LibreOffice 7.2 Community: Release Notes

    From The Document Foundation Wiki


    Writer

    General improvements

    • Alphabetical indexes, tables of contents and user-defined indexes will now generate clickable hyperlinks to document index entry marks 7685c074 (Michael Stahl, allotropia)
    Writer showing various indexes, and the mouse-over tooltip for a hyperlink to a document index entry mark
    • All background fills can now be set to either cover the page inside the margins or the entire page 56d8007a (Michael Stahl, allotropia)
    Writer showing pages with BackgroundFullSize on and off
    • Page styles can now have a gutter margin blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    Gutter margin in Writer
    • Bibliography improvements: tooltip for bibliography entry fields and clickable URLs in the bibliography table blog post; references to specific pages in PDFs blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    Tooltip for bibliography entry fields
    Clickable URLs in the bibliography table
    • Added label and business card paper (A-One, Hisago, Sanwa Supply, Daiso) data used in Japan. This work is based on data included in the "Default Settings for Japanese" extension, which was developed mainly by Masahisa Kamataki. baddf594 (JO3EMC, Jun Nogata)
    Japan brand labels in the Labels dialog
    • The Word-compatible table border painting now has better support for merged cells blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    • As-char images can now have a size larger than 65k twips (about 116 cms) blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    • When Writer document is exported to PDF, links between anchors and footnotes or endnotes (even if not on the same page) are now available in both directions 51d1952c 38cff2a3 (Georgy Litvinov)
    142741 screenshot.png
    • Support for list format strings in ODT files: right now complex numbering rules from DOCX are supported also for ODT 9987b518 (Vasily Melenchuk, CIB)
    • Spell-checking for indices is disabled now (language set to None for paragraph style Index and children) tdf#143066 (Heiko Tietze, TDF)
    • Image file type is now displayed in the Image Properties dialog (Format ▸ Image ▸ Properties... ▸ Image), not just the Compress dialog. tdf#138843 (Shubham Jain)
    • "No List" command is now available in the menu, the context menu, the toolbar and the sidebar. tdf#92622 (Anshu)
    The "No List" command is now more easily accessed in the menu, context menu, toolbar and sidebar. (Highlighted in red in screenshot.)
    • Fields are now listed in the the Navigator sidebar, and users can choose "Field" and "Field type" in the "Navigate by" tool. tdf#137741 (Jim Raykowski)
    Fields are listed in the Navigator sidebar and can be used in the "Navigate by" feature which is found in both the sidebar and the (customised) Find toolbar. (Highlighted with red rectangles.)
    • A banner is shown to notify of tracked changes being recorded, with the option to reveal or hide the relevant toolbar. d8978605 (László Németh)
    Track Changes banner that offers to reveal / hide the track changes toolbar when relevant.
    • Adding and deleting images is now recorded by Track Changes. tdf#59463 and tdf#141994 (László Németh)
    Manage Changes sidebar showing tracked addition and deletion of pictures.
    • Anchor type selector added to frame style dialog 5951da51 (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

    Mail Merge

    • User will see a warning about nonexistent data sources instead of producing empty fields. There is a button to fix the problem. blog post e64dc07c d7d48787 (Gülşah Köse, Collabora)
    Mail merge info bar
    Mail merge dialog warning

    Performance

    • Improved font caching to speed up text rendering 3f69ec9a. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Reduced opening time for some DOCX file tdf#135316 (Noel Grandin, Collabora)

    RDF metadata in Style Inspector

    Style Inspector shows ODF 1.2 RDF metadata of annotated text ranges (text:meta), metadata fields (text:meta-field), paragraphs (text:p and text:h) and bookmarks (text:bookmark-start). dd45df62, 11a4e270, db7ef0a9. (László Németh)

    Style Inspector shows hidden RDF metadata at the cursor position associated to text spans, paragraphs and bookmarks. For annotated text spans, list item “Nested Text Content” can show the boundary of the nested annotated text ranges and metadata fields.

