ReleaseNotes/5.3

Go to Page Dialog

 * Writer has a new dialog for quickly jumping to another page that is available through and .  (Akshay Deep, Yousuf Philips)

Table Styles
Table styles were implemented in Writer: For detailed code changes, see this blog entry. (Jakub Trzebiatowski, GSoC 2016; Miklos Vajna, Collabora; Jan Holešovský, Collabora; Yousuf Philips)
 * 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.

Arrows Toolbox

 * New drawing tools were added (that were previously available only in Draw and Impress). (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.

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)

Arrows Toolbox

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

Option settings

 * In new installations the default setting for new documents is now Enable wildcards in formulas instead of regular expressions. (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.

Changed spreadsheet functions

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

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). (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 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.
 * 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.

Number Format

 * Fraction Number Formats (Laurent BP)
 * any of,   or   can be used for any of integer, numerator or denominator format string.
 * For instance  will display 3.5 as   and PI as
 * any string can be used as delimiter between integer and fraction:
 * will display PI value as
 * more accurate representation of fraction with a new algorithm (Wolfgang Jäger)
 * new default formats with forced denominator
 * if denominator has less digits than places, it is now left aligned : with format  value 3.5 is displayed as
 * (with two spaces after fraction), instead of
 * (old behavior)
 * format options available through 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, (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) (Tamás Zolnai)
 * Only ODS file format is supported to save/load such pivot tables.

Other

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


 * Functions can now be searched from the available list.
 * Calc now supports scrolling through the key.

Impress

 * Images inserted via can now be linked instead of embedded in the document.  (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB)
 * Slide properties content panel in sidebar for master slide mode. (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)

Templates

 * Two new default templates: Vivid and Pencil:
 * 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)

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 " ") and X name (default " ") can be replaced by names defined by the user (Laurent BP)

Math

 * Dynamically-sized integral  now allows sub/superscripts. (Takeshi Abe)
 * New command "Evaluated At" in "Brackets" section of Elements window has been added. (Takeshi Abe)
 * Improved MathML import (Takeshi Abe)
 * Import MathML's
 * Import stretchy integral symbol from MathML
 * Improved MathML export (Takeshi Abe)
 * Export dynamically-sized integral  to MathML
 * Export Greek symbols to MathML with correct  attribute

Core / General

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

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)
 * 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.
 * Improved and consistent calculation of inter-line spacing across platforms (Khaled Hosny)
 * Enable vertical “left to right” block direction, needed for traditional Mongolian and Manchu (Khaled Hosny)

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 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
 * Tango and html 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
 * 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
 * Completely new is the tonal 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  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)


 * Added support for PAdES signing of PDF files. blog entry (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
 * Added support for XAdES signing of ODF files. (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:
 * Using the  command line option
 * On Windows: Using the start menu entry LibreOffice (Safe Mode)



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) :
 * 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
 * This allows, e.g., for better integration with SharePoint.

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 (Bartosz Kosiorek)
 * Landscape orientation is now properly saved after export to .xlsx (MS Excel compatible) (Bartosz Kosiorek)
 * Hidden and empty rows became hidden when exported to .XLSX or .XLS file (Bartosz Kosiorek)
 * Outline columns and rows are saved correctly after export to XLSX (Bartosz Kosiorek)
 * During .xlsx export, XML_outlineLevelRow, XML_outlineLevelCol keys are now saved (Office365 compatible) (Bartosz Kosiorek)
 * Fix column width on MS Excel for macOS, after export to XLSX and XLS (Bartosz Kosiorek; Markus Mohrhard)
 * Fix precision of column width according to MS specification (Bartosz Kosiorek)
 * Fix for User Defined Custom Formatting which was not applied during importing XLSX documents (Bartosz Kosiorek)
 * Fix exporting of coloured empty cells to .xlsx and .xls documents (Bartosz Kosiorek)
 * Fix compatibility issue with Excel 2007 after export to .xlsx (Bartosz Kosiorek)
 * Fix slow import of grouped pivot tables in .xlsx (Tamás Zolnai)
 * Number formats:
 * preserve escape characters (Laurent BP)
 * fraction format accepts '0' in addition to '#' and '?' (Laurent BP)
 * extended LCID can be imported. Extended LCID is used to export calendar and local numerals (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 . (Maxim Monastirsky)
 * Document recovery dialog has been simplified; it looks better and less complicated now. (Muhammet Kara, Pardus)
 * 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.  (Muhammet Kara, Pardus; Yousuf Philips)

