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The first stable release of the free office suite is available for download. The Internet, January 25, 2011 - The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project. Not only does it ship a number of new and original features, LibreOffice 3.3 is also a significant achievement for a number of reasons:
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- the developer community has been able to build their own and
independent process, and get up and running in a very short time (with
respect to the size of the code base and the project's strong ambitions);
- thanks to the high number of new contributors having been attracted
into the project, the source code is quickly undergoing a major clean-up
to provide a better foundation for future development of LibreOffice;
- the Windows installer, which is going to impact the largest and most
diverse user base, has been integrated into a single build containing
all language versions, thus reducing the size for download sites from 75
to 11GB, making it easier for us to deploy new versions more rapidly and
lowering the carbon footprint of the entire infrastructure.
Caolán McNamara from RedHat, one of the developer community leaders,
comments, "We are excited: this is our very first stable release, and
therefore we are eager to get user feedback, which will be integrated as
soon as possible into the code, with the first enhancements being
released in February. Starting from March, we will be moving to a real
time-based, predictable, transparent and public release schedule, in
accordance with Engineering Steering Committee's goals and users'
requests". The LibreOffice development roadmap is available at
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan.
LibreOffice 3.3 brings several unique new features. The 10 most-popular
among community members are, in no particular order: the ability to
import and work with SVG files; an easy way to format title pages and
their numbering in Writer; a more-helpful Navigator Tool for Writer;
improved ergonomics in Calc for sheet and cell management; and Microsoft
Works and Lotus Word Pro document import filters. In addition, many
great extensions are now bundled, providing PDF import, a slide-show
presenter console, a much improved report builder, and more besides. A
more-complete and detailed list of all the new features offered by
LibreOffice 3.3 is viewable on the following web page:
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/new-features-and-fixes.
LibreOffice 3.3 also provides all the new features of OpenOffice.org
3.3, such as new custom properties handling; embedding of standard PDF
fonts in PDF documents; new Liberation Narrow font; increased document
protection in Writer and Calc; auto decimal digits for "General" format
in Calc; 1 million rows in a spreadsheet; new options for CSV import in
Calc; insert drawing objects in Charts; hierarchical axis labels for
Charts; improved slide layout handling in Impress; a new easier-to-use
print interface; more options for changing case; and colored sheet tabs
in Calc. Several of these new features were contributed by members of
the LibreOffice team prior to the formation of The Document Foundation.
LibreOffice hackers will be meeting at FOSDEM in Brussels on February 5
and 6, and will be presenting their work during a one-day workshop on
February 6, with speeches and hacking sessions coordinated by several
members of the project.
The home of The Document Foundation is at http://documentfoundation.org.
The home of LibreOffice is at http://www.libreoffice.org, where the
download page has been redesigned by the community to be more user-friendly.
*** About The Document Foundation
The Document Foundation has the mission of facilitating the evolution of
the OOo Community into a new, open, independent, and meritocratic
organization within the next few months. An independent Foundation is a
better reflection of the values of our contributors, users and
supporters, and will enable a more effective, efficient and transparent
community. TDF will protect past investments by building on the
achievements of the first decade, will encourage wide participation
within the community, and will co-ordinate activity across the community.
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