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LibreOffice 7.0: Release Notes

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Writer

  • Actually not limited to lists; e.g., page numbering may also use padding (ODT only).
  • Padded numbering in Writer
    Padded numbering in Writer
  • Bookmarks and Fields can now be protected to prevent accidental changes to them (See Tools ▸ Protect Document) (Katarina Behrens, Michael Stahl, Samuel Mehrbrodt; CIB)
  • Fix in Mail merge: progress is not updated during export of many files (Serge Krot, CIB) tdf#133270
  • Improved rotated text handling in Writer's table rows with automatic height. More info in this blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
  • Implemented support for semi-transparent text in Writer. More info in this blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
  • Semi-transparent text in Writer
    Semi-transparent text in Writer
  • Bookmarks can now be displayed in-line in the text, controlled by Standard Toolbar ▸ Toggle Formatting Marks and Tools ▸ Options... ▸ LibreOffice Writer ▸ Formatting Aids ▸ Bookmarks (Michael Stahl, CIB) tdf#45589 4ce8120f1 04405edc3
  • Bookmark positions in the text
    Bookmark positions in the text
  • Empty input fields were completely invisible and now they are highlighted with grey background too (Serge Krot, CIB) tdf#101830
  • An option added to create encrypted PDF files with mail merge (Gülşah Köse, Collabora) 983db96a
  • Hidden paragraphs are no longer shown by default, to match the print layout (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) ac14ed9f26582701032a28cb424f2b6bf35ca7fd

Navigator

Writer's Navigator got many improvements by Jim Raykowski:

  • Navigator's categories are gray if they don't have any items (the same for Calc's Navigator) tdf#129625
  • All objects in Navigator (Headings, Tables, Frames, Images, etc.) have own context menu items like Go To, Edit, Delete, Rename tdf#128814
  • Headings in Navigator have Promote/Demote level and Promote/Demote chapter context menu items tdf#128814
  • Table's context menu in Navigator now has Insert caption item tdf#128814
  • Added Outline tracking for Headings in Navigator. It can be in three states: Default, Focus, Off. Try clicking with your mouse in several places in your big text document with many headings. You'll see that Headings in Navigator will be selected automatically according to text cursor position tdf#108766
  • Replaced the navigation toolbox with the navigate by elements control tdf#89566
  • Added Navigator section tooltip word and character count tdf#63967
  • New features for 'Headings' section items
    New features for 'Headings' section items
  • Possibility to select the entire section
    Possibility to select the entire section

AutoCorrect

Improved usage of quotation marks and apostrophe in several languages (László Németh)

  • Replace ASCII apostrophe with typographic apostrophe (’) in Czech, German, Icelandic, Slovak and Slovene instead of second level quotation mark (‘) outside of second level quotation tdf#128860
Before
      ‚word' → ‚word‘
      word' → word‘ (bad)
After
      ‚word' → ‚word‘
      word' → word’ (good)
  • Similar in Russian and Ukrainian: replace ASCII apostrophe with typographic apostrophe (’) instead of second level quotation mark (“) outside of second level quotation tdf#123786
Before
      „word' → „word“
      word' → word“ (bad)
After
      „word' → „word“
      word' → word’ (good)
  • Replace character sequences << and >> with double angle quotes « and » in Aragonese, Asturian, Catalan, Finnish, Galician, German, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian; and with single angle quotes ‹ and › in Swiss French, where these quotation marks are in use, but their actual Single and Double Quotes replacement doesn't support them tdf#133524
      <<word>> → «word»
      <<word>> → ‹word› (Swiss French)
  • Replace ASCII quotation mark " with second level quotation marks inside primary level quotation in Hungarian and Romanian (these languages use apostrophe and single quotation marks instead of the equally important double angle quotes in Single Quotes AutoCorrect) tdf#133524
      " → „
      „... " → „... » (Hungarian) or
      „... " → „... « (Romanian)
      „... »word" → „... »word« (Hungarian) or
      „... »word" → „... «word» (Romanian)
      „... »word« ..." → „... »word« ...” (Hungarian) or
      „... «word» ..." → „... «word» ...” (Romanian)

Transliteration to Old Hungarian

As an RTL (Right-To-Left) AutoCorrect feature in Hungarian, words, numbers and some kind of punctuation are transliterated to Old Hungarian (or Szekler/Székely) writing, turning on the right to left writing direction using Writer’s Complex Text Layout support during typing. See this screencast about the usage: Hungarian, as well as an Old Hungarian template document with embedded Noto Old Hungarian font. (László Németh) tdf#133589

