LibreOffice 3.5.5 released – categorized bug fixes

LibreOffice 3.5.5 has been released:

Berlin, July 11th, 2012. The Document Foundation today announces the immediate availability of LibreOffice 3.5.5, the current version of the free office suite.

This release fixes a number of bugs and further improves the stability of the software, making it the best version available for corporate and enterprise adoption. Among the changes are improvements in Calc, Impress, in the handling of fonts as well as enhancements with regards to importing and exporting third-party formats. […]

Keep in mind if you are using Ubuntu or Trisquel you need to be using the LibreOffice PPA to upgrade to this version. Make sure you read the LibreOffice notes for Ubuntu if you choose to do this. Remember this is not covered by commercial support.

I took the liberty to categorize the detailed technical change logs, which are available here:

 

Legend:

  • BNC# = bugzilla.novell.com
  • FDO# = freedesktop.org
  • I# = issues.apache.org
  • RHBZ# = bugzilla.redhat.com
  1. Performance fixes
    • fdo#48932 super slow typing and scrolling in large documents [Caolán McNamara]
    • fdo#47636 Extremely slow display with font fallback [Caolán McNamara]
    • fdo#49582 FILESAVE: Long delays saving in XP .XLS format [Petr Mladek]
  2. Notable usability and UI fixes
    • fdo#49724 update filters for file selector’s file type categories [Alberto Ferreira]
    • fdo#49948 ignore corrupted items in Recent Documents [Stephan Bergmann]
    • fdo#50981 update of German dictionaries (2012.06.10) [Andras Timar]
    • rhbz#799628 related: crash with chewing-IM with g3g [Caolán McNamara]
    • rhbz#678440 opening urls fails with error 403 on picky servers [Fridrich Štrba, Stephan Bergmann]
  3. Functionality fixes
    • bnc#652364 & bnc#750255 column break without columns seems to be a page break [Luboš Luňák]
    • bnc#750255 column break without columns seems to be a page break [Luboš Luňák]
    • bnc#757609 import vmlshape ‘hidden’ style attribute and apply to controls [Noel Power]
    • bnc#762542 don’t rotate calc shapes if twoCellAnchor, partial fix [Noel Power]
    • fdo#35972 toolbarmanager must be aware of changes in SvtMiscOptions [Ivan Timofeev]
    • fdo#38116 fix double hairline border drawing some more: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#40874 make recorded border macros run: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#42379 hide separators before calculating line breaks [Ivan Timofeev]
    • fdo#33634 better drawing support for borders of different width, [Markus Mohrhard]
    • fdo#42405 remove this, nowadays MenuItemAllowed disables menu entries [Ivan Timofeev]
    • fdo#42865 privatized unique empty string symbol: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#43895 related Fixed shortcommings of FileDialogHelper_Impl::verifyPath [Stephan Bergmann]
    • fdo#45592 similar to type for property UNO_NAME_SAVE_FILTER_DATA is wrong [Noel Power]
    • fdo#45987 ensure that number of tabs is correctly set in ScViewData, [Markus Mohrhard]
    • fdo#46074 ignore corrupted items in Recent Documents [Stephan Bergmann]
    • fdo#46112 tweak condition to prevent guessing only… [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#47325 legacy reports: survive absence of Sorting hidden control [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#47473 try to set new order only after field columns are available [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#47520 use the already retrieved row instead of driver row [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#47805 rework handling of 64-bit registry entries [Andras Timar]
    • fdo#48018 legacy reports do not sort by group columns [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#48068 fix parsing of path d-attribute [Chr. Rossmanith]
    • fdo#48345 need to refresh row also when not m_bRowCountFinal [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#48647 fix double hairline border drawing some more: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#49430 fix missing form control, partial fix for [Noel Power]
    • fdo#49438 heuristic pseudo-hack to use hair-lines if width <= 0.5 pixel [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#50139 do not cut first character of field text [Andras Timar]
    • fdo#50141 character count (with spaces) incorrect with numbering on. [Muhammad Haggag]
    • fdo#50144 put full reference text to selection field [Andras Timar]
    • fdo#50676 silence SolarMutex not locked spew [Caolán McNamara]
    • i#110536 legacy reports do not sort by group columns [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • i#116848 revert « Fixed Shapes are at wrong position » [Fridrich Štrba]
    • i#118068 revert « calc69: handle all-hidden case in ScDrawUtil::CalcScale » [Eike Rathke]
    • fdo#30519 Bad transitions if « use hardware acceleration » is enabled [David Tardon]
    • fdo#41556VIEWING: Incomplete font substitution when FontConfig matches italic font [Caolán McNamara]
    • fdo#43967 VIEWING: legacy report designer wizard improperly formats dates [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#51243 Trying to edit a report from new (but awful) Report Builder hangs libreoffice [Lionel Elie Mamane]
  4. Crash fixes
    • fdo#46687 fix Styles and Formatting gtk crasher [Bjoern Michaelsen]
