GSoC/GCI Archive
Google Summer of Code 2013

LibreOffice

Web Page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Gsoc/Ideas

Mailing List: mailto:libreoffice@lists.freedesktop.org

LibreOffice is a comprehensive, professional-quality productivity suite that you can download and install for free. There is a large base of satisfied LibreOffice users worldwide, and it is available in more than 30 languages and for all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Suse, ...).

Projects

  • Extend support for Document Management Systems Since version 4.0 LibreOffice can now connect to CMIS (Content Management Systems) service to fetch online document storage. However we can add a lot more support to this feature. This project aims to connect LibreOffice to Google Drive protocol through libCMIS. Google recently transformed its Document API to Google Drive which now act as a cloud storage and document synchronization service. By adding wrapper of this protocol from CMIS API, users will be able to handle directly his Google Drive documents in LibreOffice. This ability includes choosing exported rendition types from Google Document types which are not downloadable. The second part of project aims to extend properties dialog and version dialog in order to enable users to interact with his documents entirely using the office suite.
  • Implement Firebird SQL connector for LibreOffice Base Implement a Firebird SQL connector for LibreOffice Base to replace HSQLDB as the current default database. (This would allow removing java as a fixed dependency for using Base.)
  • Implementing an about:config functionality LibreOffice has a lot of features and this features brings a lot of options. Customizability is a good thing but this cause LibreOffice look complex and scary. This Idea is about reducing complexity of LibreOffice's UI.
  • Implementing Proper Table Styles in Writer The project aims to replace the current table formatting system in Writer, which applies a set of properties to each cell within the table, with a proper table style system. This will improve usability of Writer tables as well as offering documents a cleaner overall aspect.
  • Impress Remote Control for iOS The aim of this project is to implement an Impress Remote Control for iOS. This application should work with both iPhone and iPad and communicate over WiFi, using a TCP/IP protocol based on current server-end implementation for Android.
  • Improve toolbars in LibreOffice The project that I propose extends the current functionalities of toolbars already implemented in LibreOffice ensuring that they become more usable, effectively and more efficiently. This can be achieved by modification and hiding of elements that are present on the toolbar and providing the possibility to reshape them.
  • Improved Android / Impress Remote Control UI, performance, codebase and other improvements of LibreOffice Impress Remote application for Android
  • Slide Layout Extendibility Make Impress layout templates easily extendible .Currently, the slide layouts in Impress (e.g. "Title page", "Outline page") are a hard-coded set; it would be really nice to have them extendible or even user-editable.
  • Use Widget Layout for the Start Center Currently, the Start Center (the start screen you get when you start LibreOffice) is only a static bitmap, with few buttons and links. It would be useful to present few recently used documents there (as thumbnails), and do more fancy stuff.
  • VLC integration into LibreOffice Implementation of the cross-platform libvlc-based component for integrating it into LibreOffice applications.
  • Writer: Border around characters LibreOffice has a lot of amazing new features (e.g. LibreLogo, Remote Impress, Comments in Writer) which make LO to be ahead of its time, but there are several other territories in which this progress is less noticeable. The character border is one of these. On Bugzilla of Apache OpenOffice there is a near 10 years old bug report about this issue. Well, on LibreOffice's Bugzilla the same bug just 2 years old, but LO have an other time quantity. However this feature concern only a smaller group of LO users and there are some hack methods with which almost the same effect can be produced (e.g. frame), but the devil lies in the details. In my opinion it is an important thing to make a consistent program in which user can use borders in the same way for characters as for other objects.