    Custom color metadata field shadings

    It's possible to set a custom shading color for an annotated text range or a metadata field e.g. for visualization of metadata categories in the document editor. Ctrl + F8 or View ▸ Field Shadings disable/enable these colorful field shadings. tdf#142448 (László Németh)

    Custom color field shadings of annotated text ranges and URIs::LO_EXT_SHADING RDF shading color data of the first one in the Style Inspector. Unit test of the commit shows the pyUNO usage of the new feature: a8a9b4f4

    Calc

    General improvements

    • Added mixed date format "Common Year (Era NameWikipedia logo v3.svg)" and "Era Name (Common Year)" for cell format in Japanese locales. 8362c4b3 (Jun Nogata)
    72 mixed data format.png
    72 traditional japanese monthly name.png
    • HTML tables listed in the External Data dialog (Sheet ▸ Link to External Data...) now show the table's caption to help identify them. tdf#127484 (Andreas Heinisch)
    Calc 7.1 (left) and Calc 7.2 (right). Calc 7.2 now shows the HTML table's caption in the External Data dialog.
    • The 'fat-cross' cursor was introduced. To enable, go to Tools ▸ Options ▸ Calc ▸ View and check "Themed" (the cursor follows the icon theme); use System to keep the conventional arrow pointer. tdf#104169 (Sarabjot Singh, Mesut Çifci) tdf#142499 (Heiko Tietze, TDF)
    'Fat cross' cursor
    • The Paste Special dialog (Edit ▸ Paste Special ▸ Paste Special...) has been redesigned, and the new preset "Formats Only" was added. tdf#134802 (Heiko Tietze, TDF)
    New Paste Special dialog layout in LibreOffice Calc 7.2, with extra "Formats Only" preset.
    • New options "Select Visible Rows Only" and "Select Visible Columns Only" to deselect hidden cells (in Edit ▸ Select menu). tdf#36466 (Tünde Tóth, NISZ)
    • Descriptive Statistics (Data ▸ Statistics ▸ Descriptive Statistics...) now uses the input range's column labels to label the results. tdf#128018 (Andreas Heinisch)
    Comparison of LibreOffice Calc 7.1 (left) and 7.2 (right). The Descriptive Statistics tool now reuses the column labels of the source range to label the resulting statistics (red rectangles in picture).

    Autofilter improvements

    • Calc shows blue row numbers for filtered rows by Autofilter. tdf#89841 (Tünde Tóth, NISZ)
    • Calc now highlights an active autofilter dropdown arrow tdf#140955 (Tünde Tóth, NISZ)
    Calc shows a blue filtered row numbers and highlights an active autofilter dropdown arrow
    • AutoFilter dropdown button now scales according to sheet zoom level 008c2354 (Szymon Kłos, Collabora)
    • Calc now can filter by color in Autofilter (both cell background color and text color), importing from and exporting to OOXML format are also supported tdf#76258 (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)
    You can choose to filter rows based on text/background color
    • The AutoFilter dropdown now has a "Clear Filter" button to clear all criteria (in both the dropdown and the Standard Filter dialog). tdf#141559 (Tünde Tóth, NISZ)

    New spreadsheet functions

    Changed spreadsheet functions

    • CELL() now evaluates the top left cell of a given cell range argument as second parameter instead of the usual intersecting position for scalar parameters, for interoperability and compliance with the ODF OpenFormula standard definition. tdf#66409 (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
    • RAWSUBTRACT() now processes arguments from left to right. Previously, RAWSUBTRACT(1;2;3;4) calculated 1-4-3-2 as encountered on the arguments stack. That was changed to calculate 1-2-3-4 in "natural" left to right order as may be expected. This may make a difference like in =RAWSUBTRACT(0.3;0.2;0.1;-0.1;-0.2;0.3) where the result previously was 2.77555756156289E-17 (calculated as (0.3-0.3--0.2--0.1-0.1-0.2) == (0.0--0.2--0.1-0.1-0.2) same as =RAWSUBTRACT(0;0.2;0.1;-0.1;-0.2)), for which the first result now is 0 (calculated as (0.3-0.2-0.1--0.1--0.2-0.3)) and =RAWSUBTRACT(0;0.2;0.1;-0.1;-0.2) result now is -2.77555756156289E-17. (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
    • ROUND() has its artificial limitation on the second parameter (rounding position) removed, for which the argument previously had to be in the interval [-20,20] and otherwise the function returned error. tdf#136794 (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
    • IRR() can now take an array for the Values parameter. (It previously only could take a cell range.) tdf#58585 (Andreas Heinisch)

    Performance

    • Improved speed of pasting formulas with VLOOKUP function tdf#92456 (Noel Grandin, Collabora)
    • Improved speed of some XLSX file opening and scrolling tdf#130326 (Noel Grandin, Collabora and Caolán McNamara, RedHat)
    • Improved speed when filtering tdf#133878 (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Improved file opening speed for some big XLSX files tdf#79049 (Noel Grandin, Collabora)

