LibreOffice 7.6 Community: Release Notes

    From The Document Foundation Wiki


    Note pin.svg

    Note:
    This page will be made translatable only at the start of the week of 7.6 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 7.5 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

    • Added page number wizard in Insert menu for easy one-step insertion of the page number in the header/footer tdf#86630 (Paris Oplopoios / Justin Luth, Collabora)
    Page Number Wizard dialog
    Page Number Wizard dialog
    • The Paragraph Style dropdown (in the Formatting toolbar) now gradually replaces the default list with styles used in the document rather than always showing the full list at the top. tdf#152666 (Heiko Tietze, TDF)
    • Character properties of the paragraph marker from DOCX are now also remembered in ODT. blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    • Citation handling: added plumbing in Writer to build Zotero-like functionality blog post (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
    • Table of Figures can be generated more flexibly based on a paragraph style, not only by categories or object names. tdf#153090 (Michael Stahl, allotropia)
    Table of Figures based on paragraph style
    • Bibliography entries can now be edited directly from a bibliography table. tdf#72955 (Vojtěch Doležal)
    • Bibliography marks now (by default) hyperlink to matching row in a bibliography table. The click behaviour can be changed to open the "Display URL", open the newly introduced "Target URL", or "None". tdf#153396 (Vojtěch Doležal)
    Start of multi-page floating tables in Writer
    • The Accessibility Check has been moved to the sidebar to allow easier usage while editing the document. tdf#142978 (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)
    The new Accessibility sidebar
    • Added compatibility option to render non-breaking spaces (NBSPs) with a variable width, equal to the width of the standard space on the given line (only visible when justified), to better accomodate proper typography of central european languages (Czech, Polish, Slovak) tdf#41652 (Vojtěch Doležal)
    • NBSPs are now also displayed as either a degree signs (when fixed size) or a tildes (when variable size) when non-printing characters are enabled, because previously used background coloring wasn't visible in fields (Vojtěch Doležal)
    • Now if you have a hidden section in your document and try (possibly accidentally) to delete it, then Writer will show a warning message tdf#130199 (Balazs Varga, allotropia)
    • DOI citation recognition in Tools/AutoCorrect: Create a hyperlink pointing to doi.org for DOI citation tdf#145925 (Baole Fang)
    DOI citation recognition
    • Added highlighting for used Paragraph and Character styles and highlighting for used Direct Formatting in text. tdf#38194, tdf#106556 (Jim Raykowski)
    • keyboard navigation through forms: tab key now circularly navigates through content controls/fieldmarks. The modern content controls have a tabIndex field, which allows for precise ordering of keyboard navigation. The tabIndex also allows a control to be skipped - which is useful to avoid getting stuck in rich text controls (since the tab key needs to insert a tab character in that case). Form developer can specify the tabIndex via the content control properties UI. tdf#151548 (Justin Luth, Collabora)
    LibreOffice content control properties dialog

    Calc

    • Fixed conditional border color export to xlsx tdf#152581 (Attila Szűcs, Collabora)
    • Evaluate formula inputs in Validity… tdf#150098 (Balázs Varga, allotropia)
    Formula input in cells are now evaluated before cell value’s validity is checked
    • Number format:
      • ? are now supported on export to ODF to represent an integer digit, replaced by blank if it is a non significant zero tdf#118324 (Laurent Balland)
      • decimals for format in seconds without truncate like [SS].00 are now accepted tdf#150028 (Laurent Balland)
    • Delete Sheet tdf#153709 (Laurent Balland):
      • if Sheet is empty, no confirmation message is displayed
      • confirmation message is adapted to the number of selected sheets
    • Sheet copied to another document now retains a user-defined print range tdf#66613 (Andreas Heinisch)
    • Save solver settings to file tdf#38948 (Rafael Lima)
    • Added support for drawing styles for shapes and comments. This includes a dedicated style for comments that makes it possible to customize the default look and text formatting of new comments. The old workaround involving editing the default cell style was removed. commits (Maxim Monastirsky)
    • Export all page styles in Calc even if they are not in use tdf#154445 (Andreas Heinisch)
    • Automatic hyperlinks now stand out more in Calc tdf#153880 (Balazs Varga)
    Above: Hyperlink in C2 is now more visible
    • Added pivot table compact layout commit (Dennis Francis, Collabora)
    • Add Poisson distribution to Random Number Generators (Sheet ▸ Fill Cells ▸ Fill Random Number...) tdf#154872 (Bartosz Kosiorek)
    • Sorting by color is now possible in Autofilter tdf#95520 (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)
    • Filter/sort by color considers colors set by number format tdf#144549 (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)
    • Import Text dialog (as CSV file or as Unformatted Text) have a new option to not detect number in scientific notation. This option is only available if "Detect special numbers" is off tdf#154131 (Laurent Balland)
    New option to detect numbers in scientific notation

    Impress & Draw

    • Display soft breaks as line breaks at fontwork. tdf#148000 (Attila Szűcs, Collabora)
    • "Show Layer" is now directly available from the right-click menu instead of having to set as "Visible" in Modify Layer... ▸ Properties. tdf#113439 (Heiko Tietze, TDF)
    • Navigation panel for switching slides while viewing a presentation. This option is enabled via checkbox: Slide Show ▸ Slide Show Settings ▸ Show navigation panel. tdf#154839 (Amin Irgaliev, Vladislav Tarakanov)
    • Objects can now be listed in "front to back" order in the Navigator, showing the top-most object at the top of the list: View ▸ Navigator ▸ Show Shapes ▸ Front to back. tdf#154604 (Jim Raykowski)

