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LibreOffice Rolls Out the Updates, Latest 3.3.2

Mar 25, 2011  By Susan Linton
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LibreOffice

Unlike OpenOffice.org of yore, LibreOffice developers have been pumping out the updates at a rapid pace. Since the inaugural release two months ago, LibreOffice has seen two minor version updates as well as associated developmental releases. The latest, LibreOffice 3.3.2, was released just a couple of days ago.

LibreOffice 3.3, the fork of OpenOffice.org 3.x, was released on January 25 to a jubilant reception. It built upon the years of work that made OpenOffice.org an excellent office suite. Many OpenOffice.org developers defected when Oracle's strategy became suspect. With the many same talented developers and supporting companies now backing LibreOffice, it is well positioned to challenge OpenOffice.org in Linux distributions and user desktops. It already pulls ahead in some polls and has replaced OOo in several popular distributions.

Version 3.3 brought nice improvements over OpenOffice.org, one of which is Scalable Vector Graphics support. Another is the long awaited support for MS Works formats and improved Word Perfect support. One of the most interesting new features is the Experimental Mode, which allows one to test upcoming features.

Version 3.3.1 was released on February 23 and brought some bug fixes, new icons, and extra language additions.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 was released March 22. This release was primarily a stabilizing update bringing further bug fixes and code clean-ups. The announcement also said this release sets the stage for the next major release, 3.4.0, due May 2. 3.3.2 is actually the renamed Release Candidate 2, so not only is the changelog essentially unchanged but those who installed RC2 will not need to upgrade.

Some of the more interesting changes include dictionary updates, fixed incorrect cursor navigation, fixed the occasional blank first slide in Presentation, fixed Writer losing ticks in check boxes, fixed erratic paint rendering in Impress, and added a workaround for IM problems with KDE4 integration.

The next release of LibreOffice should arrive with the developmental snapshots leading up to 3.4.0. The first beta is expected to appear any day now and release candidates will start appearing after April 4. 3.4.1 is due May 23.

Download LibreOffice 3.3.2

______________________

Susan Linton is a Linux writer and the owner of tuxmachines.org.

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Libre is the shiznit

Tommy's picture
Submitted by Tommy (not verified) on Tue, 03/29/2011 - 09:32.

No software is perfect, but I have been quite impressed at the improvements in Libre over such a short span. It's too bad Anonymous #1 is unhappy with Calc -- I hope he or she is pitching in to help winnow them down.

Also I'm not sure how this ranks as a support forum, but Anonymous #2, I just now created a Draw document containing a bitmap I had processed in a bitmap graphics program (not the Gimp but it could have been) and added some text objects as legends, and I exported it from Draw as a png file, which I was able to immediately place in a LibreOffice Writer document. Your requirements may be different; I'm not sure what problem you might be running into but since you said something about dpi I presume you may be struggling with a bug in ANOTHER program you want to import into. I may be missing something but I don't think any part of LibreOffice has a bitmap editor, so if you care about the pixels you probably need a different tool.

The Downside

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 03/28/2011 - 21:50.

For calc spreadsheet users, both OpenOffice and LibreOffice versions 3.3.0 and later are still full of regressions/bugs. The latest stable calc is version 3.2.1.

I wish commentators would test the software they are advocating before dishing out unqualified praise.

LibreOffice Calc

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 03/30/2011 - 15:50.

I - and 50% of all serious user - would be perfectly happy if Calc was removed from the suite. Of the remaining 50%, I would say that 45% would agree if they knew how flawed the spreadsheet paragidm is.

The spreadsheet (any spreadsheet) is a solution to a non-existant problem.

What would you use for

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 04:55.

What would you use for situations in which spreadsheets are currently used? A database would require considerable more time in designing, and maintaining, and is not something your standard user should be allowed near. A word processor is just that, it makes a very poor application to deal with columns of numbers.

Update

Tuxedo's picture
Submitted by Tuxedo (not verified) on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 08:24.

Can I update from LibreOffice 3.3.1????

I wish you could export bitmapped graphics at a good resolution?

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 03/26/2011 - 04:40.

First of all, -Great program!
Now, about my comment... -I know there are possible workarounds, but I think it would be real handy to be able to export a large bitmap/png etc of a page straight from the program to a file.

When exporting, you seem to be able to specify the "size" of your work, or the "dpi", but not both at once! -and you quickly realize that there is a very small limit to the amount of actual "data" which you can export into one file. This seems to be a limitation which goes back many years, and for some reason has not been changed.

ie: if anyone is interested, try creating an a4, black and white page of graphics, and see how large and detailed a bitmap you can save from it, I do not know of any way to get any decent amount of detail in the finished bitmap, using the built-in export function?

Great program, -but what a (as far as I can tell...) incredibly frustrating limitation for a program which has increasingly amazing graphics ability!

Love to hear if anyone knows how to do this, without converting to a vector format first and reloading into another program for the conversion to bitmap?

Exporting to bitmap

lewisTM's picture
Submitted by lewisTM (not verified) on Tue, 04/05/2011 - 14:09.

IMO the most reliable way to export any ANY page to a bitmap is to first export to PDF, then import that into the GIMP, where you have precise control over DPI, size and page selection.

Cheers!

setting resolution

conwaytwt's picture
Submitted by conwaytwt on Fri, 04/01/2011 - 08:04.

It looks like Libre defaults to exporting everything as 96 or 100 dpi bitmaps. I just looked through the options and apparently the only place you can control the resolution is in the Print options dialog. (In Libre go to Tools --> Options and then LibreOffice --> Print.)

You may be able to "print" your document to a file as a high resolution bitmap.

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