LibreOffice Finally Adding Support For The WebP Image Format
Going back to 2017 there have been ongoing feature requests by users to have WebP image support within LibreOffice. WebP supports lossless images, the file sizes are generally smaller than PNGs and JPEGs, and it's become widely-supported by web browsers and other software.
LibreOffice though tends to be rather conservative with the image file formats they decide to support given that it can lead to issues when saving images within documents and then trying to open said documents up in older versions of LibreOffice or other document readers lacking support for said file type.
WebP support for LibreOffice was thus initially rejected - just has AVIF has been and various other image formats. But now finally years later with WebP image support becoming quite commonplace and working out well, WebP support is being introduced for LibreOffice 7.4. Longtime LibreOffice developer Luboš Luňák of Collabora recently began tackling the WebP integration.
LibreOffice this week received WebP image reading/writing support for both lossy and lossless WebP images, including an export dialog for manipulating the lossy/lossless settings and quality. But due to the concerns about interoperability with older versions of LibreOffice, WebP images will not be allowed for now within ODS and ODT documents. Some users in the bug ticket though are voicing their opinions that they feel WebP should be immediately allowed in ODS/ODT files while others are wanting WebP to then be automatically converted into a more compatible image format.
In any case, initial WebP image support for LibreOffice has finally landed for v7.4.
36 Comments
