BetaNews - Wednesday, January 29, 2020 at 1:30 PM
LibreOffice 6.4 offers better performance, improved help and a QR code generator
The Document Foundation has unveiled LibreOffice 6.4 64-bit and LibreOffice 6.4
32-bit, its popular open-source office suite for Windows, Mac and Linux.
LibreOffice 6.4 is a major point release -- the last in the 6.x product line --
and comes with the promise of improved performance along with several new
universal features and the usual mix of minor changes and improvements to
individual applications within the suite.
The new release kicks off with the promise of significant improvements to the
speed of opening and saving files in Impress and Calc. The Help system has also
been improved to make finding information faster through delivering more
precise results along with localized screenshots.
LibreOffice’s Start Center adds application icons alongside document thumbnails
to help users differentiate between document types, while the suite benefits
from a new QR Code generator, which allows users to add mobile-friendly codes
to their documents.
Other suite-wide improvements include unified hyperlink context menus to
provide a consistent experience across all applications. Four options are now
offered: open, edit, copy hyperlink location, and remove. There’s also a new
automatic redaction feature to automate the process of hiding classified or
sensitive data -- users can set up text or regular expression matches via the
'Tools > Audo-Redact' option.
Application enhancements
Writer users gain a new dedicated Table panel on the Sidebar, along with
improved cutting, copying and pasting of tables thanks to a new Paste Special
menu option in the form of 'Paste as Nested Table'. Comments can now both be
marked as resolved and added to images and charts within text documents.
Calc users gain the ability to export spreadsheets as a single-page PDF
document, while Impress and Draw applications add a new Consolidate Text option
to the Shape menu for combining multiple text boxes into one.
Those using LibreOffice Online gain a handful of significant improvements to
Writer and Calc. First, Writer implements the same table properties sidebar
plus gives users full management of the document’s Table of Contents for the
first time. Meanwhile, Calc users can enjoy a fully featured Function Wizard as
well as access to a much wider range of options for selected charts from the
spreadsheet sidebar.
The news follows on a week from the announcement that LibreOffice 6.5 will now
be released as LibreOffice 7.0 when it appears later this year -- the tenth
anniversary of LibreOffice’s first release.
LibreOffice Productivity Suite 6.4 64-bit is available now as a free,
open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux. LibreOffice Productivity Suite
6.4 32-bit is also available for 32-bit Windows and Linux machines.
https://betanews.com/2020/01/29/libreoffice-6-4/
David Goldfield
Assistive Technology Specialist
Feel free to visit my Web site
WWW.DavidGoldfield.info