    Document Conversion

    • The --convert-to csv:... command line spreadsheet conversion or export filter options string accepts a new optional 12th numeric parameter, which makes it possible to export the entire document to individual sheets .csv files or a specified sheet. tdf#135762 (Caolán McNamara, Red Hat; Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
      For example:
      soffice --convert-to csv:"Text - txt - csv (StarCalc)":44,34,UTF8,1,,0,false,true,false,false,false,-1 sample.ods
      • 0 or absent means the default behaviour, first sheet from command line, or current sheet in macro filter options, exported to sample.csv
      • -1 for all sheets, each sheet is exported to an individual file of the base file name concatenated with the sheet name, for example sample-Sheet1.csv, sample-Sheet2.csv and sample-Sheet3.csv
      • 2 or any other 1-based number within the range of number of sheets for one specific sheet, here sample-Sheet2.csv

    Impress & Draw

    General improvements

    • The set of default templates was refreshed (tdf#138097 — Indonesian LibreOffice team and Heiko Tietze, TDF):
      • Removed: Alizarin, Bright Blue, Classy Red, Impress, Lush Green (introduced in 4.4)
      • Added: Candy, Freshes, Grey Elegant, Growing Liberty, Yellow Idea
    Candy template
    Freshes template
    Gray Elegant template
    Growing Liberty template
    Yellow Idea template
    • All background fills can now be set to either cover the page inside the margins or the entire page dda83832 (Michael Stahl, allotropia).
    Impress dialog showing new "Background covers margins" checkbox
    • Improve and fix drawing of dashed lines in presentation mode tdf#136957 (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Multiple columns in LibreOffice text boxes a blog post (Mike Kaganski, Collabora)
    A new multi column layout in Impress text box
    • PDF signature verification is now based on PDFium blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

    User Interface

    • Direct access to the document's scaling factor via statusbar in Draw tdf#66470 (Heiko Tietze, TDF)
    Feedback of the scaling factor with context menu to change for this document
    • Improved export dialog for PNG and JPG clarifies the distinction between dimensions and resolution. tdf#115464 (Aditya Pratap Singh)
    The new PNG/JPG export dialog clarifies the distinction between dimensions and resolution.

    Performance

    • Improve document loading times by loading large images on-demand (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Improve slide rendering speed by prefetching large images (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Faster drawing of semi-transparent images 5ba5ac94. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)

    Base

    Chart

    Data Series Labels

    • Adding series name to data series label is now possible tdf#94235 (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)
    Before: No data labels
    After: Data Labels visible

    "Moving Average" Trendline

    • For "Moving average" trend line, the type can now be selected tdf#133423 (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)
      • Prior (default)
      • Central
      • Averaged Abscissa
    LibreOffice Calc 7.2 showing the trend line dialogue and a moving average of type "Averaged Abscissa". It is now possible to choose from three types: Prior (the default), Central, and Averaged Abscissa.

    Math

    • It's now possible to scale the code input box. see tdf#130654 (Dante DM)
      • The setting is accessible from expert configuration as: org.openoffice.Office.Math.smeditwindowzoom
      • The setting is accessible from math options panel as: Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice Math ▸ Settings ▸ Scaling code input window

