Containing a total of 72 bug fixes across most of its core components, the LibreOffice 6.4.7 update is here about two months after LibreOffice 6.4.6 to add one last layer of improvements and fixes, ensuring the LibreOffice 6.4 series remains as stable and reliable as possible, as well as to improve document compatibility and interoperability with other office suites.

While it’s already working on fixing bugs for the latest LibreOffice 7.0 office suite series, The Document Foundation currently still recommends LibreOffice 6.4 for enterprise users and any other type of organization that wants to save money by not buying expensive licenses for proprietary office suites.

• Professors, please let us submit PDFs

  We are under two weeks away from a presidential election and already eight months into a deadly pandemic, but we still have time for the little things. No, I don’t mean smelling flowers and sipping pumpkin spice lattes, though you are welcome to do so—I mean the types of file formats that professors request students use to submit papers.

  In my experience, most professors ask for files with a DOCX extension, a format which was developed by Microsoft in 2007 to help standardize its file extensions across its various applications. Officially known as Office Open XML, the DOCX format broke backwards compatibility with the old .doc format. This meant that all previous versions of Microsoft Word prior to the new standard would be unable to open files with this particular extension. Consternation followed that development in 2007 (or 2008 for Mac users), but in the year 2020 we have mostly solved that issue, as most computers these days do not run any pre-2006 versions of Microsoft Office.

  The modern problems with DOCX are really not problems with DOCX itself, but rather with its place in the pantheon of file extensions that are now available. Most students in our current age produce their work in a Google Doc (in point of fact, this very article was produced in a Google Doc). It’s a simple workflow that has all the functionality of a full-blown application without having to leave a web browser or fight with a sign-in form (beyond the one that we’re always signed into as a part of daily campus life). I don’t support submitting an essay or exam as a raw Google Doc, however, and my reasons for not doing so are partially shared with my aversion to submitting in DOCX: all the writing tools are immediately available upon opening the document.

  [...]

  The obvious solution is for professors to request papers in Portable Document Format, PDF. Originally developed in 1993, the PDF file format has not outlived its usefulness. Anything, from Windows 10 to Windows 95, MacOS to OS X or Unix to Ubuntu, anything can open a PDF. And since anything can open it, when students finish writing and export to PDF, we can see exactly what it is we’re submitting with our names attached. And it’s not like professors should hate it; it’s the default format for any downloaded academic document, and providing comments is much closer to how comments are written on physical paper.

  Students shouldn’t be the only ones submitting files in PDF format either. For every file in DOCX a professor puts on Moodle, there are probably three copies on every student’s hard drive. Every weekday we face the choice of digging through our downloaded files for the syllabus we downloaded a week ago or downloading yet another copy of that same syllabus. Uploading PDF files instead of DOCX to Moodle lets students open it in a web browser, a faster and less cluttered operation that lets our focus stay on class instead of going through old files.

• Static versus dynamic web sites

  In this post, I want to explore two fundamental principles or criteria that underpinned my original article, but were more or less unpronounced: sustainability and power. I also want to update you on my current site configuration.

• [Old] Writing HTML in HTML

  I've just finished the final rewrite of my website. I'm not lying: this is the last time I'm ever going to do it. This website has gone through countless rewrites – from WordPress to Jekyll to multiple static site generators of my own – but this is the final one. I know so, because I've found the ultimate method for writing webpages: pure HTML.

  It sounds obvious, but when you think about how many static site generators are being released every day – the list is practically endless – it's far from obvious. Drew DeVault recently challanged people to create their own blog, and he didn't even mention the fact that one could write it in pure HTML:

  If you want a hosted platform, I recommend write.as. If you're technical, you could build your own blog with Jekyll or Hugo. GitHub offers free hosting for Jekyll-based blogs.

  Now, there's nothing wrong with Jekyll or Hugo; it's just interesting that HTML doesn't even get a mention. And of course, I'm not criticizing Drew; I think the work he's doing is great. But, just like me and you, he is a child of his time.

  That's why I'm writing this blog post – to turn the tide just a little bit.

• Shaping the future interoperability policy

  The European Commission is currently evaluating the ISA² programme and the European Interoperability Framework to present a reinforced public sector interoperability policy in 2021.

  The related roadmaps (EIF and ISA²) are now published for feedback on the Commission’s Have your say portal. You can provide feedback on the EIF and future interoperability policy roadmap till 12 November 2020. Feedback on the roadmap for the evaluation of the ISA² programme is open till 13 November 2020.

The Document Foundation (TDF) was formed in 2010 as a home for the newly created LibreOffice project; it has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. As it begins its second decade, though, TDF is showing some signs of strain. Evidence of this could be seen in the disagreement over a five-year marketing plan in July. More recently, the TDF membership committee sent an open letter to the board of directors demanding more transparency and expressing fears of conflicts of interest within the board. Now the situation has advanced with one of the TDF's largest contributing companies announcing that it will be moving some of its work out of the foundation entirely.

The dispute over the marketing plan has its roots in money, as is often the case. Developing a large system like LibreOffice requires the work of dozens of engineers, who need to be paid to be able to put a full-time effort into the project. Some of the companies employing those developers — Collabora in particular — think that TDF has succeeded too well; the free version of LibreOffice is solid enough that attempts to sell commercial support for it are running into a wall. The proposed marketing plan was designed to better differentiate "community-supported" LibreOffice from the professionally supported offerings from TDF member companies. This idea did not sit well with community members, who worried that LibreOffice was being pushed into a second-class citizen status.

The tension is at its highest around LibreOffice Online, which provides for collaborative editing of documents hosted on a central server. Evidently, what revenue does exist in the LibreOffice ecosystem is mostly focused on LibreOffice Online, which is a relatively hard service to set up and maintain without having somebody dedicated to the task. TDF has encouraged potential users to go with commercial offerings by, among other things, allowing the system to suggest commercial support to users and not offering binary builds of the LibreOffice Online server. Currently, if you want to establish a LibreOffice Online instance, you must start with the source and build it from there.

More: an Online move ...

Ubuntu devs pushed out the recent LibreOffice 7.0.2 update to Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla users this weekend. And arriving alongside the many bug fixes and performances tweaks inside is a new icon theme bundled up especially for Ubuntu users.

Yes, LibreOffice in Ubuntu 20.10 uses a new Yaru icon set by default.

The Yaru icon set for LibreOffice is a full colour theme that covers all of the office app’s tools, options, buttons, and settings in all toolbars, dialogs, and menus. Yaru replaces the elementary-based icon pack (still included in LibreOffice if you want it back).

But what kind of different does it make?