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Martin Brinkmann at gHacks reports
LibreOffice 5.3 is the newest version of the popular open source Office suite, and one of the "most feature-rich releases in the history of the application".
The Office suite, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems, is now also available as a private cloud version, called LibreOffice Online.
LibreOffice, at is[sic] core, is an open source alternative to Microsoft Office. It features Writer, a text editing program similar to Word, Calc, the Excel equivalent, Impress which is similar to PowerPoint, and Draw, which enables you to create graphic documents.
LibreOffice 5.3 ships with a truckload of new features. One of the new features is a new experimental user interface called Notebookbar. This new interface resembles Office's ribbon UI, but is completely optional [submitters emphasis] right now.
In fact, the new user interface is not enabled by default, and if you don't look for it or know where to look, you will probably notice no difference at all to previous versions.
To enable the new Ribbon UI, select View > Toolbar Layout > Notebookbar. The UI you see on the screenshot above is enabled by default, but you may switch it using View > Notebookbar to either Contextual Groups or Contextual Single.
[...] One interesting option that the developers built-in to LibreOffice 5.3 is the ability to sign PDF documents, and to verify PDF document signatures.
[...] The Writer application got some exciting new features. It supports Table styles now for instance, and there is a new Page deck in the sidebar to customize the page settings quickly and directly.
There is also an option to use the new "go to page" box, and arrows in the drawing tools which were not available previously in Writer.
Calc got a new set of default cell styles offering "greater variety and better names", a new median function for pivot tables, and a new filter option when you are inserting functions to narrow down the selection.
The article also has 4 demo videos embedded.
In the comments there, Donutz notes that the Ribbon UI requires the Java Runtime Environment.
Oggy notes that the suite is available from PortableApps. (Martin's site is largely Windows-centric).
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:00PM
Perhaps, but as long as it requires Java I'll never use it. My computers have been Java free for four years now, and will remain that way.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:19PM
Unless you're using the database, it's inessential:
For certain features of the software - but not most - Java is required. Java is notably required for Base.
-- https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/system-requirements/ [libreoffice.org]
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday February 02 2017, @09:38PM
Oh yeah, I know. I was referring to the new UI, which requires Java as well per the summary.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @10:06PM
I may have been hasty with that description.
(...and Donutz appears to be a poorly-informed anti-FOSS troll.)
After a re-read, he seems to be saying that *LibreOffice* requires Java.
That's not necessarily true for -all- users (as another comment there indicates).
As I think about it a bit, I am reminded that the LibreOffice guys have been trying to get the Java dependencies OUT of the suite.
That they would go the other direction to add *this* feature seems counter-intuitive.
A subsequent comment there points to the stuff that -does- require the JRE.
Base, the database module was built that way and there are some widgets that -some- folks use which still have JRE dependencies.
Calling Java a *requirement*, however, seems to be trollish.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]