LibreOffice 25.2 released

Version 25.2 of the LibreOffice productivity suite is out. Changes include the ability to remove all personal information from any document, support for ODF version 1.4, a number of accessibility improvements, and more; see the release notes for details.

From:		"media-AT-documentfoundation.org" <media-AT-documentfoundation.org>
To:		corbet-AT-lwn.net
Subject:		LibreOffice 25.2, the office suite that meets today’s user needs
Date:		Thu, 06 Feb 2025 14:09:16 +0100
Message-ID:		<sfvot8GZhv5r4Pxxcp50mSOjqTcqAFqBEF45zlwf0@documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com>

The new major release provides a large number of user interface and accessibility improvements, plus the usual interoperability features Berlin, 6 February 2025 - LibreOffice 25.2, the new major release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux is available at https://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.ph... LibreOffice is the best office suite for users who want to retain control over their individual software and documents, thereby protecting their privacy and digital life from the commercial interference and the lock-in strategies of Big Tech. LibreOffice is the only office suite designed to meet the actual needs of the user - not just their eyes. It offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen sizes, optimising the space available to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away. It is also the only software for creating documents (that may contain personal or confidential information) that respects the user's privacy, ensuring that the user can decide if and with whom to share the content they create, thanks to the standard and open format that is not used as a lock-in tool, forcing periodic software updates. All this with a feature set that is comparable to the leading software on the market and far superior to that of any competitor. What makes LibreOffice unique is the LibreOffice Technology Platform, the only one on the market that allows the consistent development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions - including those provided by companies in the ecosystem - capable of producing identical and fully interoperable documents based on the two available ISO standards: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) and the proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX). The latter hides a huge number of artificial (and unnecessary) lock-in complexities that create problems for users convinced they are using a standard format. End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on the user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: https://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.ph... LibreOffice Writer Guide can be downloaded from https://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.ph... New Features of LibreOffice 25.2 PRIVACY • LibreOffice can remove all personal information associated to any document (author names and timestamps, editing time, printer name and configuration, document template, author and date for comments and tracked changes). CORE/GENERAL • LibreOffice 25.2 can read and write ODF version 1.4. • Many interoperability improvements with proprietary OOXML documents. • It is now possible to automatically sign documents after defining a default certificate. • Windows 7 and 8/8.1 are deprecated platforms, and support will be removed in version 25.8. • Extensions and features relying on Python will not work on Windows 7. WRITER • Improvements to Track Changes management, to manage large number of changes in long documents. • Comments are now tracked in the Navigator when you move the focus into comments, while resizing the area containing comments now shows a visual guide. • Added options to set a default zoom level for opening documents, overriding the level stored in documents. • It is now possible to delete all content of a content type (excluding headings) via the Navigator. CALC • Addition of a "Handle Duplicate Records" dialog to select/remove duplicate records in Calc. • Both the Function Wizard dialog and Functions Sidebar deck received improvements to searching and user experience. • Solver models can be saved into spreadsheets and Solver is able to provide a sensitivity analysis report. • Addition of new sheet protection options related to Pivot Tables, Pivot Charts and AutoFilters. IMPRESS & DRAW • Many improvements to all Impress templates, which now have visible elements (font colour set to black) in Master Notes and Handout. • Objects can be centred on the Impress slide (or Draw page) in one single step. • Automatic repeating of slides can now be activated in windowed mode. • Overflowing text in presenter notes is no longer cut off when printing. USER INTERFACE • The list of recently used files has now a checkbox "[x] Current Module Only" that allows to filter the list. • Object boundaries are now toggled independently of Formatting Marks. • The colour of non-printing characters and the background colour of comments can be customised. • Default items for unordered lists (also known as bullets) have been updated. • Significant improvements to application themes. ACCESSIBILITY • Improved warning and error levels in the Accessibility Sidebar, with option to ignore warnings. • User interface elements report an accessible identifier which can be used by assistive technologies. • Windows: accessibility gets enabled whenever a tool queries information on the accessibility level, and accessible relations are correctly reported. • Linux: positions of UI elements (including on Wayland) are correctly reported on the accessibility level. SCRIPTFORGE LIBRARIES • An extensible and robust collection of macro scripting resources to be invoked from user Basic or Python scripts. • The whole set of services (except when the native native built-in function is better) is made available for Python scripts with identical syntax and behaviour as in Basic. • The English documentation of ScriptForge libraries is now partially integrated in the LibreOffice help pages. Contributors to LibreOffice 25.2 A total of 176 developers contributed to the new features in LibreOffice 25.2: 47% of the code commits came from 50 developers employed by ecosystem companies - Collabora and allotropia - and other organisations, 31% from seven developers at The Document Foundation, and the remaining 22% from 119 individual volunteer developers. An additional 189 volunteers have committed 771,263 localized strings in 160 languages, representing hundreds of people working on translations. LibreOffice 25.2 is available in 120 languages, more than any other desktop software, making it available to over 5.5 billion people in their native language. In addition, over 2.4 billion people speak one of these 120 languages as a second language. LibreOffice for Enterprises For enterprise-class deployments, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners - for desktop, mobile and cloud - with a wide range of dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs: https://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.ph... Every line of code developed by ecosystem companies for enterprise customers is shared with the community on the master code repository and improves the LibreOffice Technology platform. Products based on LibreOffice Technology are available for all major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud. Migrations to LibreOffice The Document Foundation publishes a migration protocol to help companies move from proprietary office suites to LibreOffice, based on the deployment of an LTS (long-term support) enterprise-optimised version of LibreOffice, plus migration consulting and training provided by certified professionals who offer value-added solutions consistent with proprietary offerings. Reference: https://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.ph... In fact, LibreOffice's mature code base, rich feature set, strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and LTS options from certified partners make it the ideal solution for organisations looking to regain control of their data and break free from vendor lock-in. Availability of LibreOffice 25.2 LibreOffice 25.2 is available at https://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.ph... Minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple MacOS 10.15. LibreOffice Technology-based products for Android and iOS are listed here: https://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.ph... For users who don't need the latest features and prefer a version that has undergone more testing and bug fixing, The Document Foundation still maintains the LibreOffice 24.8 family, which includes several months of back-ported fixes. The current release is LibreOffice 24.8.4. LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.ph... [1] Release Notes: https://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.ph...