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. (Rishabh Kumar, GSoC 2016; Katarina Behrens, CIB; Heiko Tietze; Yousuf Philips)


 * Default set of patterns. (Yousuf Philips)

Toolbars

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

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)  (Susobhan Ghosh, GSoC 2016; Katarina Behrens, CIB; Yousuf Philips)


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


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


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

Menu

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

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 path.   (Muhammet Kara, Pardus)


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

Basic Editor

 * The BASIC IDE will now use the colors you set for “Font color” and “Document background” in . (Takeshi Abe)

Accessibility

 * Everyone can now improve accessibility as almost all a11y relations are now easily editable with Glade. (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.

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=" --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 (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], (Eike Rathke (Red Hat, Inc.))
 * Hungarian Rovas [hu-Hung-HU], (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:



Improvements to proofing tools and language support

 * European Portuguese language auto-correction files were synchronized with Brazilian Portuguese files (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 :
 * 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.

Access2Base updated
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  and   methods. Also the scope of the  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)

Windows

 * Windows installer (MSI) now supports Restart Manager feature available on Windows Vista and newer (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.

Toolbars

 * Four toolbar modes have been added to make it easy for users to switch the visible toolbars, which can be done in . (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 . (Yousuf Philips)

Sidebar

 * In Writer, the section Manage changes was added on the Sidebar
 * Introduction of the "Default Shapes Panel" in the new Shapes Deck (currently experimental) for Draw (see this blog entry). (Susobhan Ghosh, GSoC 2016; Katarina Behrens, CIB; Yousuf Philips)

Other

 * A toolbar control to insert Emojis has been added (Akshay Deep, GSoC; Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB)
 * Still experimental and requires to activate
 * Currently not working on windows see )

General

 * The 'Human' icon theme has been removed (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB)
 * Support for bitmap-only fonts on Windows has been removed (Khaled Hosny)
 * Support for Type 1 fonts has been removed (Khaled Hosny)
 * 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 wizard has been removed. Instead a new template selection dialog is available when launching Impress (see ). (Akshay Deep)
 * The simple gradient templates AbstractGreen, AbstractRed and AbstractYellow have been removed (Yousuf Philips)

Under the Hood
See what changed under the hood.

Removed configuration options

 * The  configuration schema is removed, and the   service no longer supports substitutions defined via the   configuration set
 * The  configuration schema is removed
 * The  configuration schema is removed
 * The  configuration schema is removed
 * The  configuration schema is removed

UNO API changes

 * The  struct is introduced (Szymon Kłos)
 * New templates for the file picker (Interface ) (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB):
 * Preview only (no link option)
 * Link & play
 * For extensions, it is now possible to bind to the XNotifyingDispatch for results (e.g. when uno.Save, was it okay or not) (Juergen Funk, CIB)
 * TerminationVetoException no longer prevents closing frames. If you throw the TerminationVetoException during shutdown, all frames will be closed, but the process will be kept alive. To restore the old behavior, use the CloseVetoException. (Samuel Mehrbrodt, CIB)
 * Some new properties are added to pivot table related services (Tamás Zolnai)
 * Additionally new constants are added as
 * Removal of the NPAPI Plugin related interface  had inadvertently been missing from LibreOffice 5.2 (see ReleaseNotes/5.2).
 * The  interface was removed  (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)
 * The  interface was modified
 * The  interface was modified
 * The  interface was modified
 * The  interface was modified
 * The  interface was modified
 * The  struct was modified
 * The  struct and   interface and   service were modified
 * The  interface was modified
 * The  struct was modified
 * The  struct and   interface and   service were modified
 * The  interface was modified

Java UNO language binding

 * Removal of some deprecated interfaces

SDK changes

 * The various GCC-based platforms no longer define a  C/C++ macro in   (but still set the   compiler flag)

Other changes

 * The  environment variable was removed.