14 DAY TRIAL // The Document Foundation has announced LibreOffice 7.0, a massive update for its productivity suite that brings improvements in all essential areas.
There are several changes that are worth highlighting in this release, and one of the first is support for the ODF 1.3 format, which comes with digital signatures for documents and OpenPGP-based encryption of XML documents.
Then, the new LibreOffice version comes with the Skia graphics engine and Vulkan GPU-based acceleration.
“The Skia graphics engine has been implemented thanks to sponsorship by AMD, and is now the default on Windows, for faster performance. Skia is an open source 2D graphics library which provides common APIs that work across a variety of hardware and software platforms, and can be used for drawing text, shapes and images. Vulkan is a new-generation graphics and compute API with high-efficiency and cross-platform access to modern GPUs,” The Document Foundation explains.
Better Microsoft Office document support
LibreOffice is often described as the top replacement to the more expensive Microsoft Office, so it’s critical for the app to fully support all document formats used by Microsoft’s software.
And version 7.0 comes with major changes in this regard, as it brings improvements for DOCX, XSLX, and PPTX document formats.
“DOCX now saves in native 2013/2016/2019 mode, instead of 2007 compatibility mode, to improve interoperability with multiple versions of MS Office, based on the same Microsoft approach. Export to XLSX files with sheet names longer than 31 characters is now possible, along with exporting checkboxes in XLSX,” the release notes reveal.
There’s a new icon theme configured as default on macOS, as well as new shapes, like arrows and diagrams. LibreOffice Writer includes more context menus for the navigator, while bookmarks are displayed in-line in text. The Calc app features a keyboard shortcut for autosum, as well as new functions for non-volatile random number generation.
The Impress & Draw app can now generate PDF documents that are larger than 500 cm.
LibreOffice 7.0 is available today for all desktop users on all supported platforms.