LibreOffice 26.2

Writer

• Anchored objects are no longer selected after pasting. The old behaviour can be restored by setting the expert option Office::Writer::Cursor::Option::SelectPastedAnchoredObject to true. (Michael Stahl, Collabora) tdf#167833

• Floating tables and the keep-with-next/don’t split paragraph attributes now work better together in Writer (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

• Change tracking: old direct format of format redlines are now preserved for ODT and are improved for DOCX (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

• Change tracking: it is now possible to decide which change to accept for interdependent changes (blog post). (Miklos Vajna, Collabora)

• Floating tables can now be split into floating tables, which improves DOCX export. (Michael Stahl, Collabora) fc53ab8e

• When changing one numbered list by joining it to a previous one (Add to list), this now helpfully also removes any “Restart numbering” properties. (Justin Luth) tdf#113213

• Spell checking dialog: various papercut fixes. Correct-All list no longer cleared unnecessarily (and more reliably cleared when switching to another application). (Justin Luth) tdf#191558 tdf#126826

• Record Track Changes: Partly-deleted paragraphs added to the hidden list. In this way, track changes for partly-deleted paragraphs will not be displayed in the numbering list. (Bayram Çiçek, Collabora) tdf#157596

• Writer now takes line spacing into account for field shadings. In this way, bottom of some letters (e.g. “Ç”, “ş”, “g”, “p”) will not be cut off because of the “field shadings” background layer. (Bayram Çiçek, Collabora) tdf#167527

• Do not show line numbering in footnote during DOCX import. (Bayram Çiçek, Collabora) tdf#167202

• Pasting a single image from the clipboard now automatically inserts a caption, following the Writer AutoCaption Images configuration setting. (Michael Stahl, Collabora) d072b5e0

• Writer now supports Start and End paragraph alignment. These options align paragraphs relative to the paragraph text direction, and can simplify reusing styles across languages and writing systems. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#118350

• Writer can now automatically set the direction of RTL text while typing. This behavior can be added to a paragraph style by checking the “Automatically set direction” option in the alignment tab of the paragraph dialog. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#162120

• Writer now displays a more visible grid, and the Snap to Grid functionality now accurately aligns objects with the grid. (Tamás Zolnai) tdf#89544 tdf#126493

• Option to prevent dragging of selected text per Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Writer ▸ Formatting Aids: Drag ’n Drop: [x] Allow text to be dragged and dropped (Heiko Tietze, tdf) tdf#100998

Calc

• Calc now supports xmlMaps.xml. (Bayram Çiçek, Collabora) tdf#167689

• Improvements to the Sort dialog options. (Regina Henschel)

  • When natural sort is enabled in the Sort dialog options, you have an additional choice to treat decimal separators as regular characters. That allows to sort IP addresses, for example, even if your locale has a dot as decimal separator. The fact that natural sort is enabled is now written to the file and thus retained when reopening the file. tdf#161949
  • The locale setting in the options of the Sort dialog is now written to the file and thus retained. Setting the locale effects not only the choice of a special sort algorithm but now it effects other locale dependent sorting properties too, e.g. which character is used as decimal separator for natural sort. tdf#168175.

• Support for Biff12 (Excel 2007+) clipboard format was added, removing limitations of the amount of data pasted into Calc from Excel. (Laurent Balland) (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#127675

• Excel 2010+ was made the default format when saving as XLSX. It was renamed from ‘Office Open XML Spreadsheet’ to ‘Excel 2010–365 Spreadsheet’. (Justin Luth, Collabora) tdf#165180

• Modifying a formula to Matrix mode can now simply be done by F2, ⇧ Shift+Ctrl+↵ Enter. No need to change formula itself. (Laurent Balland) tdf#104888

• The commands to set the font and the background color (.uno:Color/uno:BackgroundColor) apply the actual setting from the color picker, when assigned to a shortcut. (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#138722, tdf#169812

• Expert option Office::Calc::Content::Display::NoteTransparency allows users to switch off transparency for comments. (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#169504

• Column titles don’t overlap anymore when column widths are small. (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#168092}

Performance

• Scrolling speed was improved when a spreadsheet has many hiding columns (Caolán McNamara, Collabora) tdf#156297
• Spreadsheets with lots of shapes are now faster to work with. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#154913
• Removal of duplicate entries is now faster. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#166121
• Reject tracked changes is faster. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#133557
• Exporting SVGs with lots of bitmaps was optimized. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#169532

Impress

• Introduced Microsoft Media Foundation APIs on Windows to support video and audio playback of common codecs. Managing video playback with MFPlay. About the supported video and audio file formats (without any additional installed codec), more information can be found on this link. (Balazs Varga, Collabora) tdf#62408 tdf#105168 tdf#159292

Base

• Base is now truly multi-user. (Pierre Vacher) tdf#167960

Chart

• Hovering with the mouse over Chart data range colour palette entries in the Sidebar now shows a live preview in the active chart. (Marco Cecchetti, Collabora) 25fa7051

