14 DAY TRIAL // The first Release Candidate for LibreOffice 5.0 has been made available by The Document Foundation and it comes packed with a ton of changes and improvements. There are still a few weeks left until the stable edition arrives, but we can see what the developers are doing until then.
The new LibreOffice 5.0 branch is already shaping out to be an impressive release, and we've already seen two Beta versions unveiled with quite a few changes already. The developers are not stopping here, and they are pushing to get the final two RCs out the door. From the looks of it, this is going to be a big upgrade, and it's likely that The Document Foundation will put all of its weight behind it.
One of the issues that remain unsolved is the compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats, but that gap is getting smaller with each new release. The Document Foundation wants to make LibreOffice a powerful alternative for Microsoft's office suite and it needs to be able to handle anything.
LibreOffice 5.0.0 RC1 is ready for testing
The developers have explained that more improvements have been added with GTK3+ systems, all ODFF1.2 and Excel2013 variations are now supported, additional tweaks have been added to the standard and drawing toolbars, the footnote mark from cross reference is now removed properly, an important writer spelling issue has been corrected, and lots of other fixes have been implemented.
Some of the features that are going to land in the 5.0 branch include style previews in the sidebar, Word-compatible text highlighting, image cropping, DOC improvements, OOXML improvements, drag and drop for images, Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) support, and various GUI changes, just to name a few.
You can download LibreOffice 5.0.0 RC1 right now from Softpedia, but please keep in mind that it's not a stable version. The Windows and Mac OS versions are also available.