About this page

This is the page with our 5.3 release notes. It should be final now that the 5.3 version itself has been released. However, if you spot any missing or incorrect information, then please let us know. Thanks in advance for your help!





Writer

Go to Page Dialog

Writer has a new dialog for quickly jumping to another page that is available through Edit ▸ Go to Page and Ctrl + G . tdf#83054 (Akshay Deep, Yousuf Philips)

Go to Page Dialog

Table Styles

Table styles were implemented in Writer:

The "Table Autoformat" feature was extended from one-time formatting only to a full-featured table style: now when the table uses a table style, the style is preserved with edits in the table, including adding and deleting rows / columns / data.

Import and export of ODF table styles.

Table styles can be created and assigned to tables in the Styles & Formatting sidebar deck.

UNO API for working with table styles.

Undo and Redo support for table styles.

For detailed code changes, see this blog entry. (Jakub Trzebiatowski, GSoC 2016; Miklos Vajna, Collabora; Jan Holešovský, Collabora; Yousuf Philips)

New item "Table styles" in section "Styles & Formatting"

Arrows Toolbox

New drawing tools were added (that were previously available only in Draw and Impress). tdf#101390 (Gülşah Köse)

Improvements in the toolbar

It's now possible to set the small capitals character property via a toolbar button. blog entry. (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

Borderless padding is displayed

Spacing to contents for pages/paragraphs/characters/headers/frames/images will now affect layout even if borders are not defined, allowing for compatibilty with other ODF-producing software. (Justin Luth, SIL)

The ability to define borderless padding will come in version 5.4. tdf#41542

Navigator

Now it's possible to select multiple headings simultaneously and promote or demote their levels in the Navigator window in Writer. To do this, you need to toggle "Content Navigation View", and use the SHIFT or CTRL key for multiple selection. (Michael Stahl) tdf#54834

Calc

Arrows Toolbox

New drawing tools were added (that were previously available only in Draw and Impress). tdf#101390 (Gülşah Köse)

Option settings

In new installations the default setting for new documents is now Enable wildcards in formulas instead of regular expressions. tdf#88581 (Eike Rathke (Red Hat, Inc.)) This is for better interoperability with other spreadsheet applications and a better experience for users who are not familiar with regular expressions. Wildcards are more widespread and the large set of regular expression metacharacters often makes queries too complicated for casual users. See also ReleaseNotes 5.2 for wildcards.

instead of regular expressions. tdf#88581 (Eike Rathke (Red Hat, Inc.))

New spreadsheet functions

Changed spreadsheet functions

The UI name of EFFECTIVE was changed to EFFECT to be the same as in other spreadsheet applications. tdf#100641 (Eike Rathke (Red Hat, Inc.))

Compatibility with ODF 1.2

ISOWEEKNUM and WEEKNUM_OOO

Releases prior to 5.1 saved WEEKNUM wrongly as ISOWEEKNUM to ODF. Release 5.3 resolves the interim solution introduced with release 5.1 (see ReleaseNotes/5.1#Compatibility_with_ODF_1.2). (Eike Rathke (Red Hat, Inc.))

When importing ISOWEEKNUM , if the call uses one parameter it is kept as the correct ISOWEEKNUM.

, if the call uses one parameter it is kept as the correct ISOWEEKNUM. If the call uses two parameters it is determined if the second argument mode is a literal numeric value unequal to 1 in which case it is mapped to ISOWEEKNUM with one argument, as the old WEEKNUM function implemented exactly that for those modes.

is a literal numeric value unequal to in which case it is mapped to ISOWEEKNUM with one argument, as the old WEEKNUM function implemented exactly that for those modes. If the second argument is something different, i.e. a numeric value 1 or an expression, the call is mapped to the WEEKNUM_OOO compatibility function introduced in LibreOffice 5.1. WEEKNUM_OOO is now saved as ORG.LIBREOFFICE.WEEKNUM_OOO which releases 5.1 and 5.2 can read.

or an expression, the call is mapped to the compatibility function introduced in LibreOffice 5.1.

Number Format

Fraction Number Formats (Laurent BP) any of # , ? or 0 can be used for any of integer, numerator or denominator format string.



