ReleaseNotes/24.8

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    Note:
    This page will be made translatable only at the start of the week of 24.8 beta to avoid unnecessary churn.

    About this Page

    This is an in-progress scratch-pad of notes to build release notes from as and when we release. Please do not list features that are to be shipped already in the 24.2 release! Please do not add wish-list features that you hope will be implemented, but only what actually is implemented already.

    What does a good feature look like here:

    • It has a description, and a way for a busy reviewer, to find and play with the feature. Target someone who is extremely busy, and knows little-to-nothing about the product. So if a user interface element is key to the feature, be very explicit about where it is, e. g. Menu ▸ Format ▸ Character ▸ Position [tab] ▸ ‘90 degrees’ paths to the elements you changed. Of course, you know your feature is important, and that everyone should care about the Extensible AutoShapes Properties dialog – but often the guys taking the screenshots and writing the notes do not.
    • It credits the main authors who did the work – just add them in brackets after the feature, where possible.
    • If the feature can be shown off with a sample / test file – particularly for new import-able features, it would be wonderful to have a link to/up-load of a test file that we can use to show that feature off to best effect. That really helps us to make good screenshots to show off the features, and allows reviewers to do their testing.

    Thanks in advance for your help filling this out!


    Writer

    • The comment area can now be resized. (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia) tdf#73953
    • Improve support for multi-page floating tables. blog post. (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    • Legal numbering in Writer: DOC and RTF support blog post. (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

    Hyphenation

    Exclude words from hyphenation

    Format ▸ Character... ▸ Position ▸ Exclude from Hyphenation is the first and ODF-compliant solution to disable the hyphenation of selected words in hyphenated paragraphs without losing spell checking and locale-dependent text layout. blog post. (László Németh) tdf#106733

    Hyphenation across page

    By disabling Format ▸ Paragraph... ▸ Text Flow ▸ Hyphenation across options, both parts of a hyphenated word shall lie within a single column, page or spread. blog post. (László Németh) tdf#132599

    • By disabling Column (which disables also Page and Spread), Writer moves the last hyphenated line of the column or page to the next column or page, similar to the default behavior of MSO 2013 and newer.
    • By disabling only Spread, Writer moves the last hyphenated line of the right pages to the next page (a spread is a set/pair of a left and a right page, which can be seen simultaneously, for instance when opening a book), according to New Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press, 2005).
    • By disabling Page, last hyphenated line of every page moves to the next page.
    • By disabling Last full line of paragraph, the hyphenated word of the last full line of the paragraph moves to the last line (if there is enough place for it). This results in longer last lines, and removed hyphenation in the bottom right-hand corner of the paragraph.

    Compound constituent characters at line end

    In Format ▸ Paragraph... ▸ Text Flow ▸ Compound characters at line end, set 3 (or more) characters to improve the hyphenation in Danish, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Norwegian and Swedish by preferring the hyphenation between constituents of a compound word instead of breaking the second (third, etc.) constituent right after its first 2 (or more) characters. (László Németh) tdf#158885

    For example, German “Computerprogramm” can be hyphenated as “Computerpro-gramm”, but setting 4, only “Computer-programm”, according to its compound constituents Computer|programm. This can be useful for better typography, especially in headings or left-aligned text.

    Calc

    • Define ranges when exporting sheets to PDF. (Nick Wingate, Collabora) 13bd849f
    • Improve localization for the status bar and the sidebar with multiple views. blog post. (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    • The sheet protection dialog is async. (Hubert Figuière, Collabora) e86c6423
    • Add FILTER, RANDARRAY, SEQUENCE, SORT, SORTBY functions. (Balázs Varga, allotropia) tdf#126573
    • Add XLOOKUP function. (Winfried Donkers) (Balázs Varga, allotropia) tdf#127293
    • Add XMATCH function. (Balázs Varga, allotropia) tdf#128425
    • Improve copy and paste between Calc and Google Sheets. blog post. (Miklos Vajna, Collabora) tdf#159483
    • Improve threaded calculation performance. Lockless Number Formatting and optimized reference counting. (Caolán McNamara, Collabora) tdf#160056
    • Optimize redraw after a cell change by minimizing the area that needs to be refreshed. (Caolán McNamara, Collabora) 9bc2872d
    • In multi-window view of a spreadsheet, allow spell-checking enabled in one window while disabled in another. (Caolán McNamara, Collabora) 7ecf1c5a
    • Comments can now be deleted from the Navigator's right-click menu. (Rafael Lima) tdf#158704

    Impress

    • Notes are now available as a collapsible pane under the slide in Normal view. This can be turned on with View ▸ Notes Pane. (Sarper Akdemir, allotropia) tdf#33603


