LibreOffice 4.0.3 Free Office Productivity Suite Released

The Document Foundation’s LibreOffice is your editor’s favorite Microsoft Office surrogate. LibreOffice an open source, multi-platform office suite that like MS Office provides word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation modulkes, a drawing application that supports 3D, a database front-end, and file compatibility with Microsoft Office and other formats. And it even supports Power PC Macs running OS X 10.4 Tiger!

In the latest LibreOffice 4.0.3 release, “OS X Intel packages are now signed by The Document Foundation, to pass OS X Gatekeeper security without user intervention.”

LibreOffice 4 comes with a host of new features for its users as well as several important changes and improvements under the hood. You can check them out in detail at:
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-0-new-features-and-fixes/

LibreOffice now integrates with Content Management Systems and online document storage via the CMIS standard. This allows you to access directly documents stored on ECM systems, be they Open Source like Alfresco, Nuxeo or proprietary, like Microsoft SharePoint.

You can also make use of Firefox’s personas to make your LibreOffice even more personal! Personas (now renamed “Firefox themes”) are background images to embellish your user interface: thousands of them have been made available by the Firefox community and creating your own is a breeze.

Conversion with non-native formats, like RTF or DOCX has been significantly improved, allowing you to import Ink annotations, import and export RTF native mathematical equations. You are now able to attach comments to document text ranges such as paragraphs.

LibreOffice is a comprehensive, professional-quality productivity suite that you can download and install for free. There is a large base of satisfied LibreOffice users worldwide, and it is available in more than 30 languages and for all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, and Suse.

You can download, install and distribute LibreOffice freely, with no fear of copyright infringement.

LibreOffice is a feature-packed and mature desktop productivity package offering some really great advantages:

• It’s free no worry about license costs, annual fees or perhaps in future monthly subscription charges.
• No language barriers it’s available in a large number of languages, with more being added continually.
• LGPL public license you can use it, customize it, hack it and copy it with free user support and developer support from our active worldwide community and our large and experienced developer team.

LibreOffice is a free software community-driven project: development is open to new talent and new ideas, and our software is tested and used daily by a large and devoted user community; you, too, can get involved and influence its future development.

LibreOffice gives you high quality:

• The roots of LibreOffice go back 20 years. This long history means it’s a stable and functional product.
• Thousands of users worldwide regularly take part in beta testing of new LibreOffice versions.
• Because the development process is completely open,
• LibreOffice has been extensively tested by security experts, giving you security and peace of mind.

LibreOffice is user-friendly:

• You get a simple-to-use yet powerful interface that is easy to personalize Microsoft Office users will find the switch easy and painless, with a familiar look and feel.
• Compatible with all major competitors’ file formats. You can easily import files from Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint and many other formats, and can easily save to Microsoft Office and other formats when needed.
• LibreOffice is supported by a big worldwide community: volunteers help newcomers, and advanced users and developers can collaborate with you to find solutions to complex issues.

What does LibreOffice give you?

Writer is the word processor inside LibreOffice. Use it for everything, from dashing off a quick letter to producing an entire book with tables of contents, embedded illustrations, bibliographies and diagrams. The while-you-type auto-completion, auto-formatting and automatic spelling checking make difficult tasks easy (but are easy to disable if you prefer). Writer is powerful enough to tackle desktop publishing tasks such as creating multi-column newsletters and brochures.

Calc tames your numbers and helps with difficult decisions when you’re weighing the alternatives. Analyze your data with Calc and then use it to present your final output. Charts and analysis tools help bring transparency to your conclusions. A fully-integrated help system makes easier work of entering complex formulas. Add data from external databases such as SQL or Oracle, then sort and filter them to produce statistical analyses. Use the graphing functions to display large number of 2D and 3D graphics from 13 categories, including line, area, bar, pie, X-Y, and net.

Impress is a multimedia presentation module. Animation and special effects help you convince your audience. Create presentations that look even more professional than the standard presentations you commonly see at work. Get your collegues’ and bosses’ attention by creating something a little bit different.

Draw lets you build diagrams and sketches from scratch. A picture is worth a thousand words, so why not try something simple with box and line diagrams? Or else go further and easily build dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects.

Base is the database front-end of the LibreOffice suite. With Base, you can seamlessly integrate your existing database structures into the other components of LibreOffice, or create an interface to use and administer your data as a stand-alone application. You can use imported and linked tables and queries from MySQL, PostgreSQL or Microsoft Access and many other data sources, or design your own with Base, to build powerful front-ends with sophisticated forms, reports and views. Support is built-in or easily addable for a very wide range of database products, notably the standardly-provided HSQL, MySQL, Adabas D, Microsoft Access and PostgreSQL.

Math is a simple equation editor that lets you lay-out and display your mathematical, chemical, electrical or scientific equations quickly in standard written notation. Even the most-complex calculations can be understandable when displayed correctly. E=mc2.

LibreOffice also comes configured with a PDF file creator, meaning you can distribute documents that you’re sure can be opened and read by users of almost any computing device or operating system.

System requirements:

Macintosh

The software and hardware prerequisites for installing on a Macintosh computer are as follows:
• MacOSX 10.4 (Tiger) or higher;
• Intel or PowerPC processor;
• 512 Mb RAM;
• Up to 800 Mb available hard disk space;
• 1024×768 graphic device with 256 colors (higher resolution recommended).
• For certain features of the software – but not most – Java is required. Java is notably required for Base.

It is a recommended best practice to back-up your system and data before you remove or install software.

If you are running MacOS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), you may run into a problem with Apple’s new Gatekeeper. If so, you may find this article helpful. An easier solution to install the software and to run it the first time, right-click (control-click) the LibreOffice.app icon and choose Open from the context menu. You will be asked if you really want to start the program, confirm this to launch it.

Windows

The software and hardware prerequisites for installing LibreOffice on a Windows system are as follows:
• Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8;
• Pentium-compatible PC (Pentium III, Athlon or more-recent system recommended);
• 256 Mb RAM (512 Mb RAM recommended);
• Up to 1.5 Gb available hard disk space;
• 1024×768 resolution (higher resolution recommended), with at least 256 colors.
• Administrator rights are needed for the installation process. It is a recommended best practice to back-up your system and data before you remove or install software.
• For certain features of the software – but not most – Java is required. Java is notably required for Base.

LibreOffice is free for Mac OS X 10.4 and up (Universal Binary), Windows XP and up, and Linux. (Java required for some features, notably Base.)

For more information, visit:
http://www.libreoffice.org/