Software Update: LibreOffice 3.6.0 RC 2

The second release candidate of version 3.6 of LibreOffice has been released. This open source office suite comes with a word processor Writer, spreadsheet program Calc, presentation program Impress, drawing program Draw, database program Base and Formula, an application for creating scientific notations. Information about the bug fixes in this release and changes to the way the program handles the ODF format can be found at this page are found, the changes and improvements made in version 3.6 are listed below.

writer

• Support for contextual spacing†
• Format paintbrush now differentiate character automatic formating attributes applied to paragraph from those applied to text portion inside the paragraph. These character automatic formating attributes are past to the entire paragraph by default; if Ctrl is hold while the format is past these attributes are applied to the selected text portion.
• VML import (used inside older DOCX files) now handles lines, rotations and flips.
• DOCX import now handles GetExpression and SetExpression fields.
• RTF/DOCX import/export now handle the document zoom setting.
• Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+] will decrease and increase font size of the selected text, respectively. fdo#36187
• Word count (whole document and selection) in status bar fdo#34772
• Table AutoFormats now record the following table-level properties: fdo#31005
• break
• Keep with next paragraph
• Repeat heading
• Allow table split across pages
• Allow rows to break across pages
• Merge adjacent line styles
• table shadow
• Shows Text Boundaries depending on the choice of display unprintable characters fdo#46073
• Support for importing Smart Art.

Label / business card wizard

• Extension of label definitions with form (paper, page) size. Labels which are not centered on the form are created correctly now.
• All 1700+ predefined label definitions have been modified to include the form size, obsolete definitions have been removed.
• Recalculation of label position on the form. Label definitions with gaps between labels that are wider than the right margin now produce correct documents. Existing user defined labels are automatically extended with form size.
• The form size can be entered/modified in the wizard dialog.

calc

• Ctrl-D fills-down in more familiar ways, filling with the contents of the cell above if no cell is selected, and filling down multiple cells with larger selections
• New option to specify a custom sheet name prefix in new documents.
• Marked cells in Calc can now be merged via the right mouse click context menu. fdo#37210
• Improved error message for invalid sheet name. fdo#45285
• Export conditional formatting to xlsx
• Improved CSV file import.
  • Handle lines with more than 64k characters. fdo#48501
  • Differentiate between “max rows exceeded” and “max columns exceeded” and “max cell size exceeded” error messages. fdo#48516
  • Better handling of broken CSV files where generator didn’t follow RFC 4180 quote rules. fdo#48621
  • Import numbers in scientific notation without having to check “import special numbers”. fdo#39716
  • Better initial default separators, comma, semicolon and tab. fdo#38088
• Added a “Save cell formulas instead of calculated values” option to CSV export. fdo#45664
• New spreadsheet function DATEDIF as defined in ODF OpenFormula and for MS-Excel interoperability. fdo#44456
• New spreadsheet functions IMTAN, IMSEC, IMCSC, IMCOT, IMSINH, IMCOSH, IMSECH and IMCSCH as defined in ODF OpenFormula. fdo#51017
• Support field items in cells. You can now insert date, sheet name, and title fields into cells. To insert a field, activate the cell to be in edit mode, right-click on the cell, and select Insert Field in the context menu to insert a field.
• Allow sorting of data from the autofilter menu.
• Quickly allow pasting only text, value, or formula from the context menu.
• Detailed configuration options for formula calculation. You can now configure the reference syntax for built-in function INDIRECT. In the future we may add more calculation options here to allow users to configure run-time formula calculations.
• New formula options page with calculation settings.
• Dialog for detailed calculation settings.
• Remove the limitation to 3 sort entries in calc. fdo#45747
• Default number of sheets for new document will be 1, instead of 3. fdo#50183
• Support for X errorbars in scatter and bars charts, import and exporting to xls and ods when using ODS 1.2 extended. fdo#33773
• Support for color scales and data bars. Import from xlsx and import/export from ods in ODF1.2 Extended. Warning: Some limitation still apply and will be fixed in 3.7.0
• New dialogs for conditional formats to support color scales and data bars

