That LibreOffice continues to respond to requirements of end-users became truly evident when news of it being developed for Android OS arrived a few months ago. And now with screen shot of the progress made so far being released by its developers, LibreOffice’s progress is good to note.
In the developers own words, the screen shot only “look like – well, that gives a fairly horrific, bolts and all, barely usable (even with keyboard and mouse) office suite on your tablet.”; However, despite the lackadaisical images of the screen shot, the host of features that will finally come through for an Android OS are evident.
LibreOffice is a standalone office applications suite that offers excellent support for document management for any corporate or business document processes. It includes a text-editor (much like Microsoft Word), a spreadsheet program, vector tool, a presentation program, an excellent database manager as well as formula editor.
Though, which of the above programs from the suite will be integrated for the touch-based tablet and mobile form factors is a space to be watched. While yesterday’s update by Michael Meeks speaks volumes of the likely capabilities, contribution from devs will only be the way forward for a faster pace of development. The Document Foundation is looking for more volunteers definitely.
LibreOffice is very important for Android OS and tablet/mobile usage currently as there is no good document management package that is good for this platform with the exception of Google Docs limited scope on tablet or mobile form factors.
Currently, LibreOffice (developed by The Document Foundation volunteers) heads – the free Office suites for desktop download at 8 million – recorded in 2011 alone as against Open Office Project. LibreOffice has indeed come a long way following its fork from Open Office Project two years ago and is headed for great growth with a great dev community behind it – committed as they are to contributing better performing features by the day. LibreOffice continues to be the most favorite free office suites and is now available as a default on Linux distributions.
The news of LibreOffice’s new avatars for Android and iOS is indeed heartening as is the news of the creation of an online edition for LibreOffice applications via HTML 5.
Currently, the file manager through which the LibreOffice App will open; is being rendered to look better allowing for background display and such feature. Therefore, the UI for the touch-capacitive devices has a clean and polished look that will surely be of advantage to tablet users. It will also allow office documents to be opened from sdcard.
You can find a complete compilation here-http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/tree/README.cross – n313