    Base

    Chart

    Math

    Core / General

    • Added support for zoom gestures when using touchpads in the main view. (Povilas Kanapickas)
    • Exporting to PDF updates the last printed time in document properties. tdf#134901 (Justin Luth)
    • FontsUseWinMetrics configuration key now uses colon (:) as a separator between font key items instead of comma (,) which prevented correctly editing it from Expert Configuration dialog. tdf#155676 (Khaled Hosny)

    LibreOffice Help

    Filters

    General OOXML filters

    • Added support for OOXML files created in zip64 format tdf#82984, tdf#94915 (Attila Szűcs, Collabora)
    • Lots of fixes for frames defined by DOCX's framePr. Issues fixed include lost frames, combined frames that should be separate, split frames that should be combined, overlapping frames, ignored parent styles, lost relative positioning, wrong absolute positioning, and lost rotation. tdf#154129, tdf#154703 (Justin Luth, Collabora)

    PDF

    • Export to PDF v.1.7 by default. commit (Michael Stahl, allotropia)
    • Tagged PDF is now produced by default, for improved accessibility. (To further improve your PDF's accessibility, the PDF/UA option is available in the export dialog and will trigger the Accessibility Check tool). tdf#39667 (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)

    EMF/EMF+

    • Implement EMR_POLYDRAW record. tdf#142249 (Bartosz Kosiorek)
    • Add missing EmfPlusDrawCurve implementation. tdf#143877 (Bartosz Kosiorek)
    • Performance boost for EMF+ images containing EmfPlusRecordTypeDrawBeziers records. tdf#154789 (Bartosz Kosiorek)

    GUI

    • The recent documents picklist under File ▸ Recent Documents now shows the 5 most recent module-specific items first. The list can be configured using the ShowCurrentModuleOnly expert option to show only files that can be handled by the current module. tdf#56696 (Andreas Heinisch)
    Default Recent documents list
    Recent documents list with ShowCurrentModuleOnly

    Localization

    • Improved predefined outline styles for en_US (and most locales reference this, so will automatically benefit). MLA/Chicago-compliant choice now available, and Roman numeral levels are now right-aligned. Also fixed indents in the "Numbering IVX" style, and made the "Numbering ivx" style usable. The outline numbering button was added to the toolbar. tdf#56258 (Justin Luth, Collabora)
    Outline Numbering pop-up from toolbar


    New languages/locales with locale data

    Available as default document language and for locale specific formatting.

    • Morisyen {mfe-MU} [0x06B2]. tdf#154832 (Jean-Yves; Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
    • Santali {sat-IN} [0x0646]. tdf#154987 (Prasanta Hembram; Eike Rathke, Red Hat)

    Additional languages in the language list

    Available for text attribution.

    • Saraiki {skr-PK} [0x06B0], CTL, RTL. (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)
    • Rohingya Hanifi {rhg-Rohg-MM} [0x06B1] CTL, RTL. tdf#154031 (Eike Rathke, Red Hat)

    Scripting

    Java

    • The property userClassPath in the javasettings_$OS_$ARCH.xml file now supports (non nested) bootstrap variables (allowing to enter relative paths) core commit cfc2376f (Samuel Mehrbrodt, allotropia)

    VBA Support

    • Added support for ExportAsFixedFormat VBA function to Export As PDF. tdf#149786 (Balázs Varga, allotropia)

    Feature Removal / Deprecation

    • Option for making PDF the default print job format have been removed and PDF is always used. Support for PostScript as a print job format is deprecated and will be removed in a later release. core commit 2a40505d

    LOK API

    • Add memory trimming functionality for idle documents (Michael Meeks, Collabora)
    • Avoiding running graphics tests on startup in LOK mode (Michael Meeks, Collabora)
    • Avoid un-necessary slow whole-writer-document off-screen render in some cases (Michael Meeks, Collabora)
    • Swap out compressed graphics in LOK mode as well as de-compressed versions (Michael Meeks, Collabora)

    Platform Compatibility

    Mac

    • LibreOffice 7.6 requires macOS 10.15 or newer to run.

    API Changes

    • css.qa.XDumper::dump got a kind parameter. core commit 56e17186ffcda7e93530bef3a06120584bb7d579
    • remove .uno:CharBackgroundExt's secondary use to setting background color. Instead use .uno:CharBackColor for 7.6+. tdf#85592
    • deprecate .uno::BackColor to set background color in Writer. Instead use the universal .uno:CharBackColor for 7.6+. tdf#85592
    • The C functions rtl_string_newFromStr and rtl_uString_newFromStr, and the C++ constructors for rtl::OString(char const *) and rtl::OUString(sal_Unicode const *) wrapping those functions, no longer support the undocumented behavior of accepting a null pointer string argument and treating it as an empty string. (Such calls had already been diagnosed with std::abort in debug builds since LibreOffice 7.2.) core commit 6028e9fda96d0ed5da266b1c54a7755f7ba3408c

    Android Viewer