LibreOffice 3.5 Released

First time accepted submitter wrldwzrd89 writes "The Document Foundation, the team behind the free and open-source office suite called LibreOffice, has released their latest and greatest version. As is typical with major releases of LibreOffice, there are significant new features making their debut in this version. The component with the biggest upgrade is Calc, which now has support for up to 10,000 sheets per workbook among its new features. Also noteworthy among the new features is support for importing Microsoft Visio files in Impress and Draw. The full feature list is available in a PDF hosted on Dropbox; LibreOffice itself can be downloaded here."

Comments

10000 sheets per workbook?

[Quantum_Infinity]

10000 sheets per workbook? Yup, lack of sheets was exactly what was stopping me from using Calc.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Anrego]

Haha, yeah.. had the same thought.

Was like when wikipedia came out saying the reason they were losing contributors was the editing interface was too complicated.

Although I have seen some terrifying excel workbooks .. maybe there are some corporations on the fence about open source, and the ability to have their entire employee management system contained in a spreadsheet was a sticking point.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[ogrisel]

I really don't understand why a programmer would put hard limits on stuff like this (besides limites thats comes from 2*32 for unsigned int in the source code). Anyway the UI for this specific feature would probably make it unuseable far before reaching any kind of limit.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Ginger Unicorn]

i find when i get up to about 100 sheets of no more than a screen full of data each, it takes so long to save the workbook, i just start a fresh one to break it into manageable chunks. 10000 would probably take longer than the heat death of the universe to save.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[khr]

10000 sheets per workbook? Yup, lack of sheets was exactly what was stopping me from using Calc.

Dang... And while I was waiting for 10,000 sheets my workbook has grown to 10,001 sheets...

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[CSMoran]

I really don't understand why a programmer would put hard limits on stuff like this (besides limites thats comes from 2*32 for unsigned int in the source code).

Perhaps it was this exact limit? Say, no more than 2^32-1 cells in entire workbook or something like that.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[CSMoran]

Are those sheet double ply?

No, but they are double precision.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is not that you can now open 10000 sheets per workbook. It's that you can open more than X, where X is the previous limit (which presumably was low enough to be a hindrance to someone).

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Anonymous Coward]

When a user presses Delete in a cell, Calc should:

A) Delete the contents of the cell
B) Pop a stupid dialog box

Answer carefully now.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Captain Hook]

I think the point was that, it was never the interface quality which was putting off Wikipedia contributors, it was the background politics.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Anrego]

Indeed.

Don't get me wrong, I agree wiki markup and the interface they built around it is just painful to use and needs to be cleaned up or completely replaced.. but I don't think it was driving people away (certainly not in any comparable way to the real problems).

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[mspohr]

I guess it's time for me to repeat my rant about people using spreadsheets to do work which properly belongs in a database.
It's really impossible to properly audit or verify a spreadsheet. They are so easy to corrupt with improper references and random data entry. Spreadsheets are only widespread because most office drones don't have a clue about proper data management. I shudder whenever I see someone using a spreadsheet to make important business decisions because I know there are errors in every non-trivial spreadsheet.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Anrego]

I think we see this use so prevalently because it’s quick and cheap. Most business-calculation type stuff revolves around taking tables of numbers, doing calculations, and producing other tables of numbers / graphs. Excel gives you most of that right out of the box. Throw in a little VBA and you can do in an hour what would take a month to do properly.

Even I’ll admit to using spreadsheets from time to time for things that really deserved a proper app.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Abreu]

Dude, I have seen people using Excel to write letters!

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[TheRaven64]

It's a question of speed and simplicity. How do you index worksheets? If people usually create small numbers of them (say, 1-10), then an array of 100 pointers to worksheets is fine. The tab just needs to store an index, and you can find the one before and after trivially by just walking the array. If you keep this approach, you can have a thousand, or possibly ten thousand, without a particularly noticeable memory increase in memory usage (especially for something as big as an office suite), but if you really want flexibility then you need to do something like a tree or a skip list that can be dynamically resized. For small numbers, this just complicates the code and adds overhead for no benefit.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[MonsterTrimble]

Spreadsheets are only widespread because most office drones don't have a clue about proper data management. I shudder whenever I see someone using a spreadsheet to make important business decisions because I know there are errors in every non-trivial spreadsheet.

What do you define as non-trivial? I think a spreadsheet template which has been used a couple hundred times will have all but the most corner-case bugs worked out. As well, business decisions are made by humans, not machines. They rely on things not easily quantifible like customer service, past performance, future projections of costs, etc. Databases are also prone to data entry errors, design errors and the like. Just because you use a database does not mean it does not have to be tested throughly.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[mspohr]

If all you know how to use is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[jdgeorge]

No kidding... I used to use a hammer to write letters, too. Then I learned how to use the nailgun. Bam!

