ReleaseNotes/4.4: Difference between revisions
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* It is possible to connect to OneDrive directly from LibreOffice. [http://mihai-varga.github.io/onedrive-connection.html blog entry] (Mihai Varga, <abbr title="Google Summer of Code">GSoC</abbr> 2014) | * It is possible to connect to OneDrive directly from LibreOffice. [http://mihai-varga.github.io/onedrive-connection.html blog entry] (Mihai Varga, <abbr title="Google Summer of Code">GSoC</abbr> 2014) {{fdo|62437}} | ||
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Revision as of 08:38, 16 December 2014
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About this page
Writer
Master Document Templates
Writer has long had Master Documents. A master document lets you manage large documents, such as a book with many chapters. The master document can be seen as a container for individual LibreOffice Writer files. LibreOffice 4.4 introduces Master Document Templates. These Master Document Templates can be added to the Template Manager and creating a new document based on a Master Document Template creates a Master Document with the same initial content as the Template it is based upon. (Caolán McNamara, Red Hat)
Shapes can have a TextBox
Writer shapes can now have a Textbox, meaning that it's possible to have complex Writer content and full drawinglayer geometry for a shape at the same time. fdo#70942 blog entry (Miklós Vajna)

Improvements to Track Changes
- The “Accept Change” and “Reject Change” commands now automatically jump to the next change. fdo#83953 (Samuel Mehrbrodt)
- Inclusion of new buttons in the Track Changes toolbar, along with a new set of icons. fdo#83955, fdo#84405 (Yousuf Philips)

- The keyboard shortcut Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + E has been associated with the recording of track changes. fdo#86183 (Yousuf Philips)
Style dropdown
The style dropdown now has a split menu to edit or update the selected style. fdo#62081 (Szymon Kłos and Samuel Mehrbrodt)

Line numbering easier to apply for all paragraphs
Line numbering can now be enabled in a single location, in addition to the already existing per-style method. fdo#84504 (Charu Tyagi, Ericsson)

Status bar improvements
- Page number in the statusbar are more easily understood when page number styles are used. fdo#80617 (Yousuf Philips and Samuel Mehrbrodt)

- Spacing between elements was improved to work better in low-resolution screens and small windows and double-clicking in the blank statusbar field no longer opens the 'Fields' dialog. fdo#86018 (Yousuf Philips and Samuel Mehrbrodt)
- Click behaviour was unified so that left-click results in an action or dialog appearing and right-click results in the display of a context menu. fdo#82707 (Yousuf Philips and Samuel Mehrbrodt)
- Tooltips were added to all elements of the statusbar. fdo#82708 (Yousuf Philips and Samuel Mehrbrodt)
- Word and character count now have thousand separators. fdo#83308 (Yousuf Philips and Matthew J. Francis)
Toolbar improvements
The “Standard” and “Formatting” toolbars were reorganized by removing uncommonly used commands and replacing them with frequent features, in order to reduce the need for users to hunt through menus or customize toolbars. Additional buttons have been added to the toolbars, but are hidden by default and can be enabled by using the “Customize” option. fdo#81475 (Yousuf Philips and Samuel Mehrbrodt)

Bookmarks in Navigator can be named using any character that is accepted in HTML anchor names. Specifically, LibreOffice now accepts . and :. fdo#56116 (Brij Mohan Lal Srivastava)
Calc
- See also: GUI: Tab changes
Direct conversion of formulas into static values
A new feature was added to convert formula cells into static values (via the menu ▸ ▸ ). Previously, you would need to cut the cells and paste them back into place to have the same outcome. (Kohei Yoshida, Collabora)
Formula engine
- Added AGGREGATE spreadsheet function for Excel interoperability. fdo#73148 (Winfried Donkers and Eike Rathke)
Toolbar improvements
The “Standard” and “Formatting” toolbars were reorganized by removing uncommonly used commands and replacing them with frequent features, in order to reduce the need for users to hunt through menus or customize toolbars. Additional buttons have been added to the toolbars, but are hidden by default and can be enabled by using the toolbar right-click context menu “Customize Toolbar...” option or ▸ . fdo#85594 (Yousuf Philips)

The right-click context menu that appear for managing sheets now has icons for sheet operations. fdo#86476 (Yousuf Philips)
Impress and Draw
- See also: GUI: Tab changes
Text of Master View Object Previews
- In Slide Master view, the text of the presentation object previews is now read-only. Changing the text of these previews has never affected the objects based on the styles that the presentation object preview. To add or hide a level to the outline numbering preview, now you can right-click on the last line to display a menu to add/hide another level. (Caolán McNamara, Red Hat)