Impress

• Added widescreen format for impress slides. fdo#42986
• Correctly detect the external display and put the presenter console on the local display (Michael Meeks)

Math

• Format dialogs (Font, Font Size, Spacing) and Symbols (Tools > Catalog) now have help buttons. fdo#47860

Basic IDE

• Docked Object Catalog pane

core

• Support for Japanese postcard paper size in all applications.
• Recent Documents list are updated on Save, Save As, Save All, and Close. fdo#37775
• Allow for editing of read-only documents. Paraphrasing from the commit message of [1]†
  • When eg viewing mail attachments (that have been stored r/o to some download directory by the mail application), it would be nice if the user could easily temporarily modify them (say, play around with a spreadsheet, changing some numbers and triggering recalculation of formulas) by clicking the “Edit File” button and not being asked to create a copy for editing. Thus:
    • The “Edit File” button now only toggles the r/o status of the view. It no longer asks to create a copy for editing if the underlying document is physically r/o.
    • When a modified document is toggled to ar/o view via “Edit File,” LO still asks the user to save or discard the changes. However, if the underlying document is physically r/o, saving the document opens the “Save As” dialog, instead of just doing a “Save” operation (which would fail on the physically r/o document).
    • The title of the document window now contains “(read-only)” if and only if either the view is r/o or the document is physically r/o (or both).
• Add Support assistive technology tools option to installation process fdo#39833
• Added Lanczos algorithm for resizing of images and use it instead of interpolate algorithm. This change has increased the quality of images when reducing image resolution in PDF export. fdo#46378

Filters

• Import filter for Corel Draw documents. More details here and here†
• PDF Export with Watermark option. See it at File > Export to PDF.
• ODF Export now comes with a “ODF 1.2 Extended (compat mode)”, that yields better interoperability with older consumers of the Open Document Format. It comes at the price of a slightly reduced standards conformance though.

gui

• The About dialog has been redesigned for a cleaner look. Access via Help->About
• Writer and calc use split color buttons, making it possible to apply the last used color with one mouse click for font, background, border and highlight colors
• Clicking >> will not show toolbar options anymore, the options could be shown by right-clicking the toolbar. fdo#38276
• Rulers are now much cleaner and more light-weight
• Support for Trinity Desktop Environmentintegration (widgets, open/save dialogs, and address books)
• Dictionary choice removed in spell checker when there is only 1 dictionary active fdo#40778
• Zooming does now base on a geometric progression instead of an arithmetic one fdo#44173
• Default to Tango icon set on OS/X
• GTK themes are now able to render background gradient
• GTK themes now have a way for tab prelight rendering
• GTK theming is implemented for fixes lines and frames

Localization

• Implemented local dependent date acceptance patterns for input or incomplete dates. This prevents erroneous detection of dates in Calc and Writer cell input and CSV file import. see blog article for details†
• Added English_Malawi en_MW local data.
• Added Erzya_Russia myv_RU local data.
• Improved language tools (spell-check dictionaries, thesaurus, hyphenation patterns). Information taken from dictionary repository†
  • Updated Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR) spell checker
  • Updated Swedish spell-check dictionary
  • Updated French spell-check dictionary and thesaurus
  • Updated Czech thesaurus
  • Greatly improved German language tools (de-DE, de-AT, de-CH) with over 30,000 new words added to the German spell-check dictionary and over 7,000 new synonyms added to the German thesaurus. Hyphenation patterns were also improved.

Performance

• Substantially improved OLE2 document import: .doc, .xls, .ppt
• Substantially improved simple .doc /.docx import
• Large document scrolling / re-layout / interactive editing improvements
• Large autocorrect lists handled around twice as fast
• Improved performance of pivot table in Calc. Refreshing of pivot table should be now 35-50% faster than 3.5. In addition, memory footprint or pivot table is reduced significantly.
• Improved performance of raw cell value import from xlsx documents.
• Improved performance of merged cell and matrix range import from ods documents.

Infrastructure

• Many modules ported to faster, more reliable gnumake