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[StormReaver]

Yup, lack of sheets was exactly what was stopping me from using Calc.

This is a welcome addition, even if I've only needed the feature once ever; but recently. I'm implementing a new subsection for the office management software I wrote for a client. They have been storing all of their information for this new subsection in an Access database with 487 sheets. In order to get the data into PostgreSQL, I wanted to use Calc to load the database and then export it as tab-delimited text. Needless to say, that didn't work since LibreOffice didn't support enough sheets.

Worse, the Linux command line tools that read Access databases didn't convert the money amounts correctly, so I couldn't use them for the conversion. I had to find someone with Microsoft Office to do the conversion for me.

So just because you don't have a need for that many tabs doesn't mean that the need isn't real for other people.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Yo Grark]

Blame the lack of easy use of Access.

I routinely wanted to share out a simple sheet, allowable for anyone to edit easily, but have always fallen flat on my face by the complexity of simple tasks.

Yes I'm a novice user, however like Excel, I can use Calc or any similar thing because the interface is similar and or easy to use. I cannot use a database and have people interface with it to updated it without having to create a form, create a web interface or other complex things which are beyond my ability.

Now, you add database like abilities to Excel, and a lot more people would use them (like linking to other workbooks, multiple users editing simultaneously etc.)

Everyone gets help in Office suite, however Access remains the most neglected app. Only education or simplicity can change that, and people are not in the mood to learn new things*

*office drones, 9-5ers

Yo Grark

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[mspohr]

I agree that a spreadsheet which has been well used and tested will have most of the obvious bugs worked out of it. However, it can't really be shown to be free of errors in the same way database procedural logic can be tested. It is also easier to do proper data input checking on a database to avoid "loose nut behind the keyboard" problems. You are right, though, that you have to test everything. It's just much easier to do properly with a database.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Anne Thwacks]

I think a spreadsheet template which has been used a couple hundred times will have all but the most corner-case bugs worked out.

Then you are the most at risk - you think the spreadsheet might actually yield reliable data when used by people who did not actually write it themselves.

While I don't say this is impossible, I have been known to bet on the lottery. The fact is that, unless you wrote the spreadsheet yourself (and often even then), its very hard to be sure what it is actually doing with your data.

Databases are indeed prone to (horrific) errors, however, it is quite a lot easier to describe what they are supposed to do, and then test they do it, and then keep the working code. With a spreadsheet, you never know if it has been modified by accident. Formula to text or vice versa errors are very common, and there is a web site somewhere devoted to this subject (Not the daily WTF).

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[rbrander]

Where I work, Access is forbidden. Not a copy in the corporation (8000 seats) except where they could not (yet) replace it with an Oracle app. The problem is that people muck up a user-controllable database in painful ways.

But full-blown corporate Oracle apps take this many hours of meetings of the user's time: 10 + analyst_hours * 0.2 + programmer_hours * 0.1.

That is, an app that takes four hours to explain to a programmer by the analyst and six hours for the programmer to write, test, debug and document, will take about 12 hours of meetings for the user. For a small database (say, two tables of information with several hundred records total, and a few more of column values containing 5-50 values each), that has 1-4 users, you will never, Never, NEVER reach the top of the "to do" pile.

So these needed apps pile up until somebody somewhat savvy person does something with a spreadsheet and maybe some VBA. I ended up doing our whole budget system ($200M spent per year, across about 230 line-items) with three Oracle tables hit on by an Excel pivot table and couple of spreadsheet pages that was a database entry forms in all but name.

It's in it's third year and we haven't lost any of the money yet.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Giloo]

Thought the same, and the obligatory xkcd reference: http://xkcd.com/619/ ;)

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[tibit]

It's really impossible to properly audit or verify a spreadsheet.

What you mean to say, surely, is that such tools are absent from popular shipping office software suites. In general, though, it's bloody damn easy to do change tracking on a an XML-based spreadsheet file format, at least as far as ODS format is concerned. You need to whip up some XSLT or use an XML parser and write a script using it, but calling it impossible is just silly.\

I do agree that pretty much all spreadsheet users don't have a clue about any of it because it's not exposed, thus may just as well not exist -- thus your other points are valid and I couldn't agree more.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[AvitarX]

I think Wikipedia needs to do advertising, make it obvious it's an ad, and use something like google/bing, so they have no direct contact with the people being advertised.

Additionally, they should stick to their guns if a sponsor makes pressure. I suggest this, as I see plenty of people saying I would contribute money if..., so the donation model is already demonstrating that it can corrupt. Arms length advertising would be less corrupting, and could be done transparently.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[idontgno]

What is is the postage for a 2x4 with the message spelled out in nailgun nails?

