14 DAY TRIAL // The development cycle of the upcoming LibreOffice 6.0 open-source and cross-platform office suite continues these days with the release of the first Beta milestone as part of project's second bug hunting session.
That's right, LibreOffice 6.0 Beta is now available to download, and while it's been released mostly for those involved in the bug hunting sessions arranged by The Document Foundation to triagge and resolve as many issues as possible before the final release, it can also be installed by early adopters.
A second Beta release could arrive early next month if there's still some critical bugs present, but the development cycle will continue in the second half of December with the first Release Candidate (RC) milestone, followed by the second and third RCs in January 2018. The final LibreOffice 6.0 release is expected at the end of January 2018.
Some of the features coming to LibreOffice 6.0
As its version number implies, LibreOffice 6.0 promises to be a major release adding a great number of new features to its components. Among these, we can mention a new default table style for Writer, "Grammar By" spell checking for Writer, new spreadsheet functions for Calc, as well as OpenPGP document signing and encryption.
Ten new Impress templates have been added to LibreOffice 6.0, along with various improvements to existing templates and a new 16:9 default slide format. There's also support for custom icon themes via the extension manager, implementation of the Noto fonts by default, and a new import filter from QuarkXPress v.3 and v.4.
LibreOffice 6.0 also brings a new export filter to export Writer documents to the EPUB format, improvements to the SmartArt and OOXML import filters, better support for embedded text documents, enhanced Metafile Format Plus (EMF+) import filters, and a bunch of GUI enhancements, including a new variant of the Notebookbar.
Of course, there will more awesome features coming to LibreOffice 6.0 before the final release hits the streets, including an improved LibreOffice for Android app, but, until then, you can get an early preview what's been implemented so far by downloading the LibreOffice 6.0 Beta for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows systems right now through our website.
Today is the 1st day of the #BugHunting session for the upcoming #LibreOffice 6 ! https://t.co/JknruLLY9Q — LibreOffice (@libreoffice) November 27, 2017
