Libreoffice, the cross platform office suite, participated in Google summer of code. Libreoffice had 10 students for Google summer of code, nine of them were able to complete their projects related to Libreoffice and they improved performance and usability of Libreoffice.

Some work of those students is showcased on Google open source blog. Some highlights of their work:

Calc performance improvement from Daniel Bankston : In Libreoffice the loading of the XSLX and ODF formats was quite a boring task, usually 8 minutes of load time. Daniel improved Libreoffice to decrease load time to 6 seconds.

Enhanced Impress SVG export filter from Marco Cecchetti : Consider a condition, You have a computer which has no Office suite installed and you need to review your presentation. Macro came to the rescue, These new features will allow you to export your presentation as SVG and you can review it from Firefox.

A MS Publisher import filter from Brennan Vincent : Good work from Brennan, in collaboration with Valek Filipov they managed to cover and export file formats Microsoft Publisher 97 to 2010 - with all fills, shapes and textures that the Open Document Format supports.

A Java GUI to pick up files for LibreOffice on Android from Iain Billett : Iain contributed to the Libreoffice Android Port, a GUI to pick up files for opening, ease for moving to other pages and the ability to zoom pages.

A new templates selection UI from Rafael Dominguez : A nice looking, modern and eye-candy UI to select a template when creating new documents sounds good. Rafael worked on such a UI and the result is below,

Rafael also included the ability to select a template from the online repository of templates. This will be soon available in Libreoffice.

Signed PDF export from Gökçen Eraslan : Gökçen included the ability to digitally sign the PDFs directly as they are produced by LibreOffice. This is very important for the security and trust in electronic documents to be maintained.

Android impress remote control from Andrzej Hunt : Now you don’t need a keyboard or mouse to control the presentation slides, With Android impress remote control app you can do it from your Android device, thanks to Andrzej. You just have to connect your computer and Android on same network or via bluetooth. Below is screenshot :

Improved group session and UI for collaborative editing of files from Matúš Kukan : Libreoffice calc’s collaboration feature allows you to edit files collaboratively. Matúš updated this feature by adding user interface and continuing on core work.

Unit tests improvements from Artur Dorda : Unit tests are extremely important for LibreOffice.  They are the tests that are run during the build time, and consequently are run by every developer that builds LibreOffice.  Unit tests help you to make sure that the functionality hasn’t regressed over time, and if it has, to help you discover the regression quickly.  Artur extended the unit tests mainly in the area of Calc.

That’s all folks! Those changes are already merged in Libreoffice master branch either as experimental feature or part of Libreoffice. Cedric Bosdonnat, LibreOffice Organization Administrator thanks google,

Thanks to Google and their friendly Open Source Program team for organizing Google Summer of Code again this year and allowing us to participate.