The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 7.0, which brings several new features. Therefore, the company continues to provide v6.4.5 for production teams. One element that generates excitement in LibreOffice 7.0, is the replacement of the Cairo code by Google’s Skia library. So you get the support for use in CPU acceleration under the Vulkan interface. Remember LibreOffice is free although one of its weakest points is the lack of support for documents created in Office.
News from LibreOffice 7.0
Also, LibreOffice 7.0 besides the inclusion of Skia+Vulkan supports, brings performance improvement and compatibility with other files, among the most relevant we have:
- Support for ODF 1.3 OpenDocument, with the standardized and open native format of LibreOffice for office documents. Among the most important new features are digital signatures for documents with OpenPGP-based encryption of XML documents.
- With the addition of Skia, including Vulkan CPU-based acceleration. Thanks to AMD’s sponsor, it has implemented Skia’s graphics engine, accessing faster performance. Recalling that Skia is an open-source 2D graphics library, it provides common APIs with functionality on a variety of hardware and software platforms. Similarly, Vulkan is a next-generation graphics and computing API to achieve high efficiency and cross-platform performance on modern CPUs.
- Improved DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX compatibility. DOCX, when saved in native mode. Compared to previous versions, for progress in interoperability with multiple versions of MS Office, based on the Microsoft approach. Improvements in the import/export of PPTX files.
- Inclusion of new icons, the default in macOS: Sukapura, new gallery of shapes (arrows, diagrams, icons) that allows more diversity when using them.
- About the desktop, it allows greater ease of use to the browser, with context menu. The semitransparent text becomes compatible with the markers that can be shown in the line of text. The correct auto allows better use of the apostrophe in several languages improving the use of quotes.
- In spreadsheets, innovative functions for generating non-volatile random numbers are added, along with a keyboard shortcut for automatic addition.
If you want to learn more about what’s new in LibreOffice 7.0 visit the page.
Conclusion
The LibreOffice project with the release of its version 7.0, brings a variety of important new features such as ODF 1.3 support; Skia graphics engine and CPU acceleration with Vulkan; improved compatibility with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files, incorporating new features and shortcuts.
Linux users have the DEB, RPM packages in binary, approaching the update of the Snap and Flatpak version. Users with the version offered by the distribution will have to wait a few days (weeks included) for the new packages to appear as an update.
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