[tdf-announce] The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3

Florian Effenberger <floeff -AT- documentfoundation.org>

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:06:36 +0100

The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3 The first stable release of the free office suite is available for download

The Internet, January 25, 2011 - The Document Foundation launches

LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite

developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of

developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late

September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to

release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project.

Not only does it ship a number of new and original features, LibreOffice

3.3 is also a significant achievement for a number of reasons:

- the developer community has been able to build their own and

independent process, and get up and running in a very short time (with

respect to the size of the code base and the project's strong ambitions);

- thanks to the high number of new contributors having been attracted

into the project, the source code is quickly undergoing a major clean-up

to provide a better foundation for future development of LibreOffice;

- the Windows installer, which is going to impact the largest and most

diverse user base, has been integrated into a single build containing

all language versions, thus reducing the size for download sites from 75

to 11GB, making it easier for us to deploy new versions more rapidly and

lowering the carbon footprint of the entire infrastructure.

Caolán McNamara from RedHat, one of the developer community leaders,

comments, "We are excited: this is our very first stable release, and

therefore we are eager to get user feedback, which will be integrated as

soon as possible into the code, with the first enhancements being

released in February. Starting from March, we will be moving to a real

time-based, predictable, transparent and public release schedule, in

accordance with Engineering Steering Committee's goals and users'

requests". The LibreOffice development roadmap is available at

LibreOffice 3.3 brings several unique new features. The 10 most-popular

among community members are, in no particular order: the ability to

import and work with SVG files; an easy way to format title pages and

their numbering in Writer; a more-helpful Navigator Tool for Writer;

improved ergonomics in Calc for sheet and cell management; and Microsoft

Works and Lotus Word Pro document import filters. In addition, many

great extensions are now bundled, providing PDF import, a slide-show

presenter console, a much improved report builder, and more besides. A

more-complete and detailed list of all the new features offered by

LibreOffice 3.3 is viewable on the following web page:

LibreOffice 3.3 also provides all the new features of OpenOffice.org

3.3, such as new custom properties handling; embedding of standard PDF

fonts in PDF documents; new Liberation Narrow font; increased document

protection in Writer and Calc; auto decimal digits for "General" format

in Calc; 1 million rows in a spreadsheet; new options for CSV import in

Calc; insert drawing objects in Charts; hierarchical axis labels for

Charts; improved slide layout handling in Impress; a new easier-to-use

print interface; more options for changing case; and colored sheet tabs

in Calc. Several of these new features were contributed by members of

the LibreOffice team prior to the formation of The Document Foundation.

LibreOffice hackers will be meeting at FOSDEM in Brussels on February 5

and 6, and will be presenting their work during a one-day workshop on

February 6, with speeches and hacking sessions coordinated by several

members of the project.

The home of The Document Foundation is at http://www.documentfoundation.org

The home of LibreOffice is at http://www.libreoffice.org where the

download page has been redesigned by the community to be more user-friendly.

*** About The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation has the mission of facilitating the evolution of

the OOo Community into a new, open, independent, and meritocratic

organization within the next few months. An independent Foundation is a

better reflection of the values of our contributors, users and

supporters, and will enable a more effective, efficient and transparent

community. TDF will protect past investments by building on the

achievements of the first decade, will encourage wide participation

within the community, and will co-ordinate activity across the community.

*** Media Contacts for TDF Florian Effenberger (Germany) Mobile: +49 151 14424108 - E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org Olivier Hallot (Brazil) Mobile: +55 21 88228812 - E-mail: olivier.hallot@documentfoundation.org Charles H. Schulz (France) Mobile: +33 6 98655424 - E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org Italo Vignoli (Italy) Mobile: +39 348 5653829 - E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org -- Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org> Steering Committee and Founding Member of The Document Foundation Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108 Skype: floeff | Twitter/Identi.ca: @floeff -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to announce+help@documentfoundation.org List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/announce/

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