Software Update: LibreOffice 4.0 RC 2

The Document Foundation has released the second release candidate of version 4.0 of LibreOffice. This open source office suite originated as a fork of OpenOffice and comes with the word processor Writer, spreadsheet program Calc, presentation program Impress, drawing program Draw, database program Base and Formula, an application for creating scientific notations. If you want to get started with it, don’t worry about the current installation, because this beta will be installed next to it and not over it. This second release candidate contains quite a list of bug fixes and an overview of the major changes and improvements in version 4.0 can be found below:

writer

• Enable attaching comments to document text ranges. fdo#38244
• Allow additional word boundary characters. This feature overrides long dash (—) and short dash (–) to be word boundary characters for the purposes of counting words, and allows the user to specify additional word boundary characters (at Tools → Options → Writer → General → Word Count).
• Import ink annotations from DOCX and RTF documents (available when using Word on a Tablet PC).
• Import / export support for native RTF math expressions
• allow different header and footer on the first page without using a separate page style. For more details, see this blog entry.
• RTF filter now imports old Drawing Objects syntax (fdo#42407). see this blog entry for details and screenshots.
• Various DOCX improvements: import of floating tables, OLE objects inside rectangles, margins of inline images using the WordProcessing markup.
• Clicking fields selects them instead of placing the cursor before them.

calc

• New spreadsheet function XOR as defined in ODF OpenFormula. fdo#50882
• Improved performance of ODS document import.
• New configuration option to toggle handling of empty strings when used in arithmetic expression. fdo#44720
• Save settings of Text Import Dialog for Text to Columns and Paste Unformatted Text from Clipboard (in addition to Text File Import). fdo#47674
• Export color scales and data bars to XLSX (also supports Excel 2010+ extensions for databars).
• Increased size limit on (uncompressed) ODF documents from 2Gb to 4Gb.
• Support “type-ahead” search in the autofilter popup. It is now possible to search for specific entry via key input.
• XML Source dialog to quickly import arbitrary XML content. refer to this page for more information on this feature.
• New pricing Add-In containing spreadsheet functions for option pricing in particular barrier (OPT_BARRIER(…)) and touch (OPT_TOUCH(…)) options. Example : File:Calc-pricing-add-in.ods

Impress

• The state of the sidebar pane in Impress is now remembered.
• Added External Edit menu function for bitmaps.
• Much accelerated multimedia previews, and previews of embedded video on Linux.

draw

• Added External Edit menu function for bitmaps.
• Improve quality of page previews in Draw/Impress with supersampling.

Base

• On all non-Windows platforms a new mork driver implementation is used to access Thunderbird address book. This means that Debian/Ubuntu users can finally integrate LO with their Thunderbird address book. (Debian/Ubuntu distros are not shipping a Mozilla-based mork driver, therefore their native Base package can not access the address book.) This also fixes some really old bugs for different distros. For more information please see:
• In Forms, AutoFilter does not anymore treat values ​​as patterns. As a consequence, an AutoFilter on “A*” will not anymore match any value starting with an A, but only the exact value “A*”. fdo#48807

core

• CMIS protocol support for easy access to document stored on Document Management Systems like Alfresco, Nuxeo, SharePoint…
• Integration of session installer to add missing parts of LibreOffice on the fly
• Reduce Java code: Port Fax and Letter Wizard to Python

Options / General

• Java and advanced options now combined in Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Advanced. For choosing experimental features and enabling macro-recording.

Filters

• Dropped support for legacy binary StarOffice files: 1.0 -> 5.0 . NB. this retains old StarOffice XML file formats .sxw, .sxi etc.
• Import filter for Microsoft Publisher publications. More details in this blog.
• Extended coverage or Visio file format. LibreOffice 4.0.0 supports all existing Visio file formats from Visio 1.0 released in 1992 to Microsoft Visio 2013 released in 2012. More details in this blog.
• Improved ODF compatibility in various points.