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

What is is the postage for a 2x4 with the message spelled out in nailgun nails?

It is free if you go into the post office still holding the nail gun. ;-)

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[jbengt]

Worse, I have seen a college educated mechanical engineer take out his calculator, do a little arithmetic on it, and type the results into spreadsheet cells.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[RobbieThe1st]

10000 sheets per workbook? Why some arbitrary high number? Why not 65535/6 or 4294967296 or 2^64 on 64-bit builds?
What exactly makes 10000 important?
Not that I've ever used more than 2 or 3 per file, but...

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[RobbieThe1st]

to be fair, I'd likely do the same thing. If only because I usually work in degrees and Excel thinks in radians, so I'd have to apply the correct conversion functions, something easy to do wrong.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[treeves]

Actually, it's several thousand dollars, and you have to mail it (well, not "it", but a maybe a postcard) from federal prison.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[turgid]

Dude, I have seen people using Excel to write letters!

I've seen senior accountants use pocket calculators to sum columns of numbers in Excel.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Will.Woodhull]

Often there is sound business logic behind using (and abusing) spreadsheets where a database would be the technically better answer. Two cases come to mind immediately:

First, businesses often use spreadsheets to handle one-off situations where the cost of doing things properly by database cannot be justified. This works, if the strategy allows for the possibility of getting it wrong. A first estimate for the cost of taking on a job only needs to be close enough to decide whether it might be worthwhile to do a more thorough analysis. It does not have to be accurate: false positives would be weeded out later; false negatives would be lost opportunities but would impact the bottom line.

The second case is when you have low skilled employees with time on their hands, such as receptionists. Who are capable of doing some data entry, but giving them any kind of access to the business' data systems is out of the question. Spreadsheets can serve as a good intermediary.

But arguably the most common and critical use of spreadsheets today is as a form of output from the company databases that is sufficiently limited that it can be given to outsiders while containing enough pertinent details for a prospective customer to figure out exactly what he wants.

There will always be strong business reasons for spreadsheets.

That said, I cannot imaging any need for 10,000 sheets in a single spreadsheet wrapper. I'm guessing it was one of those cases where it was as easy to do a 10,000 sheet limit as to do something more reasonable, that would still fill the needs of volunteer groups that do surveys involving dozens of members (think about an Audubon Christmas bird count), but cannot afford to hire a database guru.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Will.Woodhull]

A lot depends on the relative cost of errors in the spreadsheets compared to the often much greater cost of maintaining the database.

Business decisions are not driven by accuracy. They are driven by assessments of likely costs and opportunities. The answers the spreadsheets provide do not have to be right; they just have to be close enough to make good decisions.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Will.Woodhull]

Oops. Dropped a word:

s/ false negatives would be lost opportunities but would impact the bottom line / false negatives would be lost opportunities but would NOT impact the bottom line /

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[turgid]

You might well be on to something there...

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[TheABomb]

If the post office is staffed, you'll be woefully under-armed.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Sark666]

Hmm, I use vba all the time at work. Are there some circumstances where a database would be better? Yes. But excel is such a versatile tool that can automate so many tasks. Tons of employees do stuff manually in excel that can be automated via vba that is not big enough to warrant a full database. Most people don't even realize there is a development environment within the office suite. But it's attractive because everyone has it and there are no additional licensing costs.

Regarding what you said: "While I don't say this is impossible, I have been known to bet on the lottery. The fact is that, unless you wrote the spreadsheet yourself (and often even then), its very hard to be sure what it is actually doing with your data." Well first as the developer, I can test my vba by manually plugging formulas and arriving at the values without vba, as a comparison, ensuring I get the same results. And even though it's not built into vba, you can branch out and use regular expressions to ensure what is being inputted.

For someone down the line needing to 'know' (not use, because another user should be able to just use the sheet, but necessarily know the code arriving at those values) how it's arriving at what, would need to know vba obviously and then it's up to the past developer and how well written/documented it is. Same as anything else.

   

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[NemoinSpace]

most office drones don't have a clue about proper data management.

I used to have the same rant until I realized the office drone thing was the cure, not the problem. Ignorance is bliss.
Seriously, how many times do you have to see an Access database go down in flames before you say maybe spreadsheets aren't so bad after all.
Of course now I'm sitting at my desk waiting for the boss to complain that his system is low on resources now that he has merged all his spreadsheets for the last 5 years. This may be a sequel to the BOFH !

