The development cycle of the upcoming open-source and cross-platform LibreOffice 6.0 continues these days with the release of the first Beta milestone as part of the second bug hunting session.
LibreOffice 6.0 Beta is now available for download and while it has been released primarily for those involved in the bug organized by The Document Foundation to resolve as many issues as possible before the final release, it is also available for early adopters.
A second Beta version could arrive early next month if there are still any critical bugs, but the development cycle will continue in the second half of December with the first milestone Release Candidate (RC), followed by the second and third RCs in January 2018. The final release of LibreOffice 6.0 is expected in late January 2018.
As its version number suggests, LibreOffice 6.0 promises to be a major release, adding many new features. Among them, we can mention a new default table style for Writer, “Grammar By” spell check for Writer, new spreadsheet functions for Calc, as well as OpenPGP document signing and encryption.
Ten new Impress templates have been added to LibreOffice 6.0, along with various improvements to existing templates and a new 16:9 aspect ratio default format. There is also support for custom icon themes via the extension manager, implementation of Noto fonts by default, and a new import filter from QuarkXPress v.3 and v.4.
Of course, there will be more exciting features coming to LibreOffice 6.0 before the final version is released, including an improved LibreOffice app for Android.