For instance # ?/#00 will display 3.5 as 3 1/02 and PI as 3 16/113 tdf#100755 tdf#31449 any string can be used as delimiter between integer and fraction: #" plus fraction "?/? will display PI value as 3 plus fraction 1/7 tdf#100834 more accurate representation of fraction with a new algorithm tdf#99996 (Wolfgang Jäger)

new default formats with forced denominator tdf#100592

if denominator has less digits than places, it is now left aligned tdf#102507: with format # ?/??? value 3.5 is displayed as 3 1/2 (with two spaces after fraction), instead of 3 1/ 2 (old behavior) format options available through UI dialog Format ▸ Cells ▸ Numbers and Sidebar

New options for fraction in UI dialog and Sidebar

Default Cell Styles

Default cell styles are loaded from a file in the user profile (Jaskaran Singh ( GSoC )) Syntax is based on ODF and loaded through orcus Defining own default cell styles is now easy

))

New and improved default cell styles, tdf#90937 (UX team, Jaskaran Singh)

Pivot tables

Median is added to functions available in pivot tables, useful for data fields and for row/column fields (subtotals) tdf#61700 (Tamás Zolnai) Only ODS file format is supported to save/load such pivot tables.



Using median in a pivot table.

Other

Merge non empty cells Format ▸ Merge cells ▸ Merge cells brings a new option: tdf#30456 (Laurent BP) before LibO 5.3, if content was detected, it was possible to move it as text into the first cell. If not content was just hidden but not removed.

▸ ▸ brings a new option: tdf#30456 (Laurent BP)

Previous dialog when merging non empty cells

from LibO 5.3, a new option is available: empty hidden cell so that formulas refering to these cells will be updated.

New dialog options when merging non empty cells

Functions ( Insert ▸ Function ) can now be searched from the available list tdf#67974.

Type in the marked area to search in available list of functions.

Calc now supports scrolling through the Scroll Lock key tdf#46200.

Impress

Images inserted via Insert ▸ Media ▸ Photo Album can now be linked instead of embedded in the document. tdf#65356 (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB)

▸ ▸ can now be linked instead of embedded in the document. tdf#65356 (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) Slide properties content panel in sidebar for master slide mode. tdf#89466 (Susobhan Ghosh, GSoC 2016; Katarina Behrens, CIB; Yousuf Philips)

Template Selector

When launching Impress, a Template Selector allows you to choose a Template to start with (Akshay Deep, GSoC; Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB)

Template Selector

Templates

Two new default templates: Vivid and Pencil:

Vivid template Pencil template

All existing templates have been improved (Francisco Adrián Sánchez)

Draw

New arrow endings, including Crow's foot notation's ones. Also availible in other apps. (Yan Pashkovsky, Dipankar Niranjan) tdf#93782 tdf#92152

New arrow endings

Base

Firebird has been upgraded to version 3.0.0. It is unable to read back Firebird 2.5 data, so embedded firebird odb files created in LibreOffice version up to 5.2 cannot be opened with LibreOffice 5.3. Since a future version of firebird will have a backwards compatibility module, some future version of LibreOffice (embedding this future version of firebird) will also be able to open these older files.

Embedded Firebird switched to Firebird's "archive" format, which is version- and endianness-independent, so this issue won't happen again.

ODB files created by LibreOffice < 5.3 can be manually converted to LibreOffice 5.3 format by using Firebird 2.5 to convert the data to archive format, and replacing the database data within the ODB by the archive format version. To do this, install a stand-alone Firebird 2.5, and use its "gbak" tool to convert the file "database.fdb" to "database.fbk" within the odb file. Don't forget to remove the .fdb file.

