Week 4 Report: Custom Certificate Manager and Certificate UI Enhancements

Hello once again, dear FOSS enthusiasts! Time flies when you're immersed in the enthralling world of GSoC'23 at LibreOffice. This week, we dive into the our quest for certificate UI improvements. It was a busy week outside GSoC since it was Eid al-Adha, one of the largest main holidays celebrated in Islam, Eid Mubarak for all of my fellow Muslims :). Let's take a look at the challenges and triumphs of this action-packed week.

TL;DR: Nearing completion of custom certificate manager integration and making progress on certificate UI improvements to enhance user experience.

Custom Certificate Manager Integration

One of the main goals this week was to provide the option of choosing a custom certificate manager for LibreOffice. I've managed to create an initial patch that, pending some adjustments, is nearly ready for integration and is pending review. You can find the patch here.

To accomplish this, I introduced a new configuration option in tools>security. This option allows users to specify the desired certificate manager by entering its executable path. In addition, I made the necessary changes in the underlying code to ensure LibreOffice uses the selected certificate manager when launched with adding the parameter to officecfg/registry.

Certificate UI Improvements

Building on the progress made in previous weeks, I continued my work on enhancing the certificate user interface. My focus this week has been on transforming the way certificates are displayed and managed, with the aim of making it more intuitive and user-friendly. This will continue as well for the upcoming weeks trying to get the best from other certificate managers in the market.

A Heartfelt Thank You

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to Thorsten Behrens, Heiko Tietze, Hossein Nourikhah, and the entire LibreOffice community for their invaluable support and encouragement throughout this journey. Their expertise and passion have been instrumental in my growth and progress, and I am truly honored to be part of such an incredible community.

That's all for this week! As always, feel free to email me with any questions or concerns <3. See you next week!