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Anonymous Coward]

people who say use a database are smart, but not wise

you don't need a 6 axis cnc center with automatic tool changer to slice a piece of balsa wood

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[Ginger Unicorn]

i need a better way to be doing a lot of things

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[nschubach]

If it fits, it ships

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[cthulhu11]

Indeed, the fact that any version of Star/Neo/Libre/whateverOffice has been miserably unable to accept and render the real-world MS Office documents that HR sends out is secondary in importance.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[lsatenstein]

I think we see this use so prevalently because it’s quick and cheap. Most business-calculation type stuff revolves around taking tables of numbers, doing calculations, and producing other tables of numbers / graphs. Excel gives you most of that right out of the box. Throw in a little VBA and you can do in an hour what would take a month to do properly.

Even I’ll admit to using spreadsheets from time to time for things that really deserved a proper app.

To me, a proper application is one that works to produce correct results, is easy to maintain, and also one for which the customer is happy. If it takes too long to execute, then it is not a proper app, and falls into your description category.

Re:10000 sheets per workbook?

[datavirtue]

Yes, this is VERY common. I knew this girl who was an "Excel Expert," which is all fine and dandy until you ask here to draft a letter and she whips out her hammer (Excel)--talk about some stupid looking documents. My grandmother has composed her communications in Lotus 123 for about twenty years now.

DropBox?

[Joehonkie]

They don't have their own hosting for this stuff? More seriously, how much RAM does this take up.

Re:DropBox?

[samael]

Particularly as those of us behind corporate firewalls can't get to Dropbox...

Re:DropBox?

[royallthefourth]

http://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-5-new-features-and-fixes/

Re:DropBox?

[samael]

Thank you!

Re:DropBox?

[royallthefourth]

No problem. Can't imagine what the hell the submitter and editors were thinking. Business as usual for this place, I guess...

Re:DropBox?

[Ihmhi]

Slashdot has a pretty thorough standards and practices manual, but it is unfortunately hosted on DropBox which is blocked on the Slashdot internal office network. No one's ever read it.

Re:DropBox?

[royallthefourth]

lmao

315ml

[Anonymous Coward]

importing Microsoft Visio files in Impress and Draw.

Somewhat off topic, but visio seems to be one of those killer apps for which there is still no decent open source solution.

There are a few options that kinda do what visio does (dia, kivio, umbrello etc..) but I’ve never seen anything that even comes close. It’s on of the list of things Microsoft did right (or more likely, whoever actually developed visio initially did right.. I seem to remember they bought it from someone).

And before anyone says “so go write one yourself” ... I actually tried (and failed). This isn’t an attack on the open source community, more just an interesting observation. Certain software just isn’t interesting enough and as such doesn’t seem to happen unless someone is being paid to write it.

Also... libreoffice is still a terrible name. Openoffice.org wasn’t great either.. but most people dropped the .org part and it sounded ok. “Libre” just doesn’t roll of the tongue well you feel like a tool saying it out loud. And "office" doesn't compliment it. The whole combination just doesn't work.

Re:315ml

[Amouth]

MS did buy Visio from someone else.. but they have also made alot of improvements over the years to it.

another missing open source solution is something to replace MS Project.

Re:315ml

[Enderandrew]

http://www.kde.org/applications/office/kplato/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openproj/

Re:315ml

[Dystopian Rebel]

I recommend OpenProj: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openproj/

Re:315ml

[ThePhilips]

Due to licensing policies, I do not have Visio installed on my corporate desktop. I used in past for many purposes the OO Draw and I find it pretty OK for the diagrams and whatnot.

Many people also praise the Dia, though I have no personal experience with it. Specifically, several interns I knew actually complained that for the labs they needed to use the Visio, while Dia was much better tool for the job.

Re:315ml

[Amouth]

let me rephrase that.. MS Project + Project Server replacement

Re:315ml

[Amouth]

OpenProj is nice - the missing bit is the integration MS Project has with Project Server.

Re:315ml

[sqldr]

Many people also praise the Dia [dia-installer.de], though I have no personal experience with it.

One missing feature is auto-save. Well, actually, the bug report was going to be "I clicked 'select colour' and the windows all just disappeared", or "i selected a shape, and the windows all just disappeared". Autosave might help until they sort that out :-)

Re:315ml

[Luckyo]

Well, excel is also one, as is photoshop. Calc and GIMP make for very poor alternatives.

It's good to know that libreoffice folks are working on it though. One of the main reasons most companies cannot migrate off MS office is the fact that there is just no way to replace excel due to its superior functionality (and conversion problems).

Re:315ml

[rleibman]

Wrong... there are NO open source project management tools that do even a fraction of what a proper tool should do... and none of them do resource leveling, which it shouldn't be that hard to implement... I hate MS project, but as an occasional project manager, there are no real options I've found out there.