Chart

Trend line (regression) equation: Y name (default " f(x) ") and X name (default " x ") can be replaced by names defined by the user tdf#100547 (Laurent BP)



Customize X and Y names of trend line equation

Math

Dynamically-sized integral intd now allows sub/superscripts. (Takeshi Abe) tdf#53472 tdf#102268

now allows sub/superscripts. (Takeshi Abe) tdf#53472 tdf#102268 New command "Evaluated At" in "Brackets" section of Elements window has been added. (Takeshi Abe) tdf#44839

Improved MathML import (Takeshi Abe) Import MathML's <mspace> tdf#76296 Import stretchy integral symbol from MathML tdf#103500

Improved MathML export (Takeshi Abe) Export dynamically-sized integral intd to MathML tdf#97049 Export Greek symbols to MathML with correct mathvariant attribute tdf#101022



Core / General

Closing LibreOffice will no longer kill active UNO connections (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB). tdf#102274

Text Layout

A new cross-platform text layout engine that uses HarfBuzz for consistent text layout on all platforms (Akash Jain, GSoC 2016; Khaled Hosny) tdf#89870 OpenType layout is now supported on all platforms, and default OpenType features are enabled for all languages. Graphite layout is now supported on macOS as well, not only Linux and Windows. OpenType layout features can be controlled using the syntax previously only supported for Graphite fonts, see for example Using OpenType Features in LibreOffice. Improved Kashida justification for Arabic script. Improved vertical text layout for CJK scripts to use HarfBuzz instead of the home grown solution(s). All text layout now goes through HarfBuzz, there is no longer any distinction between so-called simple and complex scripts. Many Windows-only and macOS-only text layout bugs have been fixed.

for consistent text layout on all platforms (Akash Jain, 2016; Khaled Hosny) tdf#89870

The Graphite font Awami Nastaliq used on macOS with the new layout engine STIX Two Text font showing small caps, proportional numbers, and fractions activated

Improved and consistent calculation of inter-line spacing across platforms (Khaled Hosny) tdf#55469

Enable vertical “left to right” block direction, needed for traditional Mongolian and Manchu (Khaled Hosny) tdf#33278

New vertical left-to-right option for text direction Vertical left-to-right text layout used for traditional Mongolian

Change of color palettes

see this blog entry

Fix recent colors

The custom palette is newly added, which allows colors to be added directly in the area style dialog

Custom palette makes the manipulation of factory settings via Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Colors obsolete ‒ and hence we deleted this option

▸ ▸ ▸ obsolete ‒ and hence we deleted this option The palettes gallery, web, cmyk , and scribus were removed because of the non-standard and rather arbitrary collections with inappropriate names

, and were removed because of the non-standard and rather arbitrary collections with inappropriate names Tango and html palettes received minor updates for labels and arrangement of colors

and palettes received minor updates for labels and arrangement of colors The standard palette was also refreshed. The first row now starts with 12 shades of gray followed by 12 basic colors from the HSV color wheel. The next rows are variations of these basic colors in respect to saturation and luminance by 66%, 50%, and 25%. The final 12×8 arrangement fits perfectly into our color picker grid

palette was also refreshed. The first row now starts with 12 shades of gray followed by 12 basic colors from the color wheel. The next rows are variations of these basic colors in respect to saturation and luminance by 66%, 50%, and 25%. The final 12×8 arrangement fits perfectly into our color picker grid The palette breeze has been added to the default set. It comprises all values known from the KDE human interface guidelines as an alternative to tango

has been added to the default set. It comprises all values known from the KDE human interface guidelines as an alternative to tango Completely new is the tonal palette. It aims to provide a set of colors with the same luminance respective color contrast

palette. It aims to provide a set of colors with the same luminance respective color contrast The palette freecolour-hlc based on the CIE LAB color model has been added. Its purpose is to provide a cross-media safe set of colors targeting expert publishers

Document signing

The bundled libxmlsec library has been upgraded to 1.2.23, including our "OOXML Relationships Transform Algorithm" implementation upstream. blog entry (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

Added support for PDF signature import/export. Now it is possible to digitally sign existing PDF files. blog entry. (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

A verified PDF signature.

Added support for PAdES signing of PDF files. blog entry (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

Added support for XAdES signing of ODF files. commit b2318479c8635af8e022ff4f844e85a1f6b9f4de (Tor Lillqvist, Collabora)

Safe Mode

A safe mode has been added which starts LibreOffice temporarily with a fresh user profile and helps to restore a broken configuration. (Armin Le Grand, CIB; Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB)

It can be started with one of the following methods:

Using the menu: Help ▸ Restart in Safe Mode...

