An Early Look At Some Of The New Features Of LibreOffice 5.2

While LibreOffice 5.2 isn't scheduled to be released until later this summer, here's an early look at some of the most interesting features coming to this multi-platform, open-source office suite.

In going through the work-in-progress 5.2 release notes, here are the changes that caught my attention the most:

- New drawing tools for Calc and Writer like filled curve / polygon / freeform line.

- A new single toolbar mode for Writer.

- New spreadsheet functions in Calc for RAWSUBSTRACT, FORECAST.ETS, CONCAT, TEXTJOIN, IFS, SWITCH, MINIFS, and MAXIFS.

- Support for OOXML signature import and export with the document signing support.

- Native GTK3 menu bar, tooltips, popovers, and context menus.

- A redesign to the find and replace dialog.

- Removal of support for embedding NPAPI plugins in documents.

LibreOffice 5.2.0 is currently scheduled to be released around the beginning of August. Coming up later this month is the expected first beta of LibreOffice 5.2, the release candidates to begin in June and continue through July, and then have this big office suite update primed by the first week of August.