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Would be nice to have a list of known regressions in release notes

Posted Feb 6, 2025 18:35 UTC (Thu) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link] (6 responses)

Would be nice to have know regressions also mentioned in the release notes, something in the lines of the "Known issues and solutions" that some linux distros put in their announcements for new releases.

For instance, to the best of my understanding, the gallery has been causing crashes through all the last release versions (24.8.x) and the gallery custom themes appear to be not working even in 25.2.0. At least this is what I have observed in the lat pre-release is that you cannot drag an object to a custom theme. This regression appears to be well known and reproducible, so mentioning it in the release notes as something to be careful about could save a lot of time to those in need of this functionality, who should probably stay with 24.2.7 or convert their custom themes to regular documents to copy stuff from/to.

Would be nice to have a list of known regressions in release notes

Posted Feb 6, 2025 21:00 UTC (Thu) by Kluge (subscriber, #2881) [Link] (5 responses)

By "gallery" do you mean the Startcenter? I haven't had any problems with it. In fact, I haven't had any problems with the release candidates, though I haven't used them extensively.

Would be nice to have a list of known regressions in release notes

Posted Feb 7, 2025 9:44 UTC (Fri) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link] (4 responses)

No, I mean the gallery that you get on the right sidebar, that contains graphical elements (and in fact also multimedia elements such as sounds, I think) that you can drag into your documents nicely organized in themes (e.g. diagrams, VRT terminals, etc).
This is quite useful particularly for `draw` and `impress`.

