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LibreOffice Going Online and Mobile
itwbennett writes "News from the LibreOffice Conference in Paris is trickling out. Blogger Brian Proffitt has a roundup of the conference announcements thus far. Notably included are plans for a browser-based version of LibreOffice called LibreOffice Online; and ports of LibreOffice to the Android and iOS platforms."
Would that be hosted with cloud storage? If not, I'm not sure what the benefit would be. If it will be, then who will be carrying the tab?
This is exactly what they need. Otherwise, Google Docs and Office 365 might end up making LibreOffice irrelevent.
Have you tried it recently? It's really very good.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I havent had any problem with it. I use it at home exclusively, but I also use it at work when MS Office can't do the job. Just the other day I started writing a VB script for Excel (office version 10) got halfway through and remembered that the functionality I wanted was in Calc by default. But crashes? I just dont have them, could be I only use Linux versions.
"LibreOffice Online"... seriously? LOO?
I assume it will be accessed via a series of pipes?
Yeah, it really needs a ribbon thing so that one can hide all the menu items behind huge icons and 'mouse over' moves. It is important to have huge icons, since people who use a word processor obviously cannot read and therefore cannot use menus...
This is true. I begrudgingly use $PROGRAM. Challenging interface. Not a big fan of the random bugs. With the last two versions I used, $USING_FEATURE_X guarantees a crash. It's very unfortunate. I try to live with hope.
Look everyone, it's standard boilerplate to talk about any piece of FOSS you want!
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Which LibreOffice has had since day one. Even Base has an Access-like database.
I can't see why that wouldn't be in the port.
I have recently moved 50 computers from Windows to Linux here in Thailand and the most comments I get related to the move is how much better Libreoffice is than MSO 2k7. This might have something to do with a far more simplistic interface than what 2k7 has and also the brilliant Thai translation for LO. Apart from the odd formatting issues when sharing documents between Libreoffice and MS office (usually font mismatches), it has been a successful move. I would welcome an open source mobile version of Libreoffice to use on my Galaxy Tab and Android phone.
'Functionally complete' as a goal is a good end in itself...but equally important is the fact that it must be a pleasure to use by first being a pleasure to look at.
I haven't looked at the latest version but my memory of earlier ones planted a bias in look and feel that will be hard to erase. On Windows XP, the 'beast' took forever to load and once it did, you wouldn't admire its interface.
An Access-like module actually exists but is very clunky to the extent of being unsealable. These folks should borrow a leaf from Microsoft, where the entire office suite, even with its bugs works 'flawlessly' 99% of the time for 99% of users.
Out of curiosity I just tried on the last two versions but sorry to spoil your rant, no crashes.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I've used both MS Office and Open/Neo Office - and my impression is that OO was about as annoying as Microsoft Office (pre-ribbon).
I think the introduction of the abomination that is the Office Ribbon has left it ahead of the game (OK, some people like the ribbon, but then I know one person who liked Windows Vista, and another who liked the Apple hockey-puck mouse...)
One possible criticism of OO/LO is that the style system, though flexible, can be a bit hard to get your head around. OTOH, there again MS have been happily screwing up the style system in Word to the point where it is now pretty unusable.
So, what's the easy-to-use but flexible opposition that LibreOffice should be competing with?
I'll concede the point that LaTeX/LyX is probably still king for technical writing, and that there are other products aimed at people writing "pure text" - but what is a good role-model in the realm of general purpose WP/DTP-crossover?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
You can change the icons quite easily and there are a number of sets available online. To change the icon set go to Tools>Options>View and you will see an option for Icon Size and Style. Select a style from the drop down menu. BTW I find the LibreOffice interface infinitely preferable to the mess that MS Office now uses. I used to be a fan of MS Office and thought it was their best product but switched OpenOffice long ago after having suffered more and more bugs and the interface becoming more convoluted and less productive. Having switched again to LibreOffice I have found the improvements over OOo very well executed and had no bug problems. The project seems to be moving along nicely and MS Office file support is excellent.
"You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead!" - Stan Laurel
If you use proprietary Apple API's, I don't believe they allow you to release your source code. It wouldn't be open source. They would have to release that version closed source, which they can't do if they don't own the code.
While I would welcome an iOS version of LibreOffice some day, what I really want in the near future is a viewer for its native file formats.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
It is LGPL, so they can use their existing code as a library and write a closed source iOS UI.
This past week, as an English speaker, with an English OS, I had to write a five page document in French libreoffice. Should be straight-forward. It crashed four times before I figured out that pasting an image that is too big can do that, shrank the image and it was OK. Disabled the spell checking because I had no time to figure out how to add a French Dictionary, but later on, I have taken the time, here is the sad story:
My area and family are very multi-lingual (Canadian English, Canadian French, Spanish from Spain & German from Germany and Austria (depending who you are dealing with), and Russian.) LO comes out of the box English, and adding languages is hell. The method used to be one kind of hell, something with five steps and some finger crossing and dancing on certain toes, now it is a different hell. Go ahead, find the French dictionary for libreoffice on ubuntu 11.10:
-- Google for how to install dictionaries on libre office. Enjoy.
-- Go to Tools/Language ... More Languages Online... Enjoy.
-- go to Software Centre, and search for libre office or dictionaries. Enjoy.
After you have given up there. I did apt-get install libreoffice-l10n-fr and saw that there was a recommends for hunspell-fr or myspell-fr. ok... which one? tried both, noticed that one removes the other, flipped a coin and went with hunspell. so then apt-cache search, and find all the appropriate ones (hint, there is no regularity, you just have to look at the list, and pick the ones that seem ok.) and nothing happens... until you restart LO, at which point they will be there.
Sure, I can put up a web page, and explain this crap, but really... you lose 99% of people when you ask them to open a terminal. And I know it was completely different the last time I did this, about two years ago. I and understand why it is that way (independent groups, people working for free, yada, yada, yada...) I get it, I just cannot recommend the result to someone who doesn't inhale bits until 2am every morning. The result sucks for ordinary people.
Do you realize that package is dated 2008? Did you look for any of the languages I actually mentioned, because none of them are there. You went to the list, you found the second thing in the list. Do you actually speak Africaans? My conclusion: you are an asshole who wants to show people up without actually helping.