    Core / General

    • Built-in development tools with a "Xray" like UNO object inspector part1 part2 part3 (Tomaž Vajngerl, Collabora)
    DevTools - UNO object inspector
    • Selecting form fields inside a document is now possible using Alt + <Mnemonic>. tdf#139804 (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)
    • The C++ library used to generate QR codes was changed from qrcodegen to ZXing. tdf#139778 (Akshit Kushwaha)
    • StarViewMetafile Format (SVM) was improved: When handling tdf#127471 I stumbled upon a never identified bug: When using ScaledText, the export to SVM is System-dependent due to the differing internal representation in the Font-MetafileAction. Thus, the SVM content differs if it was written on a Windows or non-Windows System, which leads to errors when exchanging SVM-based Metafiles between those systems (details in the task ([1]) ). Due to SVM being used partially as Metafile-Format in saved files (e.g. ODF variants), this was leading to 'strange' looking SWcaledText's. ScaledText is luckily not too often used, but e.g. heavily in Chart Labels which were most obviously hit by this. Since SVM is our own format, this could be enhanced by adding information to the SVM-Format in a backward compatible way. After the fix, all newly written SVM-Files can be exchanged now between LibreOffice Versions containing that fix without that error. For already existing files this is not always possible, see this Table ([2]) (2nd half) for details. (Armin Le Grand, allotropia)
    • EMF/WMF Metafile Formats were improved: When handling tdf#127471 and correcting the SVM format (see above), I also found out that the same error is in the EMF/WMF files that we write. These formats are Windows-specific formats, what makes the versions written under Windows the valid ones. The definitions for EMF/WMF are not in our hands, so I had to fix that differently. A fix is not only important for flawless data exchange between LibreOffice Versions, but also with all kinds of Windows-Applications that use EMF/WMF as DataType. After the fix EMF/WMF is always produced in Windows-conform form for ScaledText. This leads to this working data exchange Table ([3]). (Armin Le Grand, allotropia)
    • Detect wrong written old EMF/WMF Metafile Files: To not have to accept old wrong written files, I added a kind of 'Old-Emf-Wmf-Format-Detector' that uses fuzzy evaluation and corrects old files when loaded in LibreOffice from now on. This makes the exchange between EMF/WMF written by old and new LibreOffice Versions complete: no old written files are lost or need to be reproduced. This is unfortunately not possible for other Windows-Applications, so these EMF/WMF files produced by older non-Windows LibreOffice Versions have - as a workaround - e.g. be loaded and rewritten by a LibreOffice Version containing these fixes. (Armin Le Grand, allotropia)
    • Enhancements for linked OLE in Documents: The content of the OLE Data/File is now synchronized to saving the hosting Document. Before this change, the OLE Data/File for a linked OLE was always saved/changed when the OLE was changed at deactivating it. This is unexpected and not intuitive from a User's point of view. There were complaints from a User who by purpose did *not* save the hosting Document after changing the OLE in it - in the expectation that the OLE Data/File will not be touched that way and stay the same when embedding it again. With this change (for details see tdf#141529) changing the linked OLE is delayed (using a temporary file) until the hosting Document is saved. If the hosting Document is closed without saving (or the Office crashes), the linked OLE does not get saved/changed at all. This is more conform to user's expectations when changing Document-bound Data. (Armin Le Grand, allotropia)
    • Various fixes when using the Skia-based drawing backend. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Fixed rendering of CJK text when using the Skia-based drawing backend. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Text boxes got multi-column feature in all modules. Blog post (Mike Kaganski, Collabora)
    • In the Security Options dialog, choosing "Remove personal information on saving" now removes names and dates from comments and tracked changes. 12da70. (László Németh, NISZ)

    Performance

    • Improved text rendering speed when using font fallback 7439cabc. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Improved interactivity of slow drawing operations with repeated user input d3b498cc. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Various drawing speed improvements when using the Skia-based drawing backend. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Improve document loading speed by using zlib optimized crc32 85ed3a47. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • Improved swapping speed and memory consumption of graphics (Tomaž Vajngerl, Collabora)

    LibreOffice Help

    Filters

    Improvements of DOC import/export filter

    • DOC import: it was fixed chapter numbering tdf#94326 (Justin Luth)
    • DOC import: it was fixed Z-order of objects tdf#120761 (Justin Luth)
    • DOC import: it was fixed some DOC file in 64 bit system tdf#139495 (Justin Luth)
    • DOC export: it was fixed a loss of the outline level tdf#81705 (Justin Luth)

