Investing in bug reports pays off
Document compatibility between office suites is a common concern for LibreOffice users. People take sample documents, expecting a pixel-perfect similarity with other office applications and rightly so. While we cover most aspects of formats outside the OpenDocument Format specification, LibreOffice’s native format, there are pieces that have not been implemented yet (for example smooth shadows, which have been implemented recently and will be available in LibreOffice 7.1). Of course we sometimes fail as well, like any other software producer. Microsoft’s “transitional” formats often include undocumented or obscure content that is hard for other office suites to parse. One enormous advantage of open source software is that you can talk more or less directly to the developers. All bug reports and enhancement requests are taken seriously and will receive immediate response unlike what happens when you complain about issues to companies without open development models. Unfortunately not everyone knows about this advantage so we thought it’s time to recall. The people doing quality assurance for LibreOffice is an ever-changing group of around 30 contributors. They analyse user reports tirelessly and always appreciate problem descriptions delivered in a clear and understandable way. In a recent article about LibreOffice appearing on dedoimedo.com, several