• Some OOXML chart style content now round-trips through LibreOffice (OOXML -> LO -> OOXML) successfully. For now this is incomplete, and the style data is neither available nor modifiable in the user interface. (Kurt Nordback, Collabora) tdf#168472

Performance

• Performance issues with 3D charts were fixed. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#148988

Core / General

• Added connector support for Writer and Calc. The object path in the standard toolbar: Insert ▸ Shape ▸ Connectors. The object path in the tabbed user interface: Insert ▸ Connectors (double click for multi-selection). (Amin Irgaliev, Vladislav Tarakanov) tdf#79356

• Fonts for which the license disallows editing, which are embedded in documents, are now supported. Previously, they were silently ignored, and the documents were displayed using substitute fonts. Now the user is asked if they want to open the document in edit mode (without the said fonts), or in read-only mode (with the fonts used for display). ODF and OOXML file formats are supported. (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#145967

• Google Drive authentication was improved to use normal browser method (Windows only for now). (Mike Kaganski, Collabora) tdf#101630

• PDF export: handle document external links. (Floris Bos; Olivier Hallot, TDF) tdf#167490 tdf#170309

Filters

Generic XML and JSON mapping to Calc

Generic XML and JSON documents with linkable ranges are now automatically mapped to sheets in Calc. A linkable range is a section of a document containing tabular records. When a document contains multiple linkable ranges, each range gets mapped to a single sheet.

For example, the following JSON document

[
  {
    "id": 5001,
    "name": "Wireless Mouse",
    "description": "Ergonomic wireless mouse with adjustable DPI settings.",
    "sku": "WM-ERGO-BLK-01",
    "price": 25.50,
    "stock_quantity": 150,
    "category": "Electronics"
  },
  {
    "id": 5002,
    "name": "Mechanical Keyboard",
    "description": "RGB mechanical keyboard with brown switches for tactile feedback.",
    "sku": "MK-RGB-BROWN-02",
    "price": 89.99,
    "stock_quantity": 75,
    "category": "Electronics"
  },
  {
    "id": 5003,
    "name": "Laptop Stand",
    "description": "Adjustable aluminum laptop stand for improved ergonomics.",
    "sku": "LS-ALUM-ADJ-03",
    "price": 35.00,
    "stock_quantity": 200,
    "category": "Accessories"
  }
]

gets mapped to the following range of values when opened.

There is no constraints on the structure of the original data in the source document as the structure of the original data is analyzed and is automatically mapped to sheet. However, this automatic mapping is done on a best-effort basis, and it may not work in all cases.

XML documents with linkable ranges are handled in a similar fashion. (Kohei Yoshida, Collabora)

DOCX

• Improved line height handling of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean DOC/DOCX documents. (Jonathan Clark) tdf#129808

Markdown

• Added support for exporting to Markdown format (blog post). (Mike Kaganski, Miklos Vajna; Collabora) tdf#160734 tdf#168152 tdf#168172 tdf#168317 tdf#168341 tdf#168662
• Added support for importing from Markdown format, either via files or via the clipboard. (Ujjawal Kumar) tdf#162153
• Added support for using ODT/DOCX templates while importing a Markdown document (blog post). (Miklos Vajna; Collabora)

EPUB

• EPUB export was made much faster, and a progress bar is shown during export. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#133976

Graphics

The Skia graphics engine is now mandatory on both Windows and macOS. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) 07f480b7 9f9550a6

Performance

• Rendering of shape fills was made more performant. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#160345 tdf#149592
• Rendering of SVGs with pattern fills is now faster on Linux. (Noel Grandin, Collabora) tdf#101083

User Interface

• All dialogs use vertical tabs with icons now. (Heiko Tietze) tdf#161497

• Option to use horizontal tabs instead vertical. (Heiko Tietze) tdf#167108

• The Layouts panel in the Impress Sidebar now uses a native IconView widget instead of the ValueSet widget. (Parth Raiyani, Collabora) tdf#166964

• The Theme dialog now uses a native IconView widget instead of the ValueSet widget. (Parth Raiyani, Collabora) tdf#167074

• The Presets and Shadow Style Positions from the border page dialog now use a native IconView widget instead of the ValueSet widget. (Parth Raiyani, Collabora) tdf#167536

• The Go to Page/Slide/Sheet dialogs are now async. (Hubert Figuière, Collabora) 8b609509 1beb3252 46c25815

• Allow inserting hyperlink via context menu (when text is selected). (Samuel Mehrbrodt, Collabora) tdf#167544

• Dialog screenshots can now be copied to the clipboard for immediate pasting in documents (Olivier Hallot, TDF) tdf#166391

• On Linux, the native GTK and Qt color picker dialogs are now used by default instead of the custom LibreOffice one. This can be configured in Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ General (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#167669 tdf#169505

• The page size dropdown in the NotebookBar is now visually more consistent with the rest of the User Interface and it displays the full names of the available page sizes. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#136905 tdf#169710

• New symbols for unordered lists (Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#168292

• Image library for unordered lists (bullets) updated. (Andreas Kainz; Heiko Tietze, TDF) tdf#139076

