Exploring LibreOffice 7.0

The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced the release of LibreOffice 7.0. This major release is a significant upgrade from version 6.4.6, focusing on interoperability with Microsoft Office, general performance, and support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) version 1.3. A complete list of new features and bug fixes can be found in the release notes.

When talking about the latest LibreOffice release, one must also talk about ODF, the default format for LibreOffice documents. ODF version 1.3, which was approved as an OASIS Committee specification back in December 2019, offers several improvements to the format that LibreOffice can now take advantage of. For the security concerned, document encryption using OpenPGP (PGP) is a welcome addition. Further, while LibreOffice has supported digital signatures in past releases via SSL/TLS certificates, PGP keys can now be used to sign documents in LibreOffice 7.0. The notes on ODF in the release clarify the compatibility between LibreOffice versions:

To put these latest features to a test, two systems were used: Ubuntu 20.04 and macOS 10.15.5. In this experiment, a document was created in LibreOffice Writer on the Ubuntu machine, which was then opened on the macOS machine to verify the cryptography. For all tests, my LWN PGP key was used.

Initially, the most complicated aspect of getting digital signatures and encryption via PGP working was importing the keys themselves. LibreOffice relies on what it calls the "certificate manager" of the operating system, and each system offers unique challenges. In this case, there is an outstanding bug in LibreOffice from 2018 (version 6.0.2.1) for macOS that made things unnecessarily difficult. In Ubuntu, importing my keys via gpg required logging out in order for them to be accessible by Seahorse (bug report).

Using the available PGP keys in LibreOffice 7.0 to sign or encrypt documents is straightforward. Adding a digital signature to a document is a matter of choosing "Digital Signatures" from the menu (bringing up a list of current signers of the document), then clicking "Sign Document" to add another. Signing a document automatically saves it, and any further modification invalidates the signatures. An example of an ODT document signed by me is available for download, and below is a screenshot of that document:

To encrypt an ODT document using PGP is even more straightforward; checking the "Encrypt with GPG key" box when using "Save As" brings up an interface to select the key. Attempting to open an encrypted document without having the private key available causes LibreOffice to oddly prompt for a decryption password (one would hope that no password exists); with the private key available, the document is decrypted transparently.

The LibreOffice 7.0 release includes considerable improvements for interoperability with the Microsoft Office software suite as well. For Microsoft Word, LibreOffice now supports saving in the native 2013/2016/2019 Microsoft Word MS-DOCX formats instead of the previous limitation of only the 2007 compatibility mode format. Compatibility mode was never an ideal solution for interoperability with Microsoft Word, as Microsoft itself has acknowledged: "this mode is intended to ensure users of different versions of Microsoft Office can continue working together and documents created with older versions of Office won't look any different when they're opened in future versions of Office." TDF further explained the move by saying: "this mainly benefits Word users - where documents can use more features and Word's bug fixes since DOCX 1.0 can be applied." The release notes go on to acknowledge that this change adversely impacts users working with Microsoft Word 2010, and encourages those users to switch to LibreOffice.

For LibreOffice Calc, a number of improvements are included in the release. Two new functions for generating non-volatile (generated once per cell) random numbers RAND.NV() and RANDBETWEEN.NV() were added. For functions that allow the use of regular expressions, Calc now correctly handles case-insensitivity flags. The notes on this issue indicate that the "the default case-sensitivity of the functions is not changed [...] the sensitivity only changes after first (?-i) in the regular expression." In another Microsoft Office compatibility improvement, exporting spreadsheets to Microsoft Excel with sheet names with that are more than 31 characters is now supported.

Python macros to automate tasks will no longer be able to use CPython 2.7; the project has upgraded to CPython 3 exclusively. This change may cause problems for some macros; users should expect to address any scripting compatibility breaks between Python 2.7 and 3 when upgrading LibreOffice.

With LibreOffice 7.0 released, the community is looking ahead to the 7.1 release. The wiki for TDF provides the release notes for 7.1, updated as new features and bug fixes are addressed. The two notable improvements listed are an experimental Outline mode for LibreOffice Writer and the ability to add visible signatures to existing PDF files in the LibreOffice Draw application. Writer's Outline mode facilitates making document outlines by providing a way to "fold all text from the current heading to next heading".

Readers who are interested in trying out or upgrading to version 7.0 can download binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows platforms. The project also provides Flatpak, Snap, and AppImage builds. To get started with LibreOffice, extensive documentation of the project is available. As stated in the announcement, TDF "does not provide any technical support for users"; community support exists on the project's mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice web site.

A major thrust of the LibreOffice 7.0 release appears to be directed toward making it more compatible with (and more viable as a replacement to) Microsoft Office. With Microsoft shifting its attention to online offerings (Microsoft 365), TDF appears to realize that the idea of being forced into paying an eternal subscription fee for an office-productivity suite of software isn't ideal for anyone but Microsoft. After all, some users may not want to depend on an entirely online office-productivity suite. It is likely TDF hopes to attract those users who need or want their productivity software installed locally.

For those users looking for an open-source online-office solution, TDF is also working on LibreOffice Online concurrently with the offline version. LibreOffice Online is currently "suitable for home users", but TDF "is keen to avoid situations where an unsuitable version is deployed at scale". To underscore this position, LibreOffice Online displays a prominent "not supported" warning if more than ten concurrent documents and/or more than 20 concurrent connections are active.

For readers unfamiliar with the specifics of the project, LibreOffice is primarily released under Mozilla Public License v2. Its community consists of a wide range of corporate and individual contributors; the announcement for 7.0 stated: "74% of commits are from developers employed by companies sitting in the Advisory Board, such as Collabora, Red Hat, and CIB, plus several other organizations, and 26% are from individual volunteers." The project regularly announces security advisories and appears to fix serious vulnerabilities promptly.

LibreOffice 7.0 is a major improvement in a number of key ways, and LibreOffice Online will likely continue to mature into a scalable solution. For current 6.4 users, the project will continue support for "some months of back-ported fixes." In all, thanks to the work of TDF, free Microsoft Office compatible alternatives (online and offline) continue to make significant progress.