▸ Using the --safe-mode command line option

command line option On Windows: Using the start menu entry LibreOffice (Safe Mode)

Safe Mode dialog

Help Contents

The help text will now be rendered in the default platform font if possible (i.e., Segoe UI under Windows, Ubuntu under Ubuntu and Cantarell under Fedora), for greater consistency. (Adolfo Jayme Barrientos)

Office URI Schemes support

Libreoffice now supports the following registered Office URI Schemes (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) (commit 1 c697ad1a44323e3491451ebdc25019751d8a1bc1 commit 2 4311e8fb88c334cccad6f577610e1af8ae75bc59): ms-word: ms-powerpoint: ms-excel: ms-visio: ms-access:

Also, a new custom Libreoffice-specific scheme is introduced: vnd.libreoffice.command:

Currently, the default save folder parameter is ignored.

The schemes handler is registered in the OS by the installer under Windows. MS-specific schemes are only registered if Open MS files with Libreoffice checkboxes are checked (commit fdd8686987ca4ee693f5f194c8eb482daa69cfef)

This allows, e.g., for better integration with SharePoint.

Filters

Improvements in OpenXML filter

Changes in import/export into .xlsx or .xls: Fix for loss of width for hidden/collapsed grouped columns after export to .xlsx or .xls tdf#51524 (Bartosz Kosiorek) Landscape orientation is now properly saved after export to .xlsx (MS Excel compatible) tdf#48767 (Bartosz Kosiorek) Hidden and empty rows became hidden when exported to .XLSX or .XLS file tdf#98106 (Bartosz Kosiorek) Outline columns and rows are saved correctly after export to XLSX tdf#100347 (Bartosz Kosiorek) During .xlsx export, XML_outlineLevelRow, XML_outlineLevelCol keys are now saved (Office365 compatible) tdf#101135 (Bartosz Kosiorek) Fix column width on MS Excel for macOS, after export to XLSX and XLS tdf#100946 (Bartosz Kosiorek; Markus Mohrhard) Fix precision of column width according to MS specification tdf#101363 (Bartosz Kosiorek) Fix for User Defined Custom Formatting which was not applied during importing XLSX documents tdf#70565 (Bartosz Kosiorek) Fix exporting of coloured empty cells to .xlsx and .xls documents tdf#46738 (Bartosz Kosiorek) Fix compatibility issue with Excel 2007 after export to .xlsx tdf#101059 (Bartosz Kosiorek) Fix slow import of grouped pivot tables in .xlsx tdf#102694 (Tamás Zolnai) Number formats: preserve escape characters tdf#81939 (Laurent BP) fraction format accepts '0' in addition to '#' and '?' tdf#100755 (Laurent BP) extended LCID can be imported. Extended LCID is used to export calendar and local numerals tdf#36038 (Laurent BP)



Improvements in the PDF filter

PDF can be now inserted as an image into documents. blog entry. (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

Improvements in the Binary Microsoft Office filters

Changes in import from .doc and .xls The contemporary Microsoft Office default Binary Document encryption "RC4 CryptoAPI Encryption" is now supported (Caolán McNamara, Red Hat, Inc.)



New Import filters

StarOffice binary files (.sdc, .sda and .sdw) can again be imported, via libstaroffice (Laurent Alonso) This filter is written from scratch and it is at an early development stage. So it should be able to convert simple files but it could (and probably will) fail badly on more complex ones.

Zoner Callisto/Draw files (version 4-5) can now be imported, via libzmf (Aleksas Pantechovskis, David Tardon)

GUI

Keyboard shortcuts now appear in context menus and its visibility can be set in Tools ▸ Options ▸ View ▸ Menu . tdf#74377 (Maxim Monastirsky)

Shortcuts in context menu. Left - disable, right - enable

Document recovery dialog has been simplified; it looks better and less complicated now. tdf#99341 (Muhammet Kara, Pardus)

Document recovery dialog. Left - start, center - in progress, right - finished)

Revamped the Extension Manager dialog; replaced the custom-implemented error-prone buttons and behaviours with compatible standard widgets and behaviours, and fixed various bugs in the process. The Extension Manager now provides a better user experience and accessibility. tdf#103146 tdf#102004 (Muhammet Kara, Pardus; Yousuf Philips)