    Improvements of DOCX import/export filter

    • DOCX: import discarded headers/footers. Before the inactive DOCX headers/footers lost during import time. Now it can be restored by disabling the options “Same content on left and right pages” and “Same content on first page” on the Header and the Footer panes of the Page style. This is for improving the interoperability with other Office programs, e.g. supporting DOCX text document templates better. tdf#141158 (Attila Bakos, NISZ)
    • DOCX: export NONE background for ParaBackColor. tdf#140336 (Justin Luth)
    • DOCX: fix lost tables in footnotes and endnotes by converting them to floating tables during the import, and removing floating at the DOCX export. tdf#95806, tdf#125877, tdf#141172 (László Németh, NISZ)
    • DOCX export: save header image once. Writer used to dump the same image file as many times as it was featured in different headers or footers in the document, bloating the .docx file size. tdf#118535 (Dániel Arató, NISZ)
    • DOCX table import: fix extra page break. tdf#140182 (Attila Szűcs, NISZ)
    • DOCX: fix handling for effect extent vs line width. tdf#138895 (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    • DOCX export: put fly before fieldmark start into its own run. 3eced2d5 (Michael Stahl, allotropia)
    • DOCX import: fix missing tblPrEx border of first table cells. Now property set of a new cell is a copy of the table exception property set of the table row, as needed for the import of the table style inheritance. tdf#140957 (László Németh, NISZ)
    • DOCX export: always write title page in section props. Even if page description is not set we should try to mark title page because chaining of two page styles can not work for continuous sections. tdf#124678 (Vasily Melenchuk, allotropia)
    • DOCX export: fix missing page break. When an empty paragraph has both page break and section break, only the section break was exported to DOCX, the page break was not, while MSO needs that to show all page breaks. tdf#121666 (Attila Szűcs, NISZ)
    • DOCX import: fix frame direction. Frames used to be imported with zero rotation even if a w:textDirection tag explicitly called for a non-default orientation. tdf#97128 (Dániel Arató, NISZ)
    • DOCX import: fix slow endnote import by parsing endnotes.xml only once instead of parsing again and again for every endnotes. This was a serious performance problem for documents with hundreds of endnotes, where the endnote import took minutes instead of seconds. tdf#76260, tdf#120351 (László Németh, NISZ)
    • DOCX: fix page margins imported as border padding. Trying to import non-existing "none" borders of w:pgBorders zeroed page margins, removing their values to border padding. tdf#74367 (Attila Szűcs, NISZ)
    • DOCX import: preserve formatting of CREATEDATE fields. The create date of a document doesn't really change, so we can only loose if the cached result of the field is not preserved. tdf#134592 (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    • DOCX table import: fix zero para top margin when only w:beforeAutospacing=0 was specified, but not PARA_TOP_MARGIN (see default_spacing = -1 in processing of LN_CT_Spacing_beforeAutospacing). tdf#137655 (László Németh, NISZ)
    • DOCX: added import/export support for Hebrew/Arabic numbering Types tdf#141341 (Justin Luth)
    • DOCX export: now Writer saves russianUpper/russianLower numbering tdf#97569 (Justin Luth)
    • DOCX export: stop duplicating stuff in postponed text tdf#134951 (Justin Luth)
    • DOCX: import and export Resolved state of comments tdf#122222 (Mike Kaganski, Collabora)
    • DOCX export: fix missing border of frame tdf#131420 (Nagy Tibor and Attila Szűcs, NISZ)
    • DOCX import: fix frame positions of old docs by limiting AddFrameOffsets compatibility option for docs created by MSO 2010 or older. tdf#138782 (Attila Bakos, NISZ)
    • DOCX: export hidden (shared) headers/footers. tdf#69635 (Dániel Arató, NISZ)
    • DOCX: import track changes of inline images tdf#128913 (László Németh, NISZ)
    • DOCX import: fix lost column break at shapes. The column break was moved into the neighboring shape during the first import, and eliminated during the second import, losing the 2-column text layout. As a workaround, split the paragraph moving the column break into a new paragraph. tdf#121659 (Attila Szűcs and Tibor Nagy from NISZ and Justin Luth)
    • DOCX: support tracked table (row) deletion. tdf#79069 (László Németh, NISZ)
    • DOCX c15: TabOverMargin no longer true in 2013+ tdf#142404 (Justin Luth)
    • DOCX import: fix anchored obj position with to-char and TEXT_LINE tdf#139915 (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    • DOCX import: improvements for first line indent in lists tdf#132752 (Vasily Melenchuk, allotropia)

    Improvements of the RTF filter

    • RTF import: fix too small graphic size when both picwgoal and picw are provided 490450c7 (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

    Improvements of XLSX import/export filter

    • XLSX import: set filtered flag for rows hidden by AutoFilter to support copying the result of filtering. Unlike ODS and XLS, XLSX doesn't differentiates filtered and manually hidden rows, and without this fix, copy of the unupdated data of the loaded filtering contained the hidden rows, too. tdf#99913 (Tünde Tóth, NISZ)
    • XLSX import: fix lost rounded filters if the stored filter values are in the visible cell format (e.g. rounded values) instead of the original (editing) values. Now AutoFilter popup window shows the items according to the visible cell format (e.g. 1.0 instead of 1.01 or 0.99), but still grouping them based on the "editing format" (e.g. not rounded values which visible during editing), i.e. there could be repeated values in the filtering conditions (e.g. two options "1.0" and "1.0" for 1.01 and 0.99). tdf#140968, tdf#140978 (Balazs Varga, NISZ)
    • XLSX import: fix missing datetime filters by convert string representation of the datetime data to ISO 8601 (with blank instead of T) datetime to eliminate locale dependent behaviour when filtering for datetimes. tdf#137626 (Balazs Varga, NISZ)
    • XLSX import: apply more than 8 filters in OOXML autofilter import by removing the artificial limit (which looked like the limit for conditions handled by the standard filter in LO, but not for the autofilter). Now the autofilter popup menu does not always select all items, if the document contained more than 8 selected items there. tdf#140469 (Balazs Varga, NISZ)
    • XLSX import: fix conditional formatting in same cell range. Multiple conditional formatting rules of the same cell range were imported incorrectly because of missing handling of their (different) priorities and operators. tdf#139928 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • XLSX export autofiltered date columns. Export XML_dateGroupItem, XML_year, XML_month, XML_day, XML_dateTimeGrouping based on the OOXML standard. tdf#139809 (Balazs Varga, NISZ)
    • XLSX export: fix proliferation of conditional styles. Run-time created styles “ExtConditionalStyle_N N” for extended conditional styles were written back to the XLSX file, growing the cell style list by each save-reload with unused styles. tdf#139167 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • XLSX import: fix autofiltered date columns by importing dateGroupItem. tdf#116818 (Balazs Varga, NISZ)
    • XLSX export: fix lost file names in modified links. tdf#138832 (Attila Szűcs, NISZ)
    • XLSX export: fix position of rotated images tdf#139258 (Szabolcs Toth, NISZ)
    • XLSX import: fix "Formula is" type conditional formatting rule when the formula contains a reference to another worksheet. tdf#113013 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • XLSX: fix "begins/ends with" conditional formatting when using "Given text" type and cell reference. tdf#120749 tdf#139394 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • XLSX export: fix "contains" conditional formatting when using "Given text" type with cell reference instead of fixed string. Fix also "notContainsText", and prepare the fix for "beginsWith", "endsWith" and "expression" type conditions. tdf#139021 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • XLSX import: hide hidden named range of autofilter. tdf#127301 (Balazs Varga, NISZ)

