From what we’re hearing, the upcoming versions of LibreOffice are expected to support PowerPoint file formats such as PPT and PPTX better.
Even though LibreOffice is widely popular in the Linux world, it wouldn’t hurt anything to introduce it to our novice readers. LibreOffice is a substitute to Microsoft Office, but the catch is that the former is free and open-source (FOSS). Similar to Office, it comes with several tools, including Writer (word processor), Impress (presentations), Calc (spreadsheet), Draw (diagrams), Base (database), and Math (Formula Editor). You can get to know more about its latest version from here.
LIbreOffice Impress on Ubuntu
Now getting to the actual news, the LibreOffice team has announced their plans to improve the PowerPoint file formats. For this purpose, there has been the formation of a dedicated team, which includes Mark Hung, nd101, and Bartosz Kosiorek at the moment. The team is set to work collectively by reviewing the code and giving advice.
As of now, the QA team of LibreOffice has been assigned the duty of further evaluating the various PPT/PPTX issues. Afterward, they have to perform patch testing and verification.
The team has already started making progress by enabling Impress to support import/export line caps for PPTX. Other than that, users will now be able to export closed Polylines to PPTX successfully. Not to mention that issues related to hyperlinks having missing underlines in opened PPT file and saved PPTX files lacking audio have been fixed.
LibreOffice also invites its community members to help with development or testing. So if anyone wishes to partake in this activity, you should reach out to ilmari.lauhakangas@libreoffice.org. Apart from that, it is also possible to contribute to improving the compatibility of the software by filing a bug from here.
Conclusion
With this news, it can be seen that the makers of LibreOffice have their sight set on improving the compatibility of their software. As LibreOffice is likely to support PPT/PPTX files better shortly, it would become more accessible for Microsoft Office users to jump ships to LibreOffice. If you would like to know more details about this move, make sure to check out the official news source.