  • Transliteration of “Székely írás 2020-ban” (“Szekler script in 2020”)
    Transliteration of “Székely írás 2020-ban” (“Szekler script in 2020”)

Accessibility improvements

New (experimental) features have been added to make documents more accessible: an accessibility check tool to review common accessibility problems in documents, and support for PDF/UA specifications in the PDF export dialog. More information in this blog post (Tomaž Vajngerl, Collabora)

To enable the accessibility check tool and the PDF/UA export, go to:

  • Tools ▸ Options... ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced ▸ Optional Features ▸ Enable experimental features (may be unstable)
  • Restart LibreOffice

You can then find the accessibility check tool in Tools ▸ Accessibility Check..., and the PDF/UA export option in File ▸ Export As ▸ Export as PDF... ▸ Universal Accessibility (PDF/UA).

  • Accessibility check tool in action
    Accessibility check tool in action
  • Option to create a universal accessibility-compliant PDF file that follows the requirements of PDF/UA (ISO 14/289) specifications. The "Tagged PDF" option is automatically ticked.
    Option to create a universal accessibility-compliant PDF file that follows the requirements of PDF/UA (ISO 14/289) specifications. The "Tagged PDF" option is automatically ticked.

Performance improvements

  • 7.0.2
    Find & Replace is ~50% faster tdf#119286 (Noel Grandin, Collabora)

Calc

New spreadsheet functions

  • RAND.NV() and RANDBETWEEN.NV() non-volatile random number generating functions that are not recalculated on every input like RAND() and RANDBETWEEN() are. (Eike Rathke, Red Hat, Inc.) tdf#127831

Changed spreadsheet functions

  • Functions that allow using regular expressions now correctly honor case-insensitivity flags (?i) / (?-i) in the expression. Note that the default case-sensitivity of the functions is not changed; the affected functions: AVERAGEIF, AVERAGEIFS, COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, HLOOKUP, LOOKUP, MATCH, SEARCH, SUMIF, SUMIFS, VLOOKUP are case-insensitive by default, so the sensitivity only changes after first (?-i) in the regular expression (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#78840
  • TEXT() now allows the second argument to be an empty format string for interoperability with other implementations. If the first argument is numeric or a text string that could be converted to a number (according to formula detailed settings) then an empty string is returned. If the first argument is a text string that can not be converted to number then that text string is returned. In previous releases an empty format string always results in Err:502 (invalid argument) error. (Eike Rathke, Red Hat, Inc.) tdf#131536
  • OFFSET() optional 4th parameter (Width) and 5th parameter (Height) now must be greater than 0 if given, otherwise the result is Err:502 (invalid argument) error. In previous releases a negative argument value was silently taken as value 1, which does not comply with the specification and other implementations. (Eike Rathke, Red Hat, Inc.) tdf#85551
  • 7.0.1
    TEXTJOIN() and CONCAT() now handle array/matrix arguments row-wise instead of column-wise, to behave the same as for cell range references and interoperability with other implementations. If formula expressions relied on the old erroneous behaviour that an internal matrix with two columns or more was processed column-wise, they must be changed to pass a transposed matrix to achieve the same (e.g. old CONCAT({"a","b";"c","d"}) would now have to be CONCAT(TRANSPOSE({"a","b";"c","d"})) for the same acbd result). Again, this change is only for the array/matrix case, cell reference arguments are not affected. (Eike Rathke, Red Hat, Inc.) tdf#109409

Performance improvements

  • Improved opening speed of XLSX files with many pictures (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#93831
  • Improved searching speed in autofilter pulldown (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#76481
  • Improved Calc autofill speed (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#88109
  • Decreased a time for a sheet deleting's undoing operation (Luboš Luňák, Noel Grandin; Collabora) tdf#132454

Other

  • Allow raising text import dialog for paste (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) tdf#125440
  • Add Alt + = keyboard shortcut for autosum (Martin van Zijl) tdf#39302
  • Preserve non-breaking space between number and percent sign when adding/deleting decimal (Laurent Balland) tdf#133342
  • Add/Delete decimal to time format for 100th second (Laurent Balland) tdf#103414