    Improvements of PPTX import/export filter

    • PPTX import: fix WordArt effect textDeflate and textInflateTop. These effects were mapped incorrectly, resulting missing display and after ODP round-trip, changed effects. tdf#125560 (Gabor Kelemen, NISZ and Regina Henschel)
    • PPTX import: fix lost direct hyperlink colors. tdf#137367 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • PPTX table export: fix vertical alignment. tdf#131905 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • PPTX wordart 3D, add sp3d. tdf#140865 (Regina Henschel)
    • Shadow for tables from PPTX in Impress. blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    Table shadow in impress from PPTX
    • Import support for graphics cropped into custom geometry. blog post db39b68c (Gülşah Köse, Collabora)
    Custom geometry crop
    • Import support for crop position of the custom cropped graphics. blog post ccdee8ee (Gülşah Köse, Collabora)
    Crop position of the custom cropped shape
    • Import support for greyscale effect of the custom cropped graphics.blog post b7189e1a (Gülşah Köse, Collabora)
    Greyscale effect on custom cropped shape
    • Import support for mirror effect of the custom cropped graphics. blog post 62ee7fdc(Gülşah Köse, Collabora)
    mirror effect on custom cropped graphics
    • Import support for custom stretch values of the custom cropped graphics.blog post 2c96bd26(Gülşah Köse, Collabora)
    custom stretch values of custom cropped images
    • PPTX export: fix placeholders. Empty placeholders were exported as white empty custom shapes, losing their visibility and usability. tdf#111903, tdf#137152 (Attila Bakos, NISZ)
    • PPTX import: fix internal hyperlink to slide. Internal hyperlinks were lost, if they refer slides using their names. tdf#65724 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • PPTX export: fix internal hyperlinks exported as external by accident: after reloading the bad export, clicking on the hyperlink opened the same file in another document, because the exported link contained also the full file name reference instead of the slide name, according to the OOXML Relationship TargetMode="External". tdf#54037 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • PPTX import: fix duplicated slide name. tdf#103347 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • PPTX animation: export repeatCount tdf#124457 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • PPTX: fix custom slide show is not imported tdf#131390 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)
    • PPTX: fix missing custom slide show export tdf#125071 (Nagy Tibor, NISZ)

    Improvements of WMF/EMF filter

    Vector image created by LTspice XVIIWikipedia logo v3.svg and opened in LibreOffice 7.2
    • Add support for import EMF images, created by CATIAWikipedia logo v3.svg tdf#55007 (Bartosz Kosiorek, Valek Filippov - QA)
    Image exported by CATIA V5Wikipedia logo v3.svg and opened in LO
    • EMF Implement PAINTRGN record support tdf#55058 (Bartosz Kosiorek)
    • EMF: Improve performance of FILLRGN, PAINTRGN, EXTSELECTCLIPRGN records tdf#142745 (Bartosz Kosiorek, Valek Filippov - QA)
    • WMF EMF Fix RestoreDC record according to MS specification tdf#142567 (Bartosz Kosiorek, Valek Filippov - QA)
    • EMF: Add rotation support for INTERSECTCLIPRECT, ARC, ARCTO, CHORD, PIE and ROUNDRECT tdf#55058 tdf#141982 tdf#142139 (Bartosz Kosiorek, Valek Filippov - QA)
    • EMF Fix displaying of ARC, CHORD and PIE tdf#55007 tdf#142263 tdf#142268 (Bartosz Kosiorek, Valek Filippov - QA)
    • WMF: Add support for selecting colors from palette tdf#117957 (Bartosz Kosiorek, Valek Filippov - QA)
    • WMF/EMF: Fix drawing lines with different width tdf#112603 tdf#142014 tdf#142139 (Bartosz Kosiorek, Valek Filippov - QA)
    • WMF: Add implementation of BitBlt and StretchBlt records tdf#55058 tdf#142722 (Bartosz Kosiorek, Valek Filippov - QA)
    • WMF: Preserve both non-EMF+ and EMF+ drawing commands during a load/save roundtrip 6b349bcc. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)
    • EMF+: Add brush support to DrawString record tdf#142975 (Bartosz Kosiorek, Valek Filippov - QA)
    • EMF+ Add alignment support for DrawString tdf#142995 tdf#142997 tdf#143076 (Bartosz Kosiorek, Valek Filippov - QA)