Re:315ml

[dbIII]

Visio is sort of in that gap between MS Paint and CAD which AutoCADLT used to inhabit until they priced themselves out of that market.
Instead of trying to find something exactly the same why not go for something with more features like qcad (free on some platforms, similar price to Visio on others) or many others similar programs. For all practical purposes I was using a better drawing program than Visio in 1988 - it's only price and then the MS marketing that has got Visio into widespread use. Now the better stuff is no longer insanely more expensive.

Re:315ml

[xtracto]

I can comment on that... at the beginning of my last project (3 year European project with 11 universities) I looked for the avilable options. There are actually a handful of potential replacements for Microsoft Project:

- OpenProj (as it was commented)
- GantProject
- OpenWorkbench
- dotProject (online alternative)

The problem with all those is that they all lack one or two things. I think I used GanttProject at the end, but still I would have preffered Microsoft Project (which unfortunately was no available at my institution).

I have made a simlar comparison of the visio alternatives (dia, kivio, etc) and it is in the same state. Finally, mindmapping software is in a similar situation (xmarks, freemind, freeplane), although these programs are better.

10000 sheets per workbook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are those sheet double ply?

While, in the same time...

[jcreus]

OpenOffice.org is in version 3.3.0 and remarkably worse than LibreOffice. LibreOffice has way more future.

Re:While, in the same time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Libreoffice basically shed its skin and left openoffice behind in the dust.
The new features already put libreoffice ahead of openoffice, but I think the changes that were most significant were under the hood.
It has been going under a massive cleanup effort making it easier for new devs to contribute and for existing bugs to get squashed.

Re:While, in the same time...

[TheLink]

Maybe it has more future, but I've resorted to Kingsoft Office: http://www.kingsoftstore.com/kingsoft-office-freeware.html
It doesn't have as many annoying bugs.

When I last tried LibreOffice, Writer was still very buggy and hung a lot for simple stuff like undoing after a step by step replace within selection (at least the step by step replace within selection finally works, it used to replace the entire selection with the replacement text! And that replace bug was present for years in OpenOffice, so yeah there's some progress but the code base must be really crap).

And Impress was a piece of crap.

Re:While, in the same time...

[uniquename72]

OpenOffice.org is in version 3.3.0 and remarkably worse than LibreOffice. LibreOffice has way more future.

I agree, but I run OpenOffice Portable in Dropbox. LibreOffice is much larger, and OO does what I need it to.

Re:While, in the same time...

[ilsaloving]

I've never heard of Kingsoft Office before. How is it?

I certainly hope it's better than it's website shows. http://www.kingsoftstore.com/windows/professional-office-difference.html

That comparison is absolutely painful to read. The fact that they treat creating, viewing, editing, saving and printing to be separate and unique 'features' implies that the suite really doesn't do very much, so they have to pad their feature list with fluff to make it look good.

Not being able to make a title page or make adjustments to paragraphs in the free version makes me not even want to bother giving it a try.

Re:While, in the same time...

[Anonymous Coward]

>And Impress was a piece of crap.

Posting anon because my employer makes the dominant software. I actually really like Impress, much more than PowerPoint, if only for the some reason that it "does what it says on the box." PowerPoint constantly stomps all over templates and styles from its own and other Office files, resizes text as you type (the pm and devs for that feature should be punched in the forehead), it has no concept of layers (editing text in slides with animations is next to impossible), etc etc. Many of PowerPoint's enraging auto-screwup-while-you-type or trash-formatting-on-save features just can't be turned off. And I can't forget to mention that PowerPoint can't reliably roundtrip files from earlier versions of itself, a task for which Impress does an acceptable job -- even opening and recovering PPT files that PowerPoint itself says are too corrupted to open. It's politically untenable to say these things out loud here, but I just quietly use LO Impress, and no one's the wiser.

Re:While, in the same time...

[gomadtroll]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38542 & 42750

There was new feature added that completely changed how 'Table>borders>styles' is configured. A patch was made to fix backwards compatibility, sort of, but new border styles are not useful.

Not a fan of dev's run wild. I do not see the value in the metrics of the number of new code changes to software that works. New code new bugs, ad infinitum.

I switched to Apache OO 3.4-dev, it works fine, I don't feel I am missing any new' features...sometimes when something works...leave it alone.

Re:While, in the same time...

[TheLink]

I think it's better than LibreOffice, but LibreOffice was still rather unstable and flaky as of 3.3 - I haven't downloaded the latest version.

Kingsoft Writer doesn't have some features- it doesn't have the search and replace within selection (at least the free version doesn't - I could have sworn it used to have that feature). But I think it does bullets and numbering better. And it didn't hang and crash after I did a few undo commands. Whereas I could hang/crash LibreOffice 3.3's Writer when doing the same thing.