Impress & Draw

  • Subscripts now return to the default of 8%. Automatic positioning fixed for superscripts and subscripts in Textboxes (editeng). Positioning fixed for textboxes with "Autofit text". Users may need to fix exaggerated superscripts in presentations created since LO 4.1. (Justin Luth, SIL) tdf#80194 tdf#89849
  • Implemented support for semi-transparent text in Draw/Impress. More info in this blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
  • Semi-transparent text in Draw
    Semi-transparent text in Draw
  • Draw (and other modules) now support page sizes larger than 200" during pdf export (using PDF 1.6 markup). More info in this blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

Performance improvements

  • Typing into a list with animations is faster (Serge Krot, CIB) tdf#129708
  • Entering table editing mode became faster (Mark Hung) tdf#120216
  • Improved opening speed for some PPT files (Miklos Vajna, Collabora) tdf#131496

Base

  • Macro signatures are now evaluated on document load (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) f2f93434

Math

  • Added RGB personalized color. You should use syntax like color rgb 0 100 0 { your_symbols } in Formula editor. That "color" is available in Element's Attributes pane too (Dante DM) tdf#40436
  • Added a Laplace transform symbol (Dante DM) tdf#47914

BASIC

  • For numeric types, the current locale for the decimal and thousands separators is taken into account, e.g., 1.234,321 in de_DE becomes 1234, whereas 1,234.321 in the en_UK locale provides the same result. (Andreas Heinisch) tdf#97983
  • Replace function now case-insensitively replaces non-ASCII Unicode character by default. (Andreas Heinisch) tdf#132389
  • Type-declaration characters are considered in literals now (Andreas Heinisch) tdf#130476

Core / General

Gallery

Templates

  • Most Impress templates were updated from a 4∶3 ratio to 16∶9, some of templates got style support and cleaned (Laurent Balland-Poirier) tdf#132138 (Andreas Kainz) tdf#132771
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  • Add Draw BPMN template (Andreas Kainz)

Config options

  • New config options to disable individual Infobars has been added. (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) 29575dc6
    • Look for org.openoffice.Office.UI.Infobar in Expert config
  • New config option to prevent disabling readonly mode (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) tdf#101652
    • Look for AllowEditReadonlyDocs in Expert config
  • New option to disallow opening files locked by other users (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB)
    • Look for AllowOverrideLocking in Expert config

LibreOffice Help

  • Internet Explorer 11 is no longer supported for viewing the Help
  • New help pages for Property and Resume LibreOffice Basic statements as well as Err VBA object. (Alain Romedenne)
  • Basic Syntax diagrams are starting to be included inside help pages. (Alain Romedenne)
  • Argument syntax in Function/Property/Sub
    Argument syntax in Function/Property/Sub
  • Help pages now have module brand color in the header. (Olivier Hallot)
  • Help pages with module color
    Help pages with module color
  • Review and enhancements of Calc functions syntax in Help pages, using square brackets for optional arguments. (S. Fanning)
    {{Calc_fn_name|SUMIFS}}(Func_Range; Range1; Criterion1[; Range2; Criterion2][; … ; [Range127; Criterion127]])
  • Continuous improvements in Help contents and accuracy (S. Fanning, O. Hallot, A. Romedenne, S. Chaiklin, M. Kaganski, S. Horacek, A. Barrientos, S. Schröder, E. Rathke, I. Lauhakangas, S. Bergman)

Filters

ODF 1.3

LibreOffice 7.0 adds support for exporting to new versions of ODF, available via Tools ▸ Options ▸ Load/Save ▸ General ▸ ODF format version: "ODF 1.3" and "ODF 1.3 Extended"; the latter is the default, unless the user has previously changed the version in the configuration. These implement the current OASIS OpenDocument 1.3 Committee Specification 01. (Michael Stahl, CIB) a541cd919

All of the previously existing versions are still available. There were several fixes to prevent producing invalid files when choosing earlier ODF versions ("ODF 1.0/1.1", "ODF 1.2", "ODF 1.2 Extended"). In particular, Chart interpolation type "stepped" and regression curve types "moving-average" and "polynomial" are no longer exported in version "ODF 1.2 Extended". These features are available in ODF 1.3, so it is recommended to save documents with version "ODF 1.3" or "ODF 1.3 Extended". The latter is the default file format in LibreOffice 7.0. (Michael Stahl, CIB) tdf#130176 58c01351

Recent versions of LibreOffice should have no issues consuming "ODF 1.3 Extended" files. The only known exception is OpenPGP/GPG encrypted ODF 1.3 documents, which can be imported only since LibreOffice 6.4.5. If compatibility with old and no longer maintained ODF consumers (such as OpenOffice.org, Apache OpenOffice or LibreOffice 3.x) is required, and conformance to the ODF standard is no concern, the version "ODF 1.2 Extended (compatibility mode)" continues to be available.

