Collabora has published the release of the CODE 22.5 (Collabora Online Development Edition) platform, which offers a specialized distribution kit for quickly deploying LibreOffice Online and organizing remote collaboration with the office suite via the Web to achieve functionality similar to Google Docs and Office 365. The distribution kit is designed as a preconfigured container for the Docker system and is also available as packages for popular Linux distributions. The developments used in the product are hosted in the public repositories of LibreOffice, LibreOfficeKit, loolwsd (Web Services Daemon) and loleaflet (web client). The developments proposed in the CODE 6.5 version will be included in the regular LibreOffice.
CODE includes all the components required to run the LibreOffice Online Server and provides a quick start and overview of the current state of development of the LibreOffice Web Edition. Working with documents, spreadsheets and presentations is supported through a web browser, including the possibility of collaboration of several users who can simultaneously make changes, leave comments and answer questions. The contributions, current edits, and cursor positions of each user are highlighted in different colors. To organize cloud storage of documents, Nextcloud, ownCloud, Seafile and Pydio systems can be used.
The editing interface displayed in the browser is formed using the standard LibreOffice engine and allows you to achieve a completely identical display of the document structure with the version for desktop systems. The interface is rendered using the HTML5 backend of the GTK library, which is designed to render the output of GTK applications in a web browser window. LibreOfficeKit is used for calculations, mosaic rendering and layered document layout. A special Web Services Daemon is used to organize server interaction with the browser, transfer images with interface parts, organize caching of image pieces and work with the document repository.
Major changes:
- Added the ability to use external add-ons to check grammar, spelling, punctuation and style. Added support for the LanguageTool add-on.
- Calc spreadsheet now supports spreadsheets with up to 16 columns (previously, documents could not have more than 1024 columns). The number of lines in a document can be up to a million. Improved compatibility with files prepared in Excel. Improved performance for processing large spreadsheets.
- Added the ability to embed sparklines (Sparkline) in spreadsheets - mini-charts showing the dynamics of changes in a series of values. An individual chart can only be linked to one cell, but different charts can be grouped together.
- Added support for the Webp image format, which can be used to insert images into documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and Draw drawings.
- A widget with a formula input interface has been implemented, working on the client side and written in pure HTML.
- Writer adds the ability to embed DOCX-compatible form fill items in documents. Processing of such elements as drop-down lists for selecting values, checkboxes, date pickers, buttons for inserting images is supported.
- A system of delta-updates for interface elements has been implemented, which has significantly improved performance and reduced traffic (up to 75%). The interface in LibreOffice Online is formed on the server and displayed using the HTML5 backend of the GTK library, which essentially translates the finished images to the browser (a tiled layout is used, in which the document is divided into cells and when the part of the document associated with the cell changes, a new cell image is formed on the server and sent to the client). The implemented optimization allows to transfer only information about the change in the content of the cell, compared to its previous state, which is more efficient for situations where only a small part of the content associated with the cell changes.
- Improved multi-user editing capabilities.
- Implemented support for dynamic configuration of multiple hosts that provide additional components integrated with the main Collabora Online server.
- Faster rotation of raster graphics.
Source: opennet.ru