Kingsoft's Spreadsheet didn't use to have the minverse function, but now it seems to have it.

Re:While, in the same time...

[gomadtroll]

Document fidelity, aka backwards compatibility, should be the primary concern over new features.

Apache will be releasing AOO sometimes in the near future, the dev ver 3.4 preserves doc fidelity on my all archives, which is 9 years worth of use, LO 3.4.x does not, 3.5RC3 + is patched to allow viewing my archive, not as pretty as AOO or LO ver 3..3.x.

BTW Apache now holds the code to OO, not Oracle.....time to change the anti rhetoric, back to first comment.

Visio import FTW

[drinkypoo]

Visio has long been one of the programs for which there is no satisfying substitute.

Is there a non-crossing line tool in Draw? :)

Re:Visio import FTW

[Anrego]

Visio has long been one of the programs for which there is no satisfying substitute.

Indeed. I run a windows VM just to use visio. There really is nothing decent out there (and use of dia for any length of time is bad for your sanity) that even comes close.

Re:Visio import FTW

[xaxa]

Is there a non-crossing line tool in Draw? :)

I can't see one, but I've not used Draw before.

Inkscape has connectors, and a button to "Make connectors avoid selected objects". It works -- but I don't know if it would be reliable with real work (Visio, in my experience, isn't, and gets 90% of things OK, but then requires fiddly tuning to make a few odd connectors not overlap shapes).

Re:Visio import FTW

[ITShaman]

There's also OmniGraffle...
http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/

Re:Visio import FTW

[Anrego]

Kinda different areas of use...

If you are using visio for scientific modeling.. you have every right to be bitter!

Re:Visio import FTW

[drinkypoo]

Inkscape has connectors, and a button to "Make connectors avoid selected objects". It works -- but I don't know if it would be reliable with real work

As you say, since Visio isn't 100% either, it doesn't have to be perfect. If it's not suitable now it's an interface tweak away, most likely. I will give it a look, thank you.

Re:Visio import FTW

[Anrego]

I didn't excplicitly say "open source" or "for linux" so that's fair.

For that matter, there's lots of proprietary options for windows and I assume mac. Just doesn't seem to be a decent open source one.

Probably like audocad.. making one is just such a pain in the ass, and not enough users want it, and can easily be run in a virtual machine when needed.. that we probably won't see a decent open source visio clone.

Re:Visio import FTW

[MagicM]

Visio has long been one of the programs for which there is no satisfying substitute.

I don't know if it handles all of Visio's use-cases, but I've been using yEd Graph Editor with great success for all my diagramming needs.

Re:Visio import FTW

[drinkypoo]

If it handles yours it almost certainly handles mine, I will check it out.

Re:Visio import FTW

[rawler]

Try http://www.lucidchart.com/. Yeah, it's a webapp, but I've found it highly usable, and solves my diagramming needs. (In some cases much quicker and easier than Visio)

Re:Visio import FTW

[sqldr]

Visio has long been one of the programs for which there is no satisfying substitute.

I beg to differ. I draw ALL my diagrams in gnome paint, and anyone who complains just doesn't understand art.

Re:Visio import FTW

[belmolis]

I make a lot of diagrams using PIC (part of GNU groff).

Re:Visio import FTW

[Em Adespoton]

A long time ago, I essentially narrowed the field down to Visio, OmniGraffle, and Inkscape. Inkscape had UI and stability issues, plus lacked the support library. OmniGraffle lacked the ability to read other people's Visio docs. Visio.... well, back when it came out, the competition was Claris Draw... that should say something right there.

I'd love to see Inkscape merge with LibreOffice and get the same development and UI love LO's been getting recently. The underlying product is indeed impressive.

Re:Visio import FTW

[KlomDark]

Nice! Thanks for that, just tried it out - I love the auto-diagram selector when you get done dragging a line. And the auto Yes/No on the decision blocks - always a pain in Visio, unless there's a trick I've never learned to do it.

Re:Visio import FTW

[Anrego]

That's actually pretty impressive.

Thanks!

Unlike Mozilla...

[SteveFoerster]

As is typical with major releases of LibreOffice, there are significant new features making their debut in this version.

There's a Mozilla joke in there somewhere.

Anyone used its DB component?

[bogaboga]

Anyone used this suite's database component? Does it come anywhere near Microsoft's JET DB with the Access front end in functionality? I mean the ability to program "business logic" into the forms.

Re:Anyone used its DB component?

[jimicus]

Unless it's moved on drastically from the days of OpenOffice.org, don't bother. Last time I checked, it was a third-rate clone of Access '97.

docx support?