In many occasions you can install pre-made themes as extensions (there is a nice "add new galleries by extensions" button, but you can also develop your own themes, by creating a new theme (there is an add button), giving to it the name you want, and populating it by dragging graphical objects into the theme. For instance, if you often need to draw circuits, you can make your own circuit elements theme with transistors, resistors, etc. Similarly, if you work in some specialized field that uses some specific symbols, you can create your own gallery theme with them.

Unfortunately, this functionality has been broken with 24.8 where themes can be used (so it is OK to have gallery themes from extensions), but custom themes editing (adding items to themes, removing items from themes, removing custom themes) started to make the whole LibO crash. This was particularly bad because it could cause loss of unsaved data. With the latest pre-release of 25.2 the situation is already way better. You cannot drag stuff to custom themes at all (so you cannot populate/edit your own custom themes), but at least no crash.

Now, it would be nice if regressions could be fixed _within each development cycle_. This would be in line with the idea of having a "fresh" and a "still" version of LibO. Hence, if you find a regression that is critical for your workflow in the "fresh" branch, you can remain on the "still" one until the regression is addressed in the "fresh" one. In this case the matter is worse because the regression has "crossed" the EOL boundary: namely if you want the fully working gallery you need to stay on 24.2 that is EOL, since 24.8 is the new "still" version and both 24.8 (still) and 25.2 (fresh) have the regression.

But it would be even nicer if known regression were mentioned in the release notes, possibly with workarounds if known, and a bug ID to check when the regression is fixed.

Would be nice to have a list of known regressions in release notes

Posted Feb 7, 2025 12:34 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

It would be nice to have someone paid to triage bug reports ...

The problem is that people (like me) tend to submit "drive by" bug reports. Quite often, reasonably detailed, even if it's as simple as "this functionality doesn't work, this is what should happen, this is what does happen". There might be a little discussion when it's submitted, it's logged in the bug tracker against the current version.

If nobody looks at it, two years later the then-current version is eol'd, a message goes out "has this bug been fixed?", and if the original reporter (who might well have forgotten about it, changed email, whatever whatever) doesn't respond with an "of course not, somebody needs to actively fix it", then it's closed as "the version it's logged against is eol".

At the end of the day, if there's no money to throw at tracking bug reports, or sponsoring fixes for your particular problem, then this is going to happen. Even if you do throw money at it, to some extent it's going to happen. The only way to stop it is to actively monitor bugs important to you, and keep them live, and preferably fix them yourself ... which instantly falls foul of the problem that - outside of development tools - the users getting bitten by bugs and the developers fixing bugs are largely two disjoint sets. And in a volunteer environment, that means most bugs don't get looked at once they're filed :-(

Cheers,
Wol

Would be nice to have a list of known regressions in release notes

Posted Feb 7, 2025 22:31 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (2 responses)

I'd like to see a framework where a user can record and submit a PR for a regression test that works in 24.2.x but fails in 24.8.x, and the CI system can verify both of those properties. They might still reject it if they decide that the behavior you got in 24.2.x wasn't what they think should have happened, but at least their test system would be reproducing it and they wouldn't have to ask the reporter what happens now.

Would be nice to have a list of known regressions in release notes

Posted Feb 8, 2025 19:31 UTC (Sat) by oever (guest, #987) [Link] (1 responses)

LibreOffice is in the luxurious position of having a record macro function.

A bug report with a macro is easier to verify and might be reused in a test to make sure the bug does not come back.

Would be nice to have a list of known regressions in release notes

Posted Feb 9, 2025 8:41 UTC (Sun) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link]

Being able to easily create reproducible test cases using recorded macros would indeed be great. The macro recorder is unfortunately still a bit too limited for the general case. Main limitations are that:
- only works in Calc and Writer
- Actions that are not related to the document contents are not recorded (e.g., I believe the recorder would not record actions related to the gallery).
- The recording of selections is a bit problematic.