Roadmap¶

This page says what we are doing next and what we have decided against. What works today is the companion page: it describes the present; this one describes the intent.

Nothing here has a date. The project is small; the things at the top are the things being worked on.

Now: what stands between here and a beta¶

The payload origin, for the pipx channel. The application knows how to fetch, verify and install its payload; the server it fetches from is not up, so in practice you install from a directory of artifacts.

This used to be a release blocker in a stronger form, "installing the payload without a terminal". It is one no longer. Every channel that can carry the editors now carries them: the Flatpak has them inside it; the .dmg and the cask will too. The one channel that cannot is PyPI, whose users are at a prompt already. A window that offers to download still has a place, as a fallback and for that channel, though it no longer gates a release.

Next¶

Signing and notarisation on macOS. Everything is already ad-hoc signed, because Apple Silicon refuses to run a binary with no signature at all and the toolchain applies one for free. The absence of a Developer ID therefore does not stop Libera Suite running. It leaves Gatekeeper's quarantine prompt in the way, which on macOS 15 and later right-click ▸ Open no longer dismisses. That is a poor first five minutes.

A hosted Flatpak. The bundle builds for both architectures, installs, and converts a document inside its own sandbox. It needs a .flatpakref on a server, so that installing takes one URL. Flathub later.

A menu bar on Linux. The window layer is AppKit, so Linux gets no File menu and none of the shortcuts that belong to one. The start window and the editor's own File tab cover the same ground, less conveniently.

An update path. Nothing tells a tester that a newer version exists. Saying so in the release notes is enough for a beta. A version check that mentions it once is better. Automatic updates are their own project.

A redistributable application bundle. Libera.app today is a launcher around the interpreter it was built with. It embeds no Python and no payload, so it runs from your own checkout and is not something you can hand to somebody else.

Later¶

Windows. Not started: it needs a build machine we do not have. The payload layout is platform-neutral by design and that is the part that is ready; the patch queue has never been tried against MSVC and x2t is untested there.

Tabs. One window per document today. Windows exist and the Window menu lists them; merging them into one needs real support: newWindowForTab:, and moving a document between windows. Turning the tab bar back on does not do it.

File locking. Two copies of Libera Suite editing the same document will not notice each other, losing one set of changes.

Editing PDFs and diagrams. The payload contains an editor for PDF that nothing routes to yet. Diagrams opens .vsdx and shows it; the converter refuses every Visio output format, so there is nothing to save and no blank to start from. Both are upstream capabilities we have not wired up rather than things that need writing.

Password-protected documents, digital signatures, mail merge. Upstream features, none of them reachable today.

Your name in documents. Tracked changes and comments are attributed to your account's full name, which you cannot yet change.

Personal dictionaries. Add to dictionary does not persist, so a word you add comes back next session.

More fonts, particularly CJK. The shipped set is 7 MB and renders ordinary documents faithfully; the full set is 248 MB. Where the line goes is an open decision, with CJK the case that most obviously argues for moving it.

In-application help. Upstream ships a manual, but it documents ONLYOFFICE and weighs 84 MB in eight languages, so Libera Suite does not carry it. Help comes back when there is documentation of our own to point at; these pages are the substitute.

Not now¶

These are outside the current product. Each could arrive one day, in the shape described here. None is being worked on.

Collaboration, cloud storage, accounts. Libera Suite edits files on your disk, and the engine underneath it is collaborative-first with that switched off. Some form of shared editing may come back, as a mode or as a product of its own. Nothing in the local application waits on it.

Telemetry, analytics, crash reporting. There is none today, and the beta adds none. Anything of the kind would be opt-in and off until you turn it on, and What leaves your machine would list it beside everything else the application does on the network.

Changing the document engine. Not something we do today. The patch queue is 28 patches across three repositories: 24 make it build on macOS, 3 are configuration and branding, 1 fixes an upstream UI bug, and none touches the editing engine (see the patch queue). That is what keeps a pin bump a rebase of build configuration. It is a discipline, so if we ever do need the engine to behave differently, the change is carried the same way: one reviewable patch, offered upstream first.

How to influence this¶

The most useful thing you can send is a document that renders wrongly, attached. The layout engine is upstream's and mature, so where output is wrong it is far more likely to be our packaging than the engine: a missing font, a missing resource. Those are quick to fix and invisible to us until somebody sends one. Feedback says where to send it.