    Improvements of SVG filter

    • A slide with a custom background is exported correctly now fd84bce8 (Marco Cecchetti, Collabora).
    • It is possible to export a slide with a bitmap as background 3d008f3b (Marco Cecchetti, Collabora).
    • The background is exported in an optimized way. If several slides share the same bitmap as background the bitmap is exported only once. In the same way if a background is made up of tiles where all tiles are the same bitmap, the bitmap is exported only once. The same improvement has been provided for backgrounds made up with patterns or hatches 66f88211 (Marco Cecchetti, Collabora).

    GUI

    General

    • New command popup HUD ("Heads-up display") to search for and execute actions. It can be invoked with the menu Help ▸ Search Commands or the shortcut ⇧ Shift + Esc. tdf#91874 blog (Tomaž Vajngerl, Collabora)
    Command Popup
    • Global toolbar lock can now switched off via View ▸ Toolbars tdf#131817 (Heiko Tietze, TDF)
    • Alternative Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Application Colors theme 'LibreOffice Dark' added. tdf#141986 (Heiko Tietze, TDF)
    Application Colors with 'LibreOffice Dark' theme

    Icon theme

    Dialogs

    • Templates dialog got a list view. You can sort templates by name, category, date, modules, size, etc. tdf#104154 (Vert D.)
    Templates dialog list view
    • File ▸ Properties... ▸ General ▸ Location is now a clickable link to the folder, in case of local files tdf#135896 (Heiko Tietze, TDF)

    Sidebar

    • Fontwork panel was added. (Szymon Kłos, Collabora)
    Fontwork-sidebar.png

    Notebookbar

    • Now it is easier to find style using the new scrollable style picker (Szymon Kłos, Collabora)
    Nbstyles.gif

    Localization

    New languages/locales with locale data

    Available as default document language and for locale specific formatting.

    • English (Denmark) {en-DK}. (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
      Using ',' comma decimal separator and '.' dot group separator.
      ISO 8601 date(+time) formats.
      Inheriting calendar from {en-GB} (week-1stweek=4 first_weekday=2).
      Currency DKK 'kr.' symbol.
      Secondary currency EUR '€' symbol.

    Additional languages in the language list

    Available for text attribution.

    • Pali Thai {pi-Thai} in the CTL language list. tdf#139607 (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
    • Cabécar {cjp-CR} and Bribri {bzd-CR}. tdf#138839 (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
    • Sesotho {st-LS} (as spoken in Lesotho). (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)

    Improvements to proofing tools and language support

    • Esperanto spelling dictionary and thesaurus (Carmen Bianca Bakker, András Tímár)
    • A major update of Czech spelling dictionary: thousands of words have been added (based on the frequency of missing words in corpora), modified (fixes of incorrect forms) or removed (including rarely used correct forms that can be confused with mistyped forms). For more details in Czech, see this blogpost or the README file. (Miroslav Pošta, committed by Stanislav Horáček)
    • The [NatNum12] number format code modifier now supports all day and month names, abbreviated or full or initials, with its upper, lower, capitalize and title keywords. The lower keyword is new, see also tdf#128314. (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
      • Examples:
        • [NatNum12 MMM=upper]MMM-DD displays a format JAN-01
        • [NatNum12 MMMM=lower]MMMM displays a format january
        • [NatNum12 MMMM=capitalize]MMMM displays a format January (meant for locales where the month name is in only lower case letters)
      • Note that none of the NatNum12 modifier rules and spell-out options can be exported to Excel or Word or other file formats than ODF (OpenDocument Format).

    Scripting

    The ScriptForge libraries

    An extensible and robust collection of macro scripting resources for LibreOffice to be invoked from user Basic or Python scripts. (Jean-Pierre Ledure)

    The libraries expose a total of 21 services with each a bunch of methods and properties.

