Last summer the alarms went off. The Document Foundation had released a preview version of their office suite labeled "Personal," which led us to think that they would start developing a more limited and full-featured option that would only be available to paid users. The company soon denied these rumors, saying that what they were preparing was something for a fee, yes, but it was support (help), among other benefits and that, for users who do not need it, everything would continue as in the past. The tag appeared in LO 7.0, but they withdrew it. Today, with the launch of LibreOffice 7.1, is already here, but it is different.
So what announced today TDF, mentioning that LibreOffice 7.1 Community is already available, and that it is a version that is supported by community volunteers. Therefore, have added the tag Community to make it clear that the software is not intended for businesses, and is not optimized for your support needs. For businesses, the company recommends LibreOffice Enterprise, which includes versions for desktop, mobile, cloud, and LTS support, professional assistance, custom features, and other benefits, which is explained in this link.
LibreOffice 7.1 Community and Enterprise: almost the same, but different support
TDF says that most companies have opted for the Community version, and this is a problem. The volunteers have to help companies, and that makes them waste time that they could use in LibreOffice development, so everything slows down.
Regarding the news included in LibreOffice 7.1 Community, we have:
- General improvements:
- New dialog box to select the type of user interface, in order to choose the correct user interface based on the preferences of each user at the beginning.
- Improved search for a printer paper size that matches the printed document.
- Show all supported files when adding a new extension in Extension Manager.
- The print preview is now updated asynchronously, so as not to crash the user interface when adjusting settings in the print dialog.
- Add-ons dialog: to find, get and install extensions with a single click.
- Writers:
- New Style inspector to display character and paragraph style attributes and manually formatted (direct format) properties.
- The default anchor for newly added images can be configured using Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice Writer.
- Ability to detect Unicode, even if the imported text file does not have the bill of materials (byte order mark).
- Significant improvement in search / replace speed.
- calculation:
- Added an option to manage pasting with the Enter key, which can be enabled / disabled in Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice Calc ▸ General Dialog Box.
- Added option to select items in AutoFilter window by clicking all item row, in addition to checkbox.
- Significant speed improvement for AutoFilter and find / replace operations.
- Impress and Draw:
- Ability to add visible signatures to existing PDF files in Draw.
- Ability to change animations for multiple objects at once in Impress.
- Added "Pause / Resume" and "Exit" buttons to the presenter screen.
- Realistic soft blur shadows have been added to objects.
- Added new physics-based animation capabilities and new animation effect presets that use them.
- Macro: ScriptForge Libraries, a robust and extensible collection of macro scripting resources for LibreOffice to be invoked from Basic or Python user scripts.
LibreOffice 7.1.0 is now available for all supported systems from the same page as always, which can be accessed from here. Remember that this is the most advanced version of the project, and that The Document Foundation continues to recommend LibreOffice 7.0.4 for production teams. This recommendation is not based on the support offered, but rather that it is a version with more fixes that is more reliable. In the next few days, LO7.1.0 will begin to appear as an update in the different Linux distributions, as long as what we are using is the most advanced option of the software.