[tdf-announce] The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6 with a wealth of new features and improvements

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6 with a wealth of new 
features and improvements

Berlin, August 8, 2012 - The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 
3.6, the fourth major release of the best free office suite ever, which 
provides a large number of new features and incremental improvement over 
the previous versions. Innovations range from invisible features such as 
improved performance and interoperability to the more visible ones such 
as user interface tweaks, where theming has improved to more closely 
match current design best-practice. A full list with screenshots is 
available here: 
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-6-new-features-and-fixes, because 
a picture says more than a thousand words.

Wherever you look you see improvements: a new CorelDRAW importer, 
integration with Alfresco via the CMIS protocol and limited SharePoint 
integration, color-scales and data-bars in spreadsheet cells, PDF export 
watermarking, improved auto-format function for tables in text 
documents,, high quality image scaling, Microsoft SmartArt import for 
text documents, and improved CSV handling. In addition, there is a lot 
of contributions from the design team: a cleaner look, especially on 
Windows PCs, beautiful new presentation master pages, and a new splash 
screen.

LibreOffice is becoming increasingly popular in corporate environments. 
During the last months, several large public bodies have announced their 
migration to the free office suite: the Capital Region of Denmark, the 
cities of Limerick in Ireland, Grygov in the Czech Republic, Las Palmas 
in Spain, the City of Largo in Florida, the municipality of 
Pilea-Hortiatis in Greece, and the Public Library System of Chicago.

Dave Richards of the City of Largo has commented about the new release 
on his blog: "I have been testing LibreOffice 3.6 and am happy to see 
the progress. At this time all of our showstoppers are fixed and we 
probably will upgrade almost immediately when it's released. Nice work. 
CMIS is shaping up nicely. I'll be looking at 3.7 when it appears in the 
daily builds".

In France, the MIMO Working Group - the ministries of Agriculture, 
Culture and Communication, Defence, Education, Energy, Finance Interior 
and Justice - with a total of 500.000 end users, has certified 
LibreOffice for deployment on every desktop. At the same time, the OSB 
Alliance joined the efforts of German and Swiss cities and communities 
sponsoring development on the LibreOffice codebase.

Corporate users are joining consumers who quickly switched to 
LibreOffice. Giorgio Buccellati, Professor Emeritus of History and Near 
Eastern Languages at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles), 
says: "LibreOffice is wonderful software. I am an avid user of the 
Hybrid PDF feature, which allows to exchange PDF files with all other 
users while preserving the possibility of editing the same document like 
a native file".

LibreOffice 3.6 has been developed by the growing community of hackers 
gathered around The Document Foundation, thanks to a friendly and 
welcoming environment, and the compelling Free Software ethos. The 
community has surpassed the threshold of five hundred developers 
providing new features and patches since the announcement of the project 
on September 28, 2010.

According to Ohloh, LibreOffice is the third largest developer community 
focusing on free software applications, after Google Chrome and Mozilla 
Firefox, and the largest to be independent from a single corporate 
sponsor. This result has been achieved in less than two years, and is 
now a benchmark for free software projects.

The Document Foundation invites power users, able to help iron out any 
final wrinkles, to read the release notes carefully, install LibreOffice 
3.6.0, and report any problems.  More conservative users should stick 
with LibreOffice 3.5. Corporate users are strongly advised to deploy 
LibreOffice with the backing of professional support, from a company 
able to assist with migration, end user training, support and maintenance.

LibreOffice 3.6 is available from: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

To contribute to the further development of LibreOffice and The Document 
Foundation, you can donate at: 
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/donate/

Short link to The Document Foundation blog: http://wp.me/p1byPE-j8


About The Document Foundation (TDF)

The Document Foundation is an open, independent, self-governing, 
meritocratic organization, which builds on ten years of dedicated work 
by the OpenOffice.org Community. TDF was created in the belief that the 
culture born of an independent foundation brings out the best in 
corporate and volunteer contributors, and will deliver the best free 
office suite. TDF is open to any individual who agrees with its core 
values and contributes to its activities, and warmly welcomes corporate 
participation, e.g. by sponsoring individuals to work as equals 
alongside other contributors in the community. As of June 30, 2012, TDF 
has 135 members and over a thousand volunteers and contributors worldwide.


Media Contacts

Florian Effenberger (based near Munich, Germany, UTC+1)
   E-mail: floeff@documentfoundation.org

Charles H. Schulz (based in Paris, France, UTC+1)
   E-mail: charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org

Eliane Domingos de Sousa (based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, UTC-3)
   E-mail: elianedomingos@documentfoundation.org - Skype: elianedomingos

Italo Vignoli (based in Milan, Italy, UTC+1)
   E-mail: italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org - Skype: italovignoli
   GTalk: italo.vignoli@gmail.com

Full contact details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/contact/
TDF legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint

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Florian Effenberger, Chairman of the Board (Vorstandsvorsitzender)
Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108
The Document Foundation, Zimmerstr. 69, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint

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