GUI

• New Widget layout technique for dialog windows introduced, and converted various dialogs; see WidgetLayout.
• Added dialog for Smooth image filter, where it is possible to select the radius (strength) of smoothing/blurring.
• Added Edit with External Tool to Calc.
• Combine Popup menu option Save Graphic… from Writer and Save as Picture… from Draw and Impress to Save Graphic… .
• It is possible now to select and copy text from message boxes. fdo#46193
• The “Apply Style” combo box in the toolbar now features previews of the styles to choose.
• Unity integration
• Hide / Show styles in the “Styles & Formatting” dialog

Localization

• idxexample.odt localizable via PO files (Insert→Indexes and Tables→Indexes and Tables…).
• calendar/fax/letter/report templates localizable via PO files (File→Wizards).
• Added local files for ebo_CG and tyx_CG.
• Autocorrect improvements for pt-BR.

Performance

• Improved ODS load times (see this blog entry for details).
• Improved XLSX load time (see this blog entry for details).
• Significantly improved the performance of saving a new entry to a large autocorrect replacement table (fdo#49350).
• Significant load and save time improvements for slides / drawings with large numbers of shapes
• Improved RTF file load times (fdo#44736).

Infrastructure

• Many modules ported to gbuild.
• https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/used for code review and easy patch submission — more than 500 patches reviewed and merged with it already
  • ssh logerrit gerrit query status:merged|grep change|wc -l for number of merged patches
• Translations module became a source-only module, l10n tools read translations directly from .po files.
• Tinderbox building bibisect repo
  • Tinderbox integration
  • initial bibisect proof of concept

Linux

• Add GStreamer 1.0 support, and refactor existing gstreamer code.

Extensions / API changes

• Migration to Python 3.3 from Python 2
  • python plugins may require some degree of re-work to work with the latest python.
• Deprecation and un-publishing of internal accessibility API
  • This API was primarily used internally for our bridge implementations to native accessibility technology APIs, and will need adapting in future.
• Removed obsolete API / interfaces
  • Deprecated and never implemented: com.sun.star.text.LineNumberingSettings, com.sun.star.text.DocumentIndexFormat, com.sun.star.util.FileIOException, com.sun.star.util.DiskFullException, com.sun.star .text.XTextEmbeddedObject, com.sun.star.style.XStyleCondition,
  • Deprecated since earliest code checkin: com.sun.star.util.XSimpleErrorHandler, com.sun.star.util.XCancelManager, com.sun.star.util.XArchiver, com.sun.star.view.XPrintPreview, com.sun. star.text.XHeaderFooter/XHeaderFooterPageStyle, com.sun.star.text.XLineNumberingSupplier, com.sun.star.text.XModule,
  • Long term obsolete and/or un-implemented: com.sun.star.text.PrintPreviewSettings, com.sun.star.text.HypertextDocument, com.sun.star.text.AdvancedTextDocument, com.sun.star.ucb.Cookie, com.sun.star.ucb.CookiePolicy, com.sun.star.ucb.CookieRequest, com.sun.star.ucb.HandleCookiesRequest, com.sun.star.ucb.XInteractionCookieHandling, com.sun.star.system.XProxySettings, com.sun.star.system.SOffice52ProxySettings, com.sun.star.system.ProxySettings, com.sun.star.system.SystemProxySettings, com.sun.star.ucb.InteractiveCHAOSException, com.sun.star.ucb.CHAOSProgressStart, com.sun.star.xml.UserDefinedAttributeSupplier, com.sun.star.sync, com.sun.star.sync2, com.sun.star.installation, com.sun.star.text.textfield.docinfo.Info, com. sun.star.setup, com.sun.star.util.logging.LogLevel, com.sun.star.util.logging.Logger, com.sun.star.util.logging.LoggerRemote, com.sun.star.util. logging.XLogger, com.sun.star.util.logging.XLoggerRemote, com.sun.star.beans.XIntroTest, com.sun.star.test, com.sun.star.corba
• APIs deprecated in 3.0 now removed: com.sun.star.document.DocumentInfo, com.sun.star.document.StandaloneDocumentInfo, com.sun.star.document.XDocumentInfo, com.sun.star.document.XDocumentInfoSupplier, com.sun .star.document.XStandaloneDocumentInfo
• com.sun.star.lang.IllegalArgumentException now derives from com.sun.star.uno.RuntimeException
• Rename com.sun.star.ui.UICommandDescription to com.sun.star.frame.UICommandDescription