Improvements of the EMF+ import filter

  • Add support for linear gradient import (Armin Le Grand, Bartosz Kosiorek) tdf#124424
  • Add support for BeginContainer record to properly display image (Bartosz Kosiorek) tdf#131542
  • LibreOffice is now able to import and display custom labels from charts in OOXML format and store them in the ODF format. More information in the blog post (Tamás Bunth, Collabora)
  • Display of custom labels in charts
    Display of custom labels in charts

Improvements of DOCX import/export filter

  • Available since 7.0.2
    :
  • DOCX now saves in native 2013/2016/2019 mode instead of in 2007 compatibility mode. “This mode is intended to ensure users of different versions of Microsoft Office can continue working together and documents created with older versions of Office won’t look any different when they’re opened in future versions of Office.” So this mainly benefits Word users - where documents can use more features and Word’s bugfixes since DOCX 1.0 can be applied. Although this means Word 2010 users lose out a little, Microsoft has done the same to them since 2013, and it is end-of-life before 7.0 reaches stable status. Word 2010 users should upgrade to LibreOffice. (Justin, SIL; Miklos/Mike, Collabora; Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) tdf#131304 tdf#123116 tdf#131121
  • DOCX export of non-default cell margins has been implemented. Previously, the only cell margins that were being exported were the row defaults from the last column (Justin Luth, Miklos Vajna; Collabora) tdf#98409
  • Glow effect on objects was implemented (Tamás Bunth, Mike Kaganski; Collabora) tdf#101181
  • Glow effect on objects
    Glow effect on objects

Improvements of XLSX import/export filter

  • Export into XLSX with sheet names bigger than 31 characters (Serge Krot, CIB) tdf#79998
  • Export checkboxes into XLSX (Serge Krot, CIB) tdf#106181
  • Resolved "invalid content error" when opening exported XLSX file with shape (Serge Krot, CIB) tdf#133595
  • Glow effect on objects was implemented (Tamás Bunth, Mike Kaganski; Collabora) tdf#101181
  • Soft edge effect on objects was implemented. More info in this blog post (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#49247
  • Soft edges on objects
    Soft edges on objects

Improvements of PPTX import/export filter

  • Implemented better support for Impress math objects from PPTX, avoiding duplication. More info in this blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
  • The handling of predefined table styles for imported PPTX has been improved (Gülşah Köse, Collabora) tdf#107604
  • Display of the improvements of the import of predefined PPTX table styles. On the left is the original MS Office slide. The screen in the middle displays the old behaviour, the one to the right the improved import.
    Display of the improvements of the import of predefined PPTX table styles. On the left is the original MS Office slide. The screen in the middle displays the old behaviour, the one to the right the improved import.
  • The OOXML “strips” slide transition is now read properly as SLIDEWIPE in Impress (Luboš Luňák, Collabora) c69e5e3
  • The “flashing” transitions of slides have been implemented to the API. This effect used in PowerPoint presentations is similar to “fade” but flashes in white instead of fading to black. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora) e3d7fdf

GUI

Standard Toolbars

  • All toolbars are locked by default now on fresh user profiles (Ahmad Ganzouri) tdf#92484

Icon Theme

  • Best Fit for macOS
    Best Fit for macOS
  • "Neo" Colibre icon theme reborn
    "Neo" Colibre icon theme reborn

Dialogs

  • New icons and banner in Windows installer. (Bayu Rizaldhan Rayes, Rizal Muttaqin, Muhammad Rivan) tdf#130778
  • Renaming a page in Draw or slide in Impress with empty or already used name give a tool tip dialog. (Heiko Tietze) tdf#129032

Impress Presenter Screen

  • Impress presenter screen/presenter console got new refreshed and more up to date user interface design. More info in this blog post (Rizal Muttaqin)

Start Center

  • Fixed unnecessary scrolling for recent documents and templates in Start Center when all thumbnails displays in the window (Roman Kuznetsov) tdf#91818
  • Fixed unnecessary scrolling for recent documents and templates in Start Center to empty space not appear below of last thumbnails row (Roman Kuznetsov) tdf#132441