Accessibility

• Accessibility of the border previews in the Border tab of various dialogs (like Writer’s Format ▸ Paragraph dialog) has been improved to avoid confusing screen reader announcement. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#167279
• When the Tools ▸ Spelling dialog shows up, it is now properly announced by the Orca screen reader on Linux. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#163802
• Removing the accessible selection no longer unexpectedly sets the caret to the beginning of the text. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#167930
• The Help ▸ Check for Updates… dialog is now screen reader accessible. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#104833
• Spelling errors in Writer are now only reported to assistive technology when automatic spell checking is actually enabled. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) NVDA #19170
• Keyboard accessibility for the Tools ▸ Extensions… dialog has been improved. (Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#127201
• It is now possible to switch between vertical tabs using keyboard shortcuts. (Heiko Tietze, TDF; Michael Weghorn, TDF) tdf#167125 tdf#169383

Scripting

• The version of the internal Python is 3.12.
• Ship sqlite3 with internal python. (Xisco Fauli, TDF) tdf#168512
• Ship dbm with internal python. (Xisco Fauli, TDF) tdf#132074
• Ship venv with internal python. (Xisco Fauli, TDF) tdf#168511
• Ship lzma with internal python. (Xisco Fauli, TDF) tdf#168513

The ScriptForge libraries

An extensible and robust collection of macro scripting resources for LibreOffice to be invoked from user Basic or Python scripts. (Jean-Pierre Ledure)

The libraries expose a total of 35 services each with a bunch of methods and properties.

New in LibreOffice 26.2:

• The session.GetRangeFromCalc() method reads the values contained in a given range located in a given Calc file. The file does not need to be open.
• The new ScriptForge.Sharedmemory service implements the mechanisms to manage persistent memory storage across Basic and/or Python scripts. In event-driven scripting one can often benefit from having variables still being available when the next script is triggered, probably due to a user action. And this, especially, in Basic + Python mixed environments.
• The scriptforge.pyi stub file, which is a great support when editing python scripts with PyCharm or VSCode, has its syntax upgraded to Python ≥ 3.10. Older typing features are now superseded by more modern alternatives.
• The AccessibleContext UNO API is gradually being deprecated. A serious code revisit was needed. More details in tdf#168409.
• The calc.ColorizeRange() method accepts now negative values in the background and foreground arguments to reset them to their default value.
• The new SFDocuments.Shape service is focused on the description of shapes/images/drawing objects stored in (in the current release only) Calc documents. Next methods are implemented : shape.Anchor(), shape.ExportToFile(), shape.Pick(), shape.Resize() and shape.Rotate() about any pivot point.

The whole set of services (except when better done by native built-in functions) is made available for Python scripts with identical syntax and behavior as in Basic.

ScriptForge in the wiki: read Macros/ScriptForge (Lobaluna).

The English version of the documentation of the ScriptForge libraries (26.2) is partially integrated in the LibreOffice help pages (https://help.libreoffice.org/26.2/en-US/text/sbasic/shared/03/lib_ScriptForge.html?DbPAR=BASIC). Their finalization and translation into other languages is underway. (Alain Romedenne, Rafael Lima)

Localization

Improvements to proofing tools and language support

• Spell check dictionaries were updated for the languages: Hungarian, Mongolian, Portuguese (pt_PT)
• Hyphenation rules were updated for the languages: Hungarian

LibreOffice Help

Help contents upgrades and fixes:

• O. Hallot, TDF
• Stanislav Horacek
• Michael Otto
• Jean Pierre Ledure
• Ilmari Lauhakangas, TDF
• Mike Kaganski, Collabora
• Taichi Haradaguchi
• Samuel Mehrbrodt, Collabora

Feature Removal / Deprecation

• Euro converter wizard has been removed (Xisco Faulí, TDF) tdf#135580

Platform Compatibility

Mac

• LibreOffice 26.2 requires macOS 11 or newer to run.

Linux

• The builds provided by TDF now follow AlmaLinux 9 baseline, which means that they will only run on CPUs with microarchitecture level x86-64-v2 or higher. You may check the levels supported by your CPU by running /lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 --help

API Changes

• The com.sun.star.style.ParagraphAdjust enumeration has two new values: START and END (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#118350
• The SheetSortDescriptor2 service has got an additional attribute NumberBehavior. The .uno:DataSort command has got this attribute as an additional parameter. Find more about using it in Macros/BasicMacrosSortingInCalc (Regina Henschel).

Configuration Changes

Current Experimental Features

Experimental features are enabled Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Advanced ▸ Enable experimental features (may be unstable)

• Writer now has provisional support for font-relative first line, before-text, and after-text paragraph indentation. This feature may be used by entering indentation values in the paragraph properties dialog, including the unit ’em’ for the standard typographical unit, or ‘ic’ for the width of a CJK ideographic character. (Jonathan Clark, TDF) tdf#36709 tdf#163913
• New Macro Manager dialog Tools ▸ Macros ▸ Macro Manager that combines the functions of 5 existing dialogs used for Basic macro and scripting framework macro language management into one dialog. (Jim Raykowski) tdf#120658