The revamped Extension Manager Dialog

…

Icons

Support for 32px icons (extra large) for the toolbar. Currently only Breeze icons have 32px icon variants available. (Tomaž Vajngerl, Collabora)

Support for SVG icons, however because of some minor issues and there is no icon theme bundled with LibreOffice that contains SVG icons, this is considered experimental. (Tomaž Vajngerl, Collabora)

Area Dialog

Redesign of the Colors, Gradients, Hatching and Bitmap tabs and the addition of a Pattern tab. tdf#94551 (Rishabh Kumar, GSoC 2016; Katarina Behrens, CIB; Heiko Tietze; Yousuf Philips)

Colors tab. Left - 5.1, right - 5.3

Gradients tab. Left - 5.1, right - 5.3

Hatching tab. Left - 5.1, right - 5.3

Bitmaps tab. Left - 5.1, right - 5.3

New Patterns tab.

Default set of patterns. tdf#94547 (Yousuf Philips)

Toolbars

"Open Template" has been added to the "Open" dropdown (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) commit eb4ad667b

Sidebar

Introduction of the Page Deck in the sidebar in Writer, housing four panels - Page Format Panel, Styles Panel, Header Panel and Footer Panel (see this blog entry) tdf#83830 (Susobhan Ghosh, GSoC 2016; Katarina Behrens, CIB; Yousuf Philips)

Writer Page Deck

Added "Import Bitmap" functionality to the Area Content Panel found in the Properties deck. tdf#90078 (Susobhan Ghosh, GSoC 2016; Katarina Behrens, CIB; Yousuf Philips)

Import Bitmap Button in Area Content Panel

Added Styles Preview checkbox functionality to the Styles & Formatting Sidebar Deck. tdf#93845 (Susobhan Ghosh, GSoC 2016; Katarina Behrens, CIB; Yousuf Philips)

Styles and Formatting Preview Checkbox

Introduction of the new "Media Playback Panel" found in Properties deck when Media is selected (see this blog entry). tdf#87794 (Susobhan Ghosh, GSoC 2016; Katarina Behrens, CIB; Yousuf Philips)

Media Playback Panel

Start Center

…

Window

…

Menu

New entry Help ▸ User Guides... . Direct link to user guides and collateral documentation (Olivier Hallot, Christian Lohmaier, Heiko Tietze, Yousuf Philips, Samuel Mehrbrodt,Katarina Behrens )

▸ . Direct link to user guides and collateral documentation (Olivier Hallot, Christian Lohmaier, Heiko Tietze, Yousuf Philips, Samuel Mehrbrodt,Katarina Behrens ) New entry Help ▸ Get Help Online... . Direct link to community-supported forums and knowledge base (Olivier Hallot, Christian Lohmaier, Heiko Tietze, Yousuf Philips)

Link to community supported forums and user guides

Configuration

Theme Selection dialog has been fixed, and the search box and the category buttons are properly working once again. You can now colorize your LibreOffice environment to your liking by following the Tools ▸ Options... ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Personalization ▸ Select Theme path. tdf#87597 commit ecc43f06a94587e8808c7edf73eae23e5243dc85 (Muhammet Kara, Pardus)

Firefox theme selection dialog

Customization dialog is more accessible, and user friendly since it now shows the options which were hidden with the split buttons previously. tdf#82840 tdf#103160 (Muhammet Kara, Pardus; Yousuf Philips)

Menus and Toolbar Tabs of the Customization Dialog

…

Basic Editor

The BASIC IDE will now use the colors you set for “Font color” and “Document background” in Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Application Colors . tdf#103209 (Takeshi Abe)

Accessibility

Everyone can now improve accessibility as almost all a11y relations are now easily editable with Glade . tdf#87026 (Muhammet Kara, Pardus)

Online

This release features the first source release of LibreOffice Online - which provides basic collaborative editing of documents in a browser by re-using the LibreOffice core. Rendering fidelity should be excellent, and interoperability match that of LibreOffice. This is however, fundamentally a server service, best installed and configured by someone au-fait with SSL certificate creation, and is most useful when integrated with another solution.