Localization

New languages/locales with locale data

  • Ligurian [lij-IT]. (Jean Maillard, Eike Rathke, Red Hat, Inc.) tdf#130579
  • Minangkabau [min-ID]. (Peter Farley, Eike Rathke, Red Hat, Inc.) tdf#130772
  • Sundanese [sun-ID]. (Rizal Muttaqin, Eike Rathke, Red Hat, Inc.) tdf#131297
  • 7.0.3
    Võro [vro-EE]. tdf#136951 (Mihkel Tõnnov, Sulev Iva)

Incorporation of other languages

  • Brand-new UI translation into Central Kurdish / Soranî‎ / سۆرانی (ckb)
  • Brand-new UI translation into Friulian (fur)

Improvements to proofing tools and language support

See details on the changes: [1]

  • Afrikaans. The spelling dictionary was updated.
  • Catalan. The spelling dictionary was updated.
  • English (GB). The spelling dictionary was updated.
  • Latvian. The spelling dictionary was updated.
  • Slovak. The spelling dictionary was updated.
  • Belarusian (Belarus). The spelling dictionary was updated and hyphenation patterns added.
  • Russian. Updated Russian thesaurus and conversion of spelling dictionary from KOI8-R to UTF-8.

Scripting

Python

Support for building against the obsolete CPython 2.7 has been removed, and scripts are now always executed on CPython 3 (Michael Stahl, CIB) c4fa6efa67775a6b333a4a5aa873b5cc24a4f7bc

Add command FONTTRANSPARENCY for semi-transparent text (similar to PENTRANSPARENCY and FILLTRANSPARENCY) based on the new Writer feature by Miklós Vajna (László Németh) d4c92c836c42d8fa7e31657d0534bef3979a03e2

Feature removal / deprecation

Writer

  • Blinking effect was removed from the character properties dialog (Gabor Kelemen, NISZ) tdf#132373

General

Filters

Platform Compatibility

Mac

Support for macOS 10.10 and 10.11 is deprecated. Minimum runtime requirement will be raised in a future release.

Windows

Windows Default apps button was added to Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ General, to call Windows file associations management. This button behaves according to Microsoft file association management policy, which is to open "Default apps" on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1; and to show a message telling user how to open that applet manually in Windows 10. This only works with registered application, so would not work for portable or testing (e.g. beta, when not using WRITE_REGISTRY=1 installation option) releases tdf#44462 (Mike Kaganski, Collabora)

Linux

On Linux, file://host/… URLs (denoting filesystem resources on a specific host) were in the past sometimes silently treated as smb://host/… URLs denoting resources accessed via the SMB protocol. This is no longer done. If you want to access a file via the SMB protocol, use a smb URL. (Stephan Bergman) fa314082a89f917912dd2e610ac19991b84921fa

KDE 5 + Qt5

Introduced basic HiDPI scaling for Qt5 (Luca Carlon, Jan-Marek Glogowski) tdf#127687

Java support

  • The four Java jars juh.jar, jurt.jar, ridl.jar, and unoil.jar are now combined into a single libreoffice.jar. The four jars provided classes in overlapping packages, so could not be used with the Java module system. For backwards compatibility, juh.jar, jurt.jar, ridl.jar, and unoil.jar are still present as empty stubs referencing the combined libreoffice.jar. (Stephan Bergmann, Samuel Mehrbrodt; CIB) tdf#117331
  • Java Modules are now supported (using JRE >= 9). The following modules are available:
    • libreoffice.jar: org.libreoffice.uno
    • unoloader.jar: org.libreoffice.unoloader

API changes

UNO API changes

  • XStyleLoader::loadStylesFromURL now supports loading from stream (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) 0322a412
  • remove BasicImport UNO interfaces and service (css::document::XMLBasicImporter, css::document::XMLOasisBasicImporter, css::document::XXMLOasisBasicImporter), which were used internally to load the scripts embedded in documents. (Noel Grandin) 214e6caf2c503d817c47ebcc419e4f7e33b336ac
  • add new XPackageEncryption UNO interface and service (css::packages::XPackageEncryption and css::packages::PackageEncryption), can be used to implement encryption plugins via extensions. The older MS-Crypto schemes were modified to implement that API (Vasily Melenchuk, CIB) b9353394f46e46485fd148f2842f0c1e8e5322e3

Configuration changes

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