A spotlight on fresh LibreOffice 6.1 which arrived recently.
LibreOffice 6.1 released with major changes that impacts day-to-day working of users. A highlights of the changes follows.
Table of Contents
General Changes
New Icon Theme
Two new icon themes have been introduced – Colibre and Karasa Jaga. Colibre is the default for windows version of the libreoffice.
Image Handling
LibreOffice performance with documents having more images will load and display more smoothly with this release.
Signing Documents
ODF files can now have a sign via ECDSA key. However it is only available in Linux and Mac.
Shapes and Backgrounds
Brand new set of predefined color fills and texture is available.
UI changes
Notebookbar which was introduced earlier, was completed for writer, well almost. Also it is being improved for Calc and Impress. It’s now more complete experience for users who is coming to LibreOffice from MS office with this tabbed feature.
Writer
Header and Footer
You can now quickly add page numbers and page counts in headers and footers via a single click.
EPUB export
The EPUB file export dialogue is revamped with more options to accommodate as metadata for epub files.
One click signature line
A new option added to add signature in writer documents.
Calc
Sort Improvements in Filter
Calc now can sort images which is associated with cell. If you sort the associated values in a cell, the corresponding images in cells also would be sorted.
New Anchor Type
For images which is inserted in a Calc sheet, now having three anchor options. They are a) To cell b) resize with cell c) To page.
Merge Cell
Merge cells dialog is updated to visually guide users for outcome of a merge operation for cells having values.
External Data Source – CSV
Calc is now powered to accept csv as external data Source from a sheet.
Performance Improvement – Formula
Better CPU optimization is achieved in this release for parallel formula computation in sheets having huge volume of data giving Calc performance boost.
Impress and Draw
LibreOffice 6.1 introduces new drawing styles with many presets.
New menu
A new page menu is added in Draw to give more options and control on the Draw pages.
Base
Embedded HSQLDB is deprecated (experimental) and replaced by Embedded Firebird database engine. A migration assistant is added for conversion.
Access2Base basic library updated to support apostrophes in table names.
Download and Install
LibreOffice 6.1 is a “fresh” release which means it is for advanced users and early adopters. If you are running business critical operations in LibreOffice, or using for large enterprises, it is not recommended. You need stick to 6.0 release (“still”) for now and wait for the 6.1 changes to be ported to “still”.
To download LibreOffice 6.1 for Ubuntu/Linux, Windows and Mac, head over to below link for usual installers:
LibreOffice also available as new methods – snap, Flatpak and AppImage. Follow bellow links.
Summary
In a nutshell, LibreOffice 6.1 is one of the iconic release with so many ground breaking changes which impact users in their day-to-day work. This release once again made LibreOffice winner in open source and free office suite universe.
Via TDF. Pic credits: TDF YouTube
