LibreOffice
Overview
LibreOffice is a free and open-source office suite, developed by The Document Foundation. It was forked from OpenOffice.org in 2010, which was an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite comprises programs for word processing, the creation and editing of spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams and drawings, working with databases, and composing mathematical formulae. It is available in 110 languages.
History
LibreOffice was launched as a fork of OpenOffice.org, which was itself a fork of StarOffice, a proprietary office suite developed by German company StarDivision. StarOffice was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999, which released the source code of StarOffice under the GNU Lesser General Public License in July 2000, leading to the creation of OpenOffice.org.
In September 2010, some members of the OpenOffice.org project formed a new group called "The Document Foundation" and made a fork of OpenOffice.org, which they branded as LibreOffice. The name was chosen to stress the group's commitment to freedom in software development and in other aspects of its objectives.
Features
LibreOffice includes several applications that make it the most powerful Free and Open Source office suite on the market: Writer, a word processor; Calc, a spreadsheet application; Impress, a presentation engine; Draw, a drawing and flowcharting application; Base, a database front-end; and Math, for editing mathematics.
Writer
Writer is the word processor component of LibreOffice. In addition to general features of word processors, Writer provides a large number of tools and functions: it can export Portable Document Format (PDF) files, and has several desktop publishing features, like frames, text flow around objects (contour), and following inside objects, column management, and linking between containers.
Calc
Calc is the spreadsheet component of LibreOffice, similar to Microsoft Excel. One of its major features is the ability to import and export Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Other features include spell check, a large number of mathematical functions, a tool for generating charts, and pivot tables.
Impress
Impress is a program for creating multimedia presentations. The presentations can be exported as SWF files, allowing them to be viewed on any computer with Adobe Flash installed. It also includes the ability to create PDF files, and the ability to read Microsoft PowerPoint's .pptx and .pps file formats.
Draw
Draw is a vector graphics editor and diagramming tool, similar to Microsoft Visio and comparable in features to early versions of CorelDRAW. It provides connectors between shapes, which are available in a range of line styles and facilitate building drawings such as flowcharts.
Base
Base is a database management program, similar to Microsoft Access. Base allows the creation and management of databases, preparation of forms and reports that provide end users easy access to data.
Math
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.
Development
LibreOffice uses the programming languages C++ and Java for its functionality. It also uses Python, as a scripting language. The LibreOffice API, called "UNO" (Universal Network Objects), is available for Python, Java, and C++.
Licensing
LibreOffice is licensed under the terms of the Mozilla Public License v2.0. The Document Foundation has set up a framework where developers can submit patches and code modules with the expectation that their submissions will be incorporated into the main release.
Reception
LibreOffice has been received well by the media, with praise mostly focused on its price (free) and its full feature set. It has been noted for its good compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats and has been recommended as a free alternative to it.
See Also