    • fdo#50169 band-aid another crash in GraphiteLayout::expandOrCondense: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#50173 fix Styles and Formatting gtk crasher [Bjoern Michaelsen]
    • fdo#50372 crash when refresh of last already-known row unexpectedly fails [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#50868 fix potential further crashes like the one in [Fridrich Štrba]
    • fdo#51249 Crash while saving a document with track-changes enabled [Pierre-Eric Pelloux-Prayer]
    • fdo#51619 [CRASH] legacy reports: asks for parameters, then for empty parameters list then CRASH [Lionel Elie Mamane]
    • fdo#50178 reading Visio file causes crash [Julien Nabet]
    • fdo#50988 Draw crashes on loading MS Logical Design Diagram example visio file. [Julien Nabet]
  5. Update/installer fixes
    • fdo#50603 Unable to update LibreOffice without resetting user profile [Stephan Bergmann]
    • fdo#43989 let unopkg.exe run with elevated privileges during install [Andras Timar]
    • fdo#48914 uninstall process should remove .pyc files from install directory [Andras Timar]
    • fdo#51270 On UNINSTALLING, LibreOffice leaves dirt behind [Andras Timar]
  6. GNU/Linux fixes
    • fdo#34638 and fdo#50415 Fix Shortcut names which are not localized on Linux [Thomas Arnhold]
    • i#86306 revert fix for « prepare against really broken CUPS installations… » [Stephan Bergmann]
  7. Mac/PPC fixes
    • fdo#47035 fix loading of jpeg files on Mac/PPC [Christian Lohmaier]
    • i#81127 revert « sw34bf03: patch by pmladek: linux/ppc: remove -fsigned-char » [Caolán McNamara, Rene Engelhard]
    • rhbz#820554 & rhbz#826609 fix smoketest on ppc[64] and s390 [Caolán McNamara]
    • i#86306 revert fix for « prepare against really broken CUPS installations… » [Stephan Bergmann]
  8. Windows fixes
    • fdo#47044 adapt to different Windows versions’ InternetQueryOption behavior [Stephan Bergmann]
    • fdo#50509 MSI: UI language selection from command line (e.g. silent install) [Andras Timar]
  9. .doc/.docx/.xslx/Visio import fixes
    • bnc#747461 implement relativeHeight (z-order) in .docx import (part of [Luboš Luňák]
    • bnc#750838 .docx wrap values mean different things than in LO, map them [Luboš Luňák]
    • bnc#751077 handle recursive <w:p> because of shapes [Luboš Luňák]
    • i#17200 & bnc#757118 fix horizontal rule width in .doc documents [Luboš Luňák]
    • bnc#757910 fix WW8 import of textboxes with thin border/inner margin [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#43249 WW8: fix double border import: [Michael Stahl]
    • fdo#50178 reading Visio file causes crash [Julien Nabet]
    • fdo#50304 fix excel row height export problems ( I hope ) [Noel Power]
    • i#93609, i#94028 better import xlsx heights [Noel Power]
    • fdo#46738 Cell background and border color formatting information of empty cells lost in particular document after FILESAVE as xls and xlsx [Petr Mladek]
    • fdo#48601 FILEOPEN: Open Visio’s file with bitmap’s blocks [Julien Nabet, Fridrich Štrba]
    • fdo#48602 FILEOPEN: The Greek codepage instead the Russian codepage (*.vsd by MS_Visio-2000) [Fridrich Štrba]
    • fdo#49582 FILESAVE: Long delays saving in XP .XLS format [Petr Mladek]
    • fdo#50988 Draw crashes on loading MS Logical Design Diagram example visio file. [Julien Nabet]
    • fdo#51601 Cannot open xlsx file [Eike Rathke]
  10. RTF import fixes
    • fdo#44174 RTF_TITLEPG when title page has no header [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#45190 import of RTF_LI should reset inherited RTF_FI [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#45522 fix crash on RTF export of sub-tables during copy&paste [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#49968 speed up RTF import of repeated character/paragraph properties [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#50539 fix RTF import of automatic character background color [Miklos Vajna]
    • rhbz#825548 speed up RTF import of repeated character/paragraph properties [Miklos Vajna]
    • fdo#49178 CRASH when FILEOPEN particular RTF [Julien Nabet]
 

If you still want Thunderbird in Ubuntu…

If you’re one of the rare species still wanting Thunderbird in Ubuntu as described in Jorge Castro’s recent post, you can help. I am more worried about Jorge’s other comments, following his logic Ubuntu and free software are only less and less relevant by the day – not a trend I am observing.

Considering Canonical decided to include Thunderbird in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS – which will keep it around for 5 years, Thunderbird is not going away anytime soon. This essentially puts forward software that is considered irrelevant by its employees (dogfood anyone?) and demonstrates improvisation and miscommunication between Mozilla and Canonical. Many are still waiting for an official statement from Mozilla. I’d love to hear a more formal position than Jorge’s on the subject from Canonical too.

I appreciate the cloud, closed web-services and Google Apps may be all the rage (and the money) but for the rest of us, here are a few links to gather forces and continue. Remember this is not a user-centric or technical issue. The issue at hand are the business deals between Mozilla, Google, and Canonical. If anything, the recent Mozilla announcement will help Thunderbird get a better chance at surviving such forces.