The Document Foundation has announced the release of a corrective version of the Community edition of LibreOffice 7.1.3, designed for enthusiasts, experienced users, and those who prefer the latest software versions. Ready-to-use installation packages are prepared for Linux, macOS, and Windows platforms. The update includes fixes for only 105 bugs (RC1, RC2). Approximately a quarter of the fixes relate to improved compatibility with Microsoft Office formats (DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX).
Recall that starting with the 7.1 branch, the office suite was split into a community edition (‘LibreOffice Community’) and an enterprise product family (‘LibreOffice Enterprise’). The 'Community' releases are supported by enthusiasts and are not intended for enterprise use. Enterprises are advised to utilize products from the LibreOffice Enterprise family, for which partner companies will provide full support and the option to receive updates for an extended period (LTS). LibreOffice Enterprise may also include additional features, such as SLA (Service Level Agreements). The code and distribution terms remain the same, and LibreOffice Community is freely available to everyone without exception, including corporate users.
Additionally, it is worth noting the inclusion of initial support in the LibreOffice codebase for using the Emscripten compiler to build the office suite into WebAssembly intermediate code, allowing it to run in web browsers. WebAssembly provides a browser-independent universal low-level intermediate code for executing applications compiled from various programming languages in the browser.
The build is carried out by specifying the ‘--host=wasm64-local-emscripten’ option in the configure script. The output is organized using the VCL backend (Visual Class Library) based on the Qt5 framework, which supports building to WebAssembly. When running in the browser, stock UI elements from the LibreOfficeKit set are used whenever possible.
The key difference between the WebAssembly build and the long-established LibreOffice Online product is that when using WebAssembly, the entire office suite runs in the browser and can operate independently without relying on external servers, whereas the core engine of LibreOffice Online operates on server, with only the interface being transmitted to the browser (document layout, interface formation, and user action processing are handled on the server).
Moving the majority of LibreOffice Online to the browser side will allow for the creation of an editing version for collaborative work, reducing the load on servers, minimizing differences from the desktop version of LibreOffice, simplifying scalability, lowering the cost of maintaining hosting infrastructure, allowing offline operation, and enabling P2P interactions between users with end-to-end data encryption on the client side.
Source: opennet.ru