LibreOffice Online

LibreOffice Online Writer

LibreOffice Online Calc

LibreOffice Online Impress

Public LibreOffice Online Docker image

You can grab the latest docker image from Docker Hub here: https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online

Or grab it like this:

$ docker pull libreoffice/online:master $ docker run -t -d -p 127.0.0.1:9980:9980 -e "domain=<your-dot-escaped-domain>" --cap-add MKNOD libreoffice/online:master

Known problems

This docker image does not work on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, because Ubuntu 14.04 LTS has missing kernel compile option CONFIG_AUFS_XATTR=y, which is leading to setcap not working on docker’s aufs storage. Upstream bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1557776

Help

Many updates and improvements in contents (Gabor Kelemen, Olivier Hallot, Lera Goncharuk, Adolfo Jayme Barrientos, Jean Spiteri, Andras Timar)

Localization

The accent mark in Calc function names in the Spanish language (e.g. DÍA(), MÁX()) has been removed in version 5.2.3, as alignment to other spreadsheet implementations tdf#101981 (Adolfo Jayme Barrientos, Johnny_M)

Added russian name for some Calc functions (bormant)

New languages/locales with locale data

Available as default document language and for locale specific formatting.

…

Additional languages in the language list

Available for text attribution.

Silesian [szl-PL], tdf#101540 (Eike Rathke (Red Hat, Inc.))

Hungarian Rovas [hu-Hung-HU], tdf#97406 (Eike Rathke (Red Hat, Inc.))

Incorporation of other languages

Our goal is to support as many languages as possible. We would like to thank the following people for voluntary translation into LibreOffice and helps in preserving their native languages:

…

European Portuguese language auto-correction files were synchronized with Brazilian Portuguese files tdf#97439 (Tiago Santos) adds 1936 automatic replacement entries, 11 new two caps word exceptions and 1726 new abbreviations.

Croatian sentence exception list updated: added 66 new abbreviations.

Proofing tools for German language (de-AT, de-CH, de-DE) have been largely improved (tdf#105396): The spell-check dictionary now contains over 258,000 words. This new version adds over 7,300 new words. The hyphenation patterns have been improved. The new version includes 700 corrected and new hyphenation patterns. Hyphenation uses the new COMPOUND feature and contains a list with over 69,000 words and compounds. The thesaurus now contains over 146,000 words in over 37,000 meaning groups. The new version adds ~11,000 new words. The thesaurus now includes 11,400 associations and 1,900 antonyms.







If you speak an endangered language and want to help us to achieve our goal of providing free tools for every single person on the Earth, please join us.



Scripting: Python and Basic

Access2Base, the Basic library for Base users, is now available in its version 1.6.0 (Jean-Pierre Ledure).

The main improvements are related to the management of (long) binary fields with the GetChunk and AppendChunk methods. Also the scope of the CopyObject method has been extended to the duplication of complete tables between distinct databases. As an experimental feature, the tables might belong to databases built above distinct database systems (f.i. from HSQLDB to MySql or the opposite). Additionally a spanish translation of the UI has been provided by Iñigo Zuluaga. Full documentation is available on the documentation website.

Fonts

The Emoji One font has been bundled for Emoji support (Akshay Deep) commit 8266787540b64396d6f0864a9d2bced0e40a8f1b

OS Integration

Windows

Windows installer (MSI) now supports Restart Manager feature available on Windows Vista and newer (commit 190f0685c866b6232564c9d207456d3292d7a551) (Mike Kaganski, Collabora). This allows to automatically close and restart processes locking files that the installer needs to replace. Previously, only a list of these processes was shown, and the user needed to close/reopen them manually. Without closing/reopening, a system restart after installation is required.

Experimental features

These features are not finalized, yet can be tried by early adopters. They can be enabled in Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced ▸ Enable experimental features.