- Toggling bullets on and off in slide master view in the outline preview via "Bullets On/Off" now truly toggles on/off the bullets of the Outline styles. In the past this only affected the preview itself, leaving the outline styles unchanged. Now it correctly affects outline levels in the normal view. (Caolán McNamara, Red Hat)
Select and toggle off master elements directly via Delete
In Slide Master view, master elements which Impress allows the user to remove via ▸ ▸ can now be removed by direct deletion of the matching placeholder in the Master View preview. In other words, to remove a footer, header, slide number or date/time, select the corresponding box in Master View and press Delete. (Caolán McNamara, Red Hat)

OpenGL transitions
- Implemented and enabled for Windows. (Markus Mohrhard, Collabora) Seems to be not available in 4.4.Beta???
- Improved implementation based on new OpenGL framework in vcl for Linux, Windows and OS X. (Markus Mohrhard, Collabora)
Page Title field
New field: Page Title in ▸ ▸ . fdo#47302 (Jennifer Liebel)
Inherit current style of cells when inserting New row/column in table
When we have a table in impress, have modified a cell style and then add a new row or column it now inherits the style of the current row/column for the new one instead of using default values. fdo#60712 (Hideki Ikeda)
Password for editing
It is now possible to save an Impress/Draw file read-only and require a password to modify it. fdo#63483 (Katarína Behrens)
Text background color
Draw supports background color for text in frames and captions. blog entry (Matteo Campanelli, GSoC 2014)

Printing: use specified paper size
Draw now uses the paper size specified in page formatting with printing. fdo#63905 (Eilidh McAdam)
Zoom Mode button
Creation of a new zoom mode button that is able to zoom in, zoom out and pan with the use of Ctrl and ⇧ Shift. fdo#55903 fdo#83572 (Maxim Monastirsky and Yousuf Philips)
Toolbar improvements
The default toolbars were reorganized to bring frequent used features to the toolbars. fdo#84909 (Yousuf Philips)
Menubar improvements
The View menu was reorganized to better unify its items similar to Writer and Calc. fdo#86209 (Yousuf Philips)
Base
Chart
Math
Color support
- Now Math 879bfcbf84fc7b73b5475d3f02e98184a2065dc5. (Regina Henschel, Apache)
- The newly added colors 38e21f422cd5ee9ce97aae9f0be32f46f6d22904. (Marcos Paulo de Souza)

Core
Included fonts
LibreOffice 4.4 adds the libre-licensed Caladea and Carlito fonts (Huerta Tipográfica). Caladea and Carlito have the same metrics and proportions as Microsoft’s Cambria and Calibri, respectively, so they can be used as drop-in replacements. (András Tímár, Collabora)
Digitally signed PDF export
Digital signature in PDF export now works on Windows. The Windows built-in certificate functionality is used to store your certificates for signing.


Drawing objects
You can move only the point next to the rectangle in "line callout" drawings, with ⇧ Shift key pressed. (Matúš Kukan, Collabora)
LibreOfficeKit
Calc and Impress support tiled rendering for improved performance when navigating documents in mobile devices. (Andrzej Hunt, GSoC 2014)
Options / General
Help content
- Local help page button for Calc in ▸ ▸ . fdo#80453 (Olivier Hallot, EDX)
- Local help page button for Calc in ▸ . fdo#80338 (Olivier Hallot, EDX)
- Local help entries for various Calc functions. fdo#80656, fdo#80452, fdo#80451, fdo#80450, fdo#80449, fdo#80447, fdo#80446, fdo#80445, fdo#80444, fdo#80443, fdo#80442, fdo#80440, fdo#80438, fdo#80436, fdo#80433, fdo#80432, fdo#80430 (Olivier Hallot, EDX)
Code quality
Translation of German comments
Many more source code comments have been translated into English. (Daniel Sikeler; Christian M. Heller; Tobias Madl; Thomas Viehmann; Philipp Riemer; Michael Jaumann; Laurent Balland-Poirier; Chris Sherlock; Philipp Weissenbacher; and Jennifer Liebel)
Coverity
Improved code quality based on the Coverity scan analysis.