    New in LibreOffice 7.2:

    • The DialogControl service supports tree controls including the OnNodeSelected and OnNodeExpanded events.
    • The document management part is enriched with the new Form and FormControl services. A form and its subforms may be located in a Base, Writer or Calc document.
    • The whole set of services (except for those functions that are better handled by Python natively) is made available for Python scripts with identical syntax and behaviour as in Basic. In addition, a set of methods is provided compatible with their homonymous Basic builtin functions (MsgBox, CreateUnoService, ...). ScriptForge also integrates the APSO shell console, providing the previous installation of the APSO extension.
    • The english version of the documentation of the ScriptForge libraries (7.2) has been fully integrated in the LibreOffice help pages (https://help.libreoffice.org/7.2/en-US/text/sbasic/shared/03/lib_ScriptForge.html?DbPAR=BASIC). Their translation into other languages is underway. (Alain Romedenne, Rafael Lima)

    BASIC

    • The InStr and Replace functions now support the case-insensitive operation for non-ASCII characters using the application locale. tdf#139840 and tdf#132389 (Andreas Heinisch)
    • Exporting a macro under File ▸ Export Basic, writes the resulting *.bas file using the UTF-8 charset including the BOM. Importing a macro under File ▸ Import Basic, checks if the BOM is present, and decides whether the *.bas file will be imported using the system or the UTF-8 charset. tdf#139196 (Andreas Heinisch)

    Python

    • The Python version shipped with LibreOffice has been upgraded to 3.8.10 c22fc8 (Jan-Marek Glogowski, CIB)

    Feature Removal / Deprecation

    • OpenGL-based drawing code has been removed in favor of Skia/Vulkan. (Luboš Luňák, Collabora)

    Platform Compatibility

    Mac

    Windows

    • You can now use wildcards when converting documents from command line. tdf#48413 (Deborah Barkley-Yeung)
    For example, the following command converts all documents with .doc extension in C:\Docs\In\ directory to ODF format:
        soffice.exe --headless --convert-to odf --outdir C:\Docs\Out C:\Docs\In\*.doc
    • LibreOffice can now check default file format association for ODF formats on startup tdf#45735 (Matt K.)
    A new dialog if some ODF file formats don't associate with LibreOffice
    • Added a new expert configuration org.openoffice.Office.Common/Load/DetectWebDAVRedirection (true by default), disabling which allows to disable the detection of WebDAV mapped drive on Windows (added in tdf#126121 in version 6.4), and use the previous Windows built-in WebDAV access mechanism (which prevents LibreOffice from obtaining extended information about the document, but allows to use some features like cookie-based WebDAV authentication, that are not yet supported by LibreOffice natively) tdf#141164 (Mike Kaganski, Collabora)

    API Changes

    • osl_getLocalHostname no longer returns a FQDN (fully qualified domain name). This speeds the function up as it works without querying DNS via network. (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia) eac00017
    • osl_demultiplexSocketEvents and its support functionality is deprecated, without a replacement in the UNO C/C++ API, and will potentially be removed from a later version. 0a126b4c

    UNO API changes

    • XSystemTransferable interface was removed from CDOTransferable. It was only implemented for transferable objects on Windows; and its implementation was wrong, so unusable in any way 818a84c4 (Mike Kaganski, Collabora)
    • Replace "No-width No Break" (uno:InsertZWNBSP) by "Word Joiner" (uno:InsertWJ) since it inserts U+2060 character tdf#140796 (Julien Nabet)
    • The UNO command "uno:PasteTransposed" is added. Paste Transposed is part of the "Paste Special" dialog and can now be called directly. tdf#102255 (Roland Kurmann)
    • The UNO command "uno:PasteAsLink" is added. Paste As Link is part of the "Paste Special" dialog and can now be called directly. tdf#90101 (Roland Kurmann)
    • The Calc VBA compatibility Range.Formula and Range.FormulaR1C1 properties wrongly used localized formula expressions as if they were Range.FormulaLocal and Range.FormulaR1C1Local implementations. That worked in English UI and locales, but not in translated UI or with locale dependent different separators, imported Excel documents using these properties failed there.
      Instead, they now use English formula expressions and separators. Additionally Range.FormulaLocal and Range.FormulaR1C1Local are implemented to use localized formula expressions. tdf#141543 (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
      • This change means for macros created in LibreOffice that relied on the erroneous behaviour in a localized non-English environment those macros will cease to work, the remedy in these cases is to replace setting Formula and FormulaR1C1 attributes with FormulaLocal and FormulaR1C1Local instead.