Major LibreOffice update features better collaboration tools and optimized code

Today LibreOffice, the popular open source office suite, received a major update that will make its users and developers happy. This update focuses on cleaning up and optimizing code as well as improving collaboration and performance.

In terms of cleaning up the code, there were close to 1,500 code changes. Excess and obsolete code was removed while more code was added to make LibreOffice run quicker and to add new features. This will be great for developers of LibreOffice as it will make the code easier to understand. Thousands of lines of comments were also translated from German to English. Hopefully LibreOffice will be less intimidating for new developers.

Here are some of the major updates you can find in LibreOffice 4.0:

• Integration with different content management systems via the CMIS standard.
• Better DOCX and RTF support. Ink annotations from tablets and comments should function better.
• Support for Microsoft Publisher documents.
• Performance improvements while loading and saving documents, particularly with RTF, XLSX and ODS files.
• A remote control app for Android is coming soon.
• Support for Firefox Themes (aka “Personas”)
• New widget layout for dialog windows.

LibreOffice started life as a fork of Apache OpenOffice but with these updates, LibreOffice shows that it can and should be considered as a completely different office suite. There are a ton more updates in LibreOffice 4.0 than the ones listed so be sure to hit he source link to see all of the changes in gratuitous detail. You can download the update here.

Source: Libre Office