Refactoring
Refactored large parts of Writer code, split the large classes into smaller interfaces. (Valentin Kettner, GSoC 2014)
Filters
- See also: Document Liberation libraries
Media file formats
More media file types are now accessible from ▸ : Real Audio (.ra), Real Media (.rm), Digital Video (.dv), Audio Codec (.ac3), Ogg Opus (.opus), Advanced Systems (.asf), MPEG Audio (.m4a). fdo#82994 (Daniel Sikeler and Caolán McNamara)
Adobe PageMaker
Draw can now import Adobe PageMaker files. (Anurag Kanungo, GSoC 2014)
New import filters for legacy formats
57d3b5cfa6bdd60ec5b3046bdd824e4f0adf3b30 from MacDraw, MacDraw II and RagTime for Mac (v. 2-3), via libmwaw. (Alonso Laurent; Fridrich Štrba and David Tardon)
- It is possible to connect to SharePoint 2010/2013 directly from LibreOffice. blog entry (Mihai Varga, GSoC 2014)
- It is possible to connect to OneDrive directly from LibreOffice. blog entry (Mihai Varga, GSoC 2014) fdo#62437
Improved OOXML support
- Metadata is now imported from ef2668bad976f1fbb70759887cafd35ea7833655. (Miklós Vajna)
- Custom wrap polygon is now 959a843f48be63071c64ba9e20c9389ebc390e81 to b818256d1c0f467d1064a0ebc1b17d079e74f38a. (Miklós Vajna)
- Support for bitmaps when exporting cropped images to e16b01a9e4e111b1267c4eec1f5d168e5c2b8e53. (Miklós Vajna)
GUI
Dialogs conversion to WidgetLayout finished
LibreOffice 4.0 introduced an infrastructure to build user interface dialogs and windows with the XML-based .ui format of GtkBuilder/Glade. All the original dialogs and tabs (.src-based) are now converted to this new format. blog entry (Caolán McNamara, Red Hat; Palenik Mihály, GSoC 2014; Szymon Kłos, GSoC 2014; and many more heroes)
Changes to rulers
- Rulers have smaller numbers and are now hidden by default. (Jan Holešovský, Collabora)

- Rulers can be turned on or off by using the key combination Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + R. fdo#87042 (Mattias Põldaru)
Start Center
Templates now appear directly in the Start Center and can be picked from there. (Efe Gürkan Yalaman, GSoC 2014; and Jan Holešovský, Collabora)

New color selector
- Shows recently used document colours
- Support for different color palettes and for .gpl GIMP palette format
- Allows to directly open the color picker and choose another colour
(Krisztian Pinter, GSoC 2014; Tomaž Vajngerl, Collabora; Maxim Monastirsky; and Adolfo Jayme Barrientos)

Reworked paragraph line spacing dropdown
The paragraph line spacing dropdown that was present only in the sidebar has been reworked so that it can be used in the main toolbar too, and was added there. fdo#83076 (Jan Holešovský, Collabora; Yousuf Philips)

Bullet and Numbering dropdown
The “Bullets” and “Numbering” toolbar buttons now have drop-down menus so it easier to change the list style without opening the lists dialog. fdo#85804 (Maxim Monastirsky; Yousuf Philips)

Sidebar changes
The Sidebar is still receiving progressive improvements from our community developers over the initial code import from Symphony:
- It has now been enabled by default in Writer, in addition to Impress (where it was enabled since 4.2). Also, the Sidebar now combines the functionalities of the old “Gallery” and “Styles & Formatting” floating panels, removing a lot of UI redundancy. fdo#73151 (Samuel Mehrbrodt)
- Tabs icons now also work as a toggle to open/close sidebar decks. fdo#67627 (Thomas Arnhold)
- The sidebar drop down menu now has a 'Close Sidebar' entry. fdo#85937 (Samuel Mehrbrodt)
- Sidebar open by default in Writer, Calc and Draw showing just the tab icons. fdo#85935 (Jan Holešovský, Collabora)
- Style tabs have new icons. (Miroslav Mazel)

- Cut, Copy and Paste actions are now at the top of the context menu. fdo#71770 fdo#84293 (Jeffrey Stedfast, Xamarin; Yousuf Philips)
- Writer now has the ability to access the Paste Special dialog via the context menu, reaching feature parity with Calc. fdo#62947 (Babu Vincent; Yousuf Philips)
- Font, Font size and Text alignment formatting options have been removed from context menu in Writer: according to statistics were widely unused and their removal reduces visual clutter. fdo#81132 (Yousuf Philips and Samuel Mehrbrodt)

Paste special is now available via the context menu
Removed some unused formatting options.
- Writer now has an option to change the currently selected image to another graphic via the context menu, reaching feature parity with Impress and Draw. fdo#82496 (Jennifer Liebel)

Edit / Read-only mode
LibreOffice will now display an infobar to indicate visibly when a document is being opened in read-only mode. This infobar replaces the “Edit file” icon in the main toolbar, as its labeling and usage patterns proved confusing for users. Activation and deactivation of read-only mode is also available from within the menu ▸ or through the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + M. fdo#80538 fdo#80536 (Yousuf Philips, Samuel Mehrbrodt and Joren De Cuyper)