[jarkus4]

And does it finally have proper support for MS docx format? I rarely write anything in Writer and it works good enough in that aspect. Unfortunately my main use for such application is reading docs (specification etc) send by someone else and docx support is just abysmal - I had to install MS Word Viewer for this. And no, getting them to send it in some normal format is not always an option.

Re:docx support?

[MonsterTrimble]

It has had .docx support for quite a while as I recall.

Re:docx support?

[Fast Thick Pants]

If you haven't yet, try Novell's build of LibreOffice along with the "OpenOffice.OpenXML Translator 4.0" plugin for import/export of .docx etc. I've found it somewhat satisfactory. Caveats: Windows only, still on version 3.4, registration required for download.

(Not saying this is better than vanilla LO 3.5's .docx support, which I haven't tried yet.)

Re:docx support?

[Vaphell]

even MS sucks at supporting its own formats between versions, so don't hold your breath hoping that LO people will reverse engineer all the obscure corner cases and quirks where things break.

Re:docx support?

[xaxa]

I've had more trouble with older (2003?) versions of Office reading DOCX files (with the plugin). I've gradually gone from trying MS Word first, to trying LO Writer first.

But it probably depends what your needs are. I generally don't need to care about the formatting being exactly the same.

Re:docx support?

[dotancohen]

The .docx support is good enough that I am writing a book in collaboration with MS Office users, including change tracking and comments, and they don't know that I'm using LibreOffice 3.4. If you find any bugs in .docx compatibility, you can contact me here and we will file bugs:
http://dotancohen.com/eng/message.php

Thanks.

Re:docx support?

[Rutulian]

The .docx support for the Mac version of Office is what gives me the most trouble. I can send some of the problem documents if that is helpful.

Re:docx support?

[shutdown -p now]

This hasn't been true since Office 2003 or so. Every time I ask someone on Slashdot to give a specific example, it's about Office 95 or 97 document.

Most certainly, .docx - which has only been introduced in Office 2007 - can go back and forth without regressions in all Office versions that support it.

Re:docx support?

[dotancohen]

I only have a Linux box to test, but send the documents to me anyway. My Gmail username is the same as my /. username. If you can get a hold of a PDF output from MS Word so that we can compare how the document is supposed to look, that would be great.

Thanks!

Re:docx support?

[Sark666]

So true. Not that I'm an MS fan, but we have an Access database with numerous clients deployed that was written for office 2000 and 2003. It had to make a couple of exception checks for 2000/2003 but that's it. We skipped 2007 and are getting office 2010 soon. Tried it recently on office 2010 and only two things needed to be changed, and now runs perfectly. And yes, this is probably one of those times where it should be a full-scale database etc, but point being, this uses numerous access forms, generates reports, deals with account logins, password resets etc. Pretty anything you can do in Access, is being done in this system, but yet only 2 things needed to be changed. Same thing with various vba excel tools.

I've read the same thing so many times that I cringe for a moment myself when running something on newer office versions and yet, 99% it runs or if not, with very little changes.

Nicely done --

[IGnatius T Foobar]

As difficult as it is to deal with the open/libre office fork, it's beginning to become apparent that the governance issues of oo.o were holding it back. As a truly open source project, Libre is already showing that they can work with contributions from a lot of different developers to move the whole project forward a lot faster than oo.o was doing in the past. This is good news because we're now enjoying a world class office suite that is just getting better all the time.

Of course, now we can expect to hear from all the naysayers who will predictably continue to declare LibreOffice a perpetual failure because they have some weird edge case of an MS Office document that didn't import perfectly...

Re:Nicely done --

[dotancohen]

Of course, now we can expect to hear from all the naysayers who will predictably continue to declare LibreOffice a perpetual failure because they have some weird edge case of an MS Office document that didn't import perfectly...

And if you do have such a document, then please get in contact with me so that we can file a bug and get it fixed:
http://dotancohen.com/eng/message.php

Inability to print transparent layers in Draw

[Maxo-Texas]

This bug was apparently introduced after 3.2 and is not present in later versions of open office. It's been several months and isn't fixed.

If you set shape to transparent, the drawing can be exported correctly to PDF but you can't print them- they become pointy-- the curviness of bezier curves is lost. This occurs on multiple printers and in both windows xp, windows 8, and at least some versions of Linux.

I would like to use Libreoffice but this is a non-starter. Looking forward to when it is fixed.

Re:Inability to print transparent layers in Draw

[tibit]

Have you filed a bug?

Re:Inability to print transparent layers in Draw

[Maxo-Texas]

Yes with copious examples. I'm at work right now so I can't pull up the bug report.
But several others have reported it as well and provided examples.

Then it as flagged as having been entered before some change in procedures and so it had to be revalidated as real and the other users posted more examples.

It's reported under Draw. Think it may be in the 33000's but not sure.