Toolbars

Four toolbar modes have been added to make it easy for users to switch the visible toolbars, which can be done in View ▸ Toolbar Layout . tdf#101249 (Szymon Kłos, GSoC 2016; Yousuf Philips)

Implementation of the Extended Toolbar framework (see this blog entry) (Szymon Kłos, GSoC 2016; Jan Holešovský, Collabora; Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB; Yousuf Philips)

Implementation of 3 layouts in the Extended Toolbar (Szymon Kłos, GSoC 2016; Yousuf Philips; Heiko Tietze)

In Impress, the Standard (Single Mode) toolbar was added to provide a single toolbar alternative to the default double toolbar arrangement and it contains the most used function, insert, and formatting operations. It can be activated by enabling with View ▸ Toolbar Modes ▸ Single . tdf#92218 (Yousuf Philips)

New Standard (Single Mode) toolbar in Impress 5.3

Sidebar

In Writer, the section Manage changes was added on the Sidebar

New section Manage changes on Sidebar

Introduction of the "Default Shapes Panel" in the new Shapes Deck (currently experimental) for Draw (see this blog entry). tdf#87643 (Susobhan Ghosh, GSoC 2016; Katarina Behrens, CIB; Yousuf Philips)

Default Shapes Panel in new Shapes Deck

Other

A toolbar control to insert Emojis has been added tdf#100100 (Akshay Deep, GSoC ; Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) Still experimental and requires to activate Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced ▸ Enable experimental features (may be unstable) Currently not working on windows see tdf#105689)

; Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB)

Feature removal / deprecation

General

The 'Human' icon theme has been removed (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB) commit d1f4b84fa

Support for bitmap-only fonts on Windows has been removed (Khaled Hosny) tdf#103514

Support for Type 1 fonts has been removed (Khaled Hosny) commit 48304cb5b4d8df71463837e2e48aa7c4d9594df9

ActiveX support is considered deprecated and may be removed in the future. If this change negatively affects your Windows application please email the LibreOffice development list with your use case and plan for moving off of ActiveX. We specifically want feedback if you use ActiveX to embed LibreOffice components into your application.

Impress

The File ▸ Wizards ▸ Presentation wizard has been removed. Instead a new template selection dialog is available when launching Impress (see #Template_Selector). (Akshay Deep) commit bb8040595c9b6f0ccde39e6833f27a50abb891d8

▸ ▸ wizard has been removed. Instead a new template selection dialog is available when launching Impress (see #Template_Selector). (Akshay Deep) commit bb8040595c9b6f0ccde39e6833f27a50abb891d8 The simple gradient templates AbstractGreen, AbstractRed and AbstractYellow have been removed (Yousuf Philips)

Under the Hood

See what changed under the hood.

API changes

Removed configuration options

The /org.openoffice.Office/Substitution configuration schema is removed, and the com.sun.star.util.PathSubstitution service no longer supports substitutions defined via the /org.openoffice.Office/Substitution/SharePoints configuration set tdf#102630

configuration schema is removed, and the service no longer supports substitutions defined via the configuration set tdf#102630 The /org.openoffice.Office/Common/View/Localisation/AutoMnemonic configuration schema is removed commit a97d67cd0bf0819d4559fa79d5fcbcd86222fe6a

configuration schema is removed commit a97d67cd0bf0819d4559fa79d5fcbcd86222fe6a The /org.openoffice.Office/Common/View/Localisation/DialogScale configuration schema is removed commit 4bc99ab1ac4bed1df66d1df8b1ca3168e7e3d8f4

configuration schema is removed commit 4bc99ab1ac4bed1df66d1df8b1ca3168e7e3d8f4 The /org.openoffice.Office/Common/View/FontScaling configuration schema is removed commit ec950f8ebb2745ccff2275dcc09d2034cd73dfeb

configuration schema is removed commit ec950f8ebb2745ccff2275dcc09d2034cd73dfeb The /org.openoffice.Office/Common/FirstStartWizard configuration schema is removed

commit 860a82766f2c6d4fad340bf6ab283a7cd22a1fd5

UNO API changes

Java UNO language binding

Removal of some deprecated interfaces commit 970b0ebb67d4033d70795e586a26c7a695c14194 com.sun.star.uno.IFieldDescription com.sun.star.uno.IMemberDescription com.sun.star.uno.IMethodDescription com.sun.star.uno.ITypeDescription



SDK changes

The various GCC-based platforms no longer define a HAVE_GCC_VISIBILITY_FEATURE C/C++ macro in settings/settings.mk (but still set the -fvisibility=hidden compiler flag) commit f255c3e96e25a43a4724d80287554d892d7ffd70

Other changes