    • Show text formatting toolbar when editing a text box in second toolbar row. (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia) dee3e2d7

    Draw

    • Hovering over a layer's tab highlights the objects it contains. (Jim Raykowski) tdf#157255


    Base

    Chart

    Math

    Core / General

    • The recent document list will now only show documents for the current module (Writer only showing text documents, Calc only showing spreadsheets, etc). The change simply toggles the ShowCurrentModuleOnly setting from False to True, and can be changed back in Expert Configuration. (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia) tdf#159120
    • The user is now notified of the need to reload the document to take into account a change in Macro Security Level. (Rafael Lima) tdf#159985
    • LevelBar widget is now implemented for JSDialog. (Hubert Figuière, Collabora) 460a7103
    • Although it was already possible to type their ISO 639-2 codes by hand, "[Multiple]" (mul) and "[Undetermined]" (und) are now listed at the top of language lists (along with "[None]", zxx). (Eike Rathke, Red Hat) tdf#160256
    • Chinese and Japanese word selection is now based on ICU rules. Issues can be reported on the ICU website. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#49885

    Filters

    • If the option Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Security ▸ Options ▸ Remove personal information on saving is enabled, then personal information will not be exported, neither to ODF nor to OOXML. This includes author names and timestamps (created, modified, printed), editing duration, printer name and config, as well as the template associated with a document. (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia) c479944e ba891193 1e49f469
    • Writer can now retain the default page style's background when saving as DOCX. (Justin Luth, Collabora) tdf#126533

    SVG

    User Interface

    Accessibility

    Scripting

    JavaScript

    • Rhino was updated to 1.7.14 version. The Rhino JavaScript Debugger window is removed with this change. (Stephan Bergmann, allotropia) 58c4457a

    Basic IDE

    • New Color Scheme dialog to pick one of six syntax highlighting color schemes independently from the current Application Colors. Find it in View ▸ Color Scheme. (Rafael Lima) tdf#156925


    • The current line in Basic Editor now has a highlight color for better visibility. (Rafael Lima) tdf#158750
    • The visibility status of the UI elements Object Catalog, Watched Expressions and Call Stack (which can be toggled in the View menu) is now remembered after closing and reopening the Basic IDE. (Rafael Lima) tdf#155381
    • Clicking the line number in the status bar will open the Go to Line dialog. (Rafael Lima) tdf#158749

    Android Viewer

    Localization

    Changes to locale data

    • For the English (South Africa) {en-ZA} and other South African {*-ZA} locales, the decimal separator was changed to period dot (".", previously comma ",") and the group separator was changed to comma (",", previously the space character). This is done in order to align with common practices and the latest changes in the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR). (Eike Rathke; Red Hat, Inc.) tdf#159829

    LibreOffice Help

    Feature Removal / Deprecation

    Platform Compatibility

    Windows 7 and 8/8.1 are now deprecated platforms. The Extended Security Updates program on Windows Embedded POSReady 7 expires on October 8, 2024. Mainstream support for the Embedded Standard edition of Windows 8 ended on July 10, 2018, and extended support ended on July 11, 2023.

    Starting with LibreOffice 25.2, there will be no guarantee that LibreOffice will work on Windows 7 or 8/8.1. Support will not be intentionally removed at this point and fixes to problems exclusively affecting these platforms will still be accepted.

    API Changes

    • New UNO command .uno:ChangeTheme to toggle between Light and Dark modes. (Justin Luth, Collabora) tdf#160349
    • Draw: new UNO command .uno:SetLayer to move objects to a different layer. (Jim Raykowski) tdf#122587

    Configuration Changes

    • Remove unused printing options. (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia) tdf#158041
    • Remove some unused config keys. (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)
    • Bootstrap variables are now looked-for first in a fundamental.override.ini file next to the application. LibreOffice itself does not bring along such a file, but it can be convenient for an administrator to place one in an installation. (Stephan Bergmann, allotropia) 8b53fa72
    • The Windows-specific tunables LimitMaximumMemoryInMB and ExcludeChildProcessesFromLimit are now looked-for in the [Bootstrap] section of fundamental.override.ini rather than in a [Win32] section of bootstrap.ini. c84e8a14
    • Similarly, the Windows-specific EnableAttachThreadInputHack is treated as a normal bootstrap variable now rather than being looked-for in a [Win32] section of bootstrap.ini. 6047341f
    • For backwards compatibility, the above are all additionally still looked-for in a [Win32] section of bootstrap.ini. This behavior is deprecated and will be removed in a later version. ebd3f097