WRITER
• Better change tracking in the footnote area
• Edited lists show original numbers in change tracking
• New typographic settings for hyphenation
CALC
• Support for 16,384 columns in spreadsheets
• Extra functions in drop-down AutoSum widget
• New menu item to search for sheet names
IMPRESS
• New support for document themes
A video summarizing the top new features in LibreOffice 7.4 Community is
available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC8M4UzqpqE and
PeerTube: https://peertube.opencloud.lu/w/myZUTCytN28kuxDa5VXNgh. A
description of all new features is available in the Release Notes [1]
Interoperability
Based on the distinctive features of the LibreOffice Technology platform
for personal productivity on desktop, mobile and cloud, LibreOffice 7.4
provides a large number of improvements and new features targeted at
users sharing documents with MS Office or migrating from MS Office.
These users should check new releases of LibreOffice on a regular basis,
as the progress is so fast, that each new version improves dramatically
over the previous one.
LibreOffice offers the highest level of compatibility in the office
suite market segment, with native support for the OpenDocument Format
(ODF) – beating proprietary formats for security and robustness – to
superior support for MS Office files, to filters for a large number of
legacy document formats, to return ownership and control to users.
Microsoft files are still based on the proprietary format deprecated by
ISO in 2008, and not on the ISO approved standard, so they hide a large
amount of artificial complexity. This causes handling issues with
LibreOffice, which defaults to a true open standard format (the
OpenDocument Format).
Contributors to LibreOffice 7.4 Community
LibreOffice 7.4 Community's new features have been developed by 147
contributors: 72% of code commits are from the 52 developers employed by
three companies sitting in TDF’s Advisory Board – Collabora, Red Hat and
allotropia – or other organizations (including The Document Foundation),
and 28% are from 95 individual volunteers.
In addition, 528 volunteers have provided localizations in 158
languages. LibreOffice 7.4 Community is released in 120 different
language versions, more than any other free or proprietary software, and
as such can be used in the native language (L1) by over 5.4 billion
people worldwide. In addition, over 2.3 billion people speak one of
those 120 languages as their second language (L2).
LibreOffice for Enterprises
For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the
LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners –
for desktop, mobile and cloud – with a large number of dedicated
value-added features and other benefits such as SLA (Service Level
Agreements): https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-in-business/.
Despite this recommendation, an increasing number of enterprises are
using the version supported by volunteers, instead of the version
optimized for their needs and supported by the different ecosystem
companies. Over time, this represents a problem for the sustainability
of the LibreOffice project, because it slows down its evolution. In
fact, every line of code developed by ecosystem companies for their
enterprise customers is shared with the community on the master code
repository, and improves the LibreOffice Technology platform.
Products based on LibreOffice Technology are available for major desktop
operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and Chrome OS), for mobile
platforms (Android and iOS), and for the cloud. Slowing down the
development of the platform is hurting users, and the LibreOffice
project may fall short of its expectations and possibilities.
Migrations to LibreOffice
The Document Foundation has developed a Migration Protocol to support
enterprises moving from proprietary office suites to LibreOffice, which
is based on the deployment of an LTS version from the LibreOffice
Enterprise family, plus migration consultancy and training sourced from
certified professionals who offer value-added solutions in line with
proprietary offerings. Reference:
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/.
In fact, LibreOffice – thanks to its mature codebase, rich feature set,
strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and LTS
options from certified partners – is the ideal solution for businesses
that want to regain control of their data and free themselves from
vendor lock-in.
Availability of LibreOffice 7.4 Community
LibreOffice 7.4 Community is available from:
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements for
proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple
macOS 10.12. LibreOffice Technology-based products for Android and iOS
are listed here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/android-and-ios/.
For users who don’t need the very latest features, and prefer a release
that has undergone more testing and bug fixing, The Document Foundation
maintains the LibreOffice 7.3 family, which includes some months of
back-ported fixes. The current version is LibreOffice 7.3.5.
The Document Foundation does not provide technical support for users,
although they can get it from volunteers on user mailing lists and the
Ask LibreOffice website: https://ask.libreoffice.org
LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can
support The Document Foundation with a donation at
https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.
LibreOffice 7.4 is built with document conversion libraries from the
Document Liberation Project: https://www.documentliberation.org
[1] Release Notes: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.4
Press Kit
Download link: https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/6i79yxpLYjsaGZB
Permalink:
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2022/08/18/libreoffice-7-4-community/
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The Document Foundation & LibreOffice
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