Release Notes for Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2

Translations: English (en) | Deutsch (de) | Italian (it) | Dutch (nl) | Portuguese (pt) | Russian (ru) | Spanish - Español (es)


General Remarks

Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2 brings stability fixes, bug fixes and enhancements. All users of Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 or earlier are advised to upgrade. You can download Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2 here.

Please review these Release Notes to learn what is new in this version as well as important remarks concerning known issues and their workarounds.

Our Bugzilla issue tracking database provides a detailed list of solved issues.

General areas of improvement include: Writer, Calc, Impress/Draw, Base, compatibility with Microsoft-based environments, build system improvements. Further details on each of these areas are below.

Improvements/Enhancements

  • Several distinct enhancements were applied to the WebDAV management and file locking: OpenOffice is now able to properly interact with Microsoft Sharepoint, enabling a more productive usage in corporate-level environments. These enhancements were funded, and contributed upstream, by the Emilia-Romagna regional administration (Italy), where OpenOffice was adopted a few years ago.
  • The PDF export dialog was redesigned for better usability on small laptop screens.
  • Underlying libraries for the solver and digital signing functionality have been updated, for better performance and increased security.
  • OpenOffice 4.1.2 fixes security vulnerabilities. See the security announcements page for more information.

Removed/Retired Features

Support for the ancient .hwp file format  was retired. This was a rarely used format created with versions of the program named "Hangul Word Processor" prior to 1997; therefore impact on users is expected to be minimal. The few users who have files in the .hwp format should convert them to ODF using Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 before upgrading.

Bug Fixes

See the list in Bugzilla

Language Support

  • OpenOffice 4.1.2 supports the same languages as OpenOffice 4.1.1.
  • The following translations were updated: Italian.
  • The following dictionaries were updated: English en-GB, English en-US, English en-CA, Portuguese pt-PT.

For a complete list of available languages and language packs see: http://www.openoffice.org/download/other.html

Additional Platform Support

  • Binaries are still provided for the same platforms as OpenOffice 4.1.1: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux 32-bit and 64-bit (RPM and DEB).
  • Thanks to build system fixes, OpenOffice can now be built on modern Linux distributions.
  • OpenOffice 4.1.2 contains improvements that allow for an out-of-the box build on FreeBSD (courtesy of Don Lewis and Pedro Giffuni)
  • OpenOffice 4.1.2 contains improvements that allow for an out-of-the box build on OS/2 (courtesy of Yuri Dario).

Known Issues

  • Mac OS X: Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2 will be flagged by the Gatekeeper facility in Mac OS X. This is a new feature to help guard against malware on Mac systems. There is a procedure laid out at the following link to allow applications not installed from the Mac App store to run. See the Mac support article.
  • Mac OS X: Due to a known bug in Oracle Java installations of Apache OpenOffice on OSX that do not have the legacy Apple Java 6 installed will not be able to recognize Oracle Java 7, 8, and possibly 9. The work around until the Java bug is fixed is to install the legacy version of Apple Java from the following link: Legacy Apple Java 6. This will allow the portions of AOO that require Java to run properly.
  • For developers: the source package of OpenOffice 4.1.2 will not build on 32-bit versions of Ubuntu 14.04  and similar distributions. The source fails to build in main/svl with this error: undefined reference to `__stack_chk_fail'. This can be worked around by copying and pasting the command that fails and running it manually with "-lc" appended (as the missing __stack_chk_fail symbol is present in libc, but the linker doesn't search there).
  • For developers: the OpenOffice SDK won't build with Java 8. Either build with --disable-odk or see the dev list archives for possible solutions.

Installation Information

Installation instructions can be found at: http://www.openoffice.org/download/common/instructions.html

Stay informed about Apache OpenOffice

You are encouraged to subscribe to the Apache OpenOffice announcement mailing list to receive important notifications such as product updates and security patches.  To subscribe you can send an email to:  announce-subscribe@openoffice.apache.org.

You can also follow the project on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

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9 Comments

  1. Dennis E. Hamilton

    Is the transfer of this page to https://www.openoffice.org/development/releases/4.1.2.html done automatically or is there an action required (e.g., when the 4.2 one is created)?

    1. Jörg Schmidt

      Sorry but I do not know, because I always make only the German translation of the releases notes.

      (The German release notes are only available here in the wiki and not as a duplicate on the website. They are always linked by the German Main page (http://www.openoffice.org/de/).)
       

       

      greetings
      Jörg

    2. Keith McKenna

      Dennis if I remember correctly the copy is done by the release manager once the release vote has been approved.

       

      1. Dennis E. Hamilton

        I finally checked the web site SVN.  The https://www.openoffice.org/development/releases/4.1.2.html was created by Kay Schenk. 

        I assume she copied this Community Wiki page, but not clear how that was done.  I would like to capture instructions so anyone else could do that too.

        1. Andrea Pescetti

          Kay just copy-pastes the content usually. No special technology or tools involved. I hadn't checked whether this page existed or not on the openoffice.org site, since this is the primary and nicest copy anyway (as you will see for older releases, copying to the openoffice.org site degrades design and images).

          1. Dennis E. Hamilton

            I think "primary" needs to be resolved somehow.

            When I do a web search, I get both the CWiki and openoffice.org results. 

            Perhaps the page should indicate where the primary source and maintenance of release notes are?

            That way, someone who finds the openoffice.org replica can be guided to the CWiki, if that is the way we want to do it.

            On the other hand, the openoffice.org page is more durable and is found in the project SVN.

            We could make either one the primary public version and use the CWiki for the authoring process.  Or we could just create them on the SVN, attending to formatting issues, and turning on the page (linking from the parent release-note list) when we're ready.

            Either could work.  Clarity and certainty would be nice so everyone knows the drill, though.

          2. Kay Schenk

            I actually use the Cwiki export process to do this so the styling is maintained, etc. When you look at the web site area,you'll see an extra directory now which holds referenced objects.

            I started doing this export early on because we had issues with the original release notes pages being inappropriately edited by mistake. So, I wanted to preserve the original copy that went with the release within say a week or so of the release. I would continue doing the export of changes to the web within a reasonable time frame.

            It would be better to have this discussion on "dev" instead of this page.

             

             

             

             

             

    3. Andrea Pescetti

      There is no compelling reason for copying this page. Still, if won't harm if you want to keep a copy as plain HTML on the openoffice.org site; I think Kay did that in the past. But this page should stay at this URL (i.e., copy it if you wish but do not move it) since its URL is in all press releases and articles.

      1. Dennis E. Hamilton

        I'm confused.  This page is already on the openoffice.org site.  I was simply wondering how it gets there, since it is obviously created on the Confluence Wiki and seems to be kept current at openoffice.org too.

        I have no interest in removing it from the Confluence Wiki.