Tab changes
- Sheet tabs (Calc) and layer tabs (Draw) were moved to an independent row and are no longer displayed next to the horizontal scrollbar. As many visual styles under Linux (in addition to the default OS X configuration) use very thin scrollbars, these rendered the tabs too small to be clickable and, most importantly, readable. fdo#36772 (Tomaž Vajngerl and Samuel Mehrbrodt)
- The tabs have an updated, flatter look. (Tomaž Vajngerl)
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Firefox Themes
- New browser for Firefox themes with search and preview. (Rachit Gupta, GSoC 2014)

- Firefox themes now apply also to bottom toolbars. fdo#59299 (Michael Jaumann, LHM)

Image scaling
Images are now scaled proportionally by default in Calc and Impress/Draw as they were already in Writer. fdo#83808 (Samuel Mehrbrodt)
Simplification of Special Character dialog
Special characters are now added to an editable field so special characters can be inserted/removed at the location of the cursor in the field. fdo#64302 fdo#85907 (Szymon Kłos; Adolfo Jayme Barrientos)

Icon improvements
- New and improved icons have been added to the Tango, Sifr, and Oxygen icon themes. fdo#75256 fdo#75359 (Mirek Mazel; Yousuf Philips; Matthias Freund; Alexander Wilms; and Adolfo Jayme Barrientos)
- Large icons are shown by default on Windows, as they are on Linux and Mac OS. fdo#82309 (Jan Holešovský, Collabora; and Yousuf Philips)
Locale in About dialog
The About dialog now informs the user about the locale they are currently using. fdo#85432 (Brij Mohan Lal Srivastava)

UI text improvements
Localization
New languages/locales with locale data
Available as default document language and for locale specific formatting.
- Added Catalan Valencian [ca-ES-valencia] locale data. fdo#83292 (Andras Timar)
Performance
- Loading large autocorrect lists is at least twice as fast now, because the lists are parsed in a thread by the fastparser and repeated parsing of unchanged files is avoided. fdo#79761 (Daniel Sikeler)
- Redundant image swap out / in has been significantly cleaned up avoiding wasteful image load/save. (Tamas Zolnai, Collabora)
- FastSerializer classes used by all OpenXML export are very significantly faster and more efficient, reducing syscall thrash. (Matus Kukan, Collabora)
Infrastructure
Scripting / Basic
- It's now possible to export a Basic library from an Excel document. fdo#60904 (Caolán McNamara, Red Hat)
- Changed the value returned from GetSolarVersion. Before this change the returned value was one number for version major, minor and micro. So, for version 4.4.0, the returned value was 440. Now we're using two decimals for version major, two for version minor and one for version micro. The new format is 40400, for version 4.4.0. fdo#60689 (Marcos Paulo de Souza)
- Add an (un-published: be careful) processEventsToIdle() method to the
com.sun.star.awt.Toolkitservice - calling this causes all pending rendering to be completed. (Michael Meeks, Collabora)
Access2Base updated
The bundled Access2Base Basic library is upgraded to version 1.2.0. (Jean-Pierre Ledure)
- All the methods which can meaningfully be used without a database connection (error handling, dialogs manipulations, status bar and window handling, commands launch...) have been reviewed to become executable before any OpenConnection call.
- A CloseConnection method has been added to free resources.
- To pass values from one open document to another, use the TempVars collection of TempVar objects.
- New properties added for forms and subforms: OrderBy and OrderByOn.
- The ApplyFilter and SetOrderBy actions are now applicable on table or query datasheets, and on forms or subforms as well.
- The GoTorecord method has been extended to table and query datasheets.
Details here
Extensions
Feature removal / deprecation
The feature to embed LibreOffice in certain web browsers via the deprecated NPAPI (enabled through the ▸ ▸ option) has been removed. (Bryan Quigley)
ODF changes
API changes
- c5d47c327a57df55fa3dac0fff6b65888d0345e4 for Context param in UNO C++ exception class constructors which makes it possible to use UNO exceptions with less code verbosity.
- 83636d2c09802aeeb1b30078022d228d04da21eb for UNO Java exception classes that take a "Throwable cause" parameter, allowing us to store the original cause when rethrowing exceptions.
OSL macro clean-up
IReference and ReferenceObject
ReferenceObjectininclude/salhelper/refobj.hxx0c6c66b64a9572a8e474f6dfdedcbebfe54758af.IReferencehas been removed frominclude/rtl/ref.hxx, it is no longer in use.
UNO API changes
The following UNO interfaces and services were changed:
UNO API removals
The following UNO interfaces and services were removed from the API:
Platform compatibility
OS X
- LibreOffice 4.4 requires OS X 10.8 or later. The binary packages provided are 64-bit only.