Re:Inability to print transparent layers in Draw

[tibit]

That's all I needed to know.
-- your friendly bugtracker cop :)

Still no auto-update.

[Kenja]

How hard can it be to add update notifications and downloads to the app?

Re:Still no auto-update.

[Kenja]

Actually, I do. And adding a simple HTTP client to check status of an XML file on the web is dead simple in most cases. Why do you ask?

Re:Still no auto-update.

[Kenja]

And actually, looks like they DID add version checking at long last. They just didn't tell anyone about it. Nifty.

Re:Still no auto-update.

[truedfx]

They told everyone about it by mentioning it in both of the first two links in the summary, in addition to the New Features page linked to in another comment.

Re:Still no auto-update.

[hobarrera]

On most OSs, the OS itself offers some means for updating software packages. I take it you're using windows. If windows offered some infrastructure for software updates/repositories, then the LO developers might have taken the time.
Creating an auto-update mecanism at the time, would be a huge, windows-specific task, to fill in a role that the OS normally does nowadays.

Re:Still no auto-update.

[Shifty0x88]

OMG!!! Finally!!!!

I can understand what they are going through, inheriting.... well maybe commandeering is a better word, old code.

Can't wait to check out the new version

Re:Still no auto-update.

[Shifty0x88]

They do, but they only support Microsh!t programs.

Re:Still no auto-update.

[TheRaven64]

Is this a new feature? The Mac version of OO.o has had auto-update for ages, and it's always been a second-tier port. I assumed they disabled it on most platforms because they have a standard way of pushing updates (even Windows in a corporate setting).

Re:Still no auto-update.

[hobarrera]

Cool, I didn't know this. Can developers make use of this update mechanism? LO might be ablo to use this if so.

Re:Here we go again

[dotancohen]

Great, a major LO upgrade. That means I download it, install it, and see how many minutes it takes me before I hit a large enough Office compatibility snag that makes me delete it and swear off giving it another shot.

Instead of swearing it off, get in touch with me and we will file bugs. Sure, it might take a year or three until they are fixed, but most of them _do_ get fixed in LibreOffice. I would say that the last year in LO has closed more of my bugs than the past five years of OpenOffice.org, including one very critical bug that has been open for almost _ten_years_:
https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=5556

Fixed in LO six months after filing:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37978

You can contact me here, please have a file that demonstrates the issue handy or clear reproduction instructions:
http://dotancohen.com/eng/message.php

Thanks.

New features

[sakdoctor]

Visio .vsd import
Native PostgreSQL driver
Java 7 support
AES encryption .msi Windows Installer - I understand that .msi is a big deal for corporate installs somehow.

Anyway is it just me or is Libreoffice really really awesome. There seems like a tremendous amount of energy behind the project, and it's all headed in the right direction.

Re:New features

[uigrad_2000]

Well, they're obviously moving much faster than openoffice did. The product looks very clean, opens fast, and is mostly enjoyable to use.

There's still a number of key combinations that Calc is missing (most noticeably ctrl-D to copy cell above), and the background color tool is still horribly designed (only contains colors too dark for use as a background, and it does not remember the last chosen color). It's simple stuff like this that keeps people on Excel.

Re:New features

[Enderandrew]

Many automation tools that push software out to hundreds/thousands of desktops at once only work with .msi files because you can do automated/silent installs. So yes, having a .msi installer is important in the enterprise world.

Re:New features

[Enderandrew]

Open bugs with that feedback.

Re:New features

[dotancohen]

Open bugs with that feedback.

Done! Please subscribe to the bugs and leave comments so it is not just me saying "this would be nice".

Remember last background colour
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46069

Copy cell above
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46070

Re:New features

[Enderandrew]

I will vote for these.

Re:New features

[Techman83]

Some of the more flexible Deployment platforms can deploy just about anything, but a well designed MSI is far easier. That said I've come across many, many poorly designed MSIs, which are just as much hassle as anything else.

Re:New features

[tbird81]

I hope these get done. I've tried similar "minor gripe" reporting in OO.org. They're not majors, but they're little things that are annoying.

(Another one I have is not being able to select the internal colour when writing in "outline" text mode.)

I was actually quite pleased by the quick responses in OOo, although they just sort of sat there. Most are still "ACCEPTED" even though I submitted them in 2003 about version 1.1!

Good luck with yours.

Re:New features

[hebcal]

There's still a number of key combinations that Calc is missing (most noticeably ctrl-D to copy cell above), and the background color tool is still horribly designed (only contains colors too dark for use as a background, and it does not remember the last chosen color). It's simple stuff like this that keeps people on Excel.

Ctrl-D Works fine in 3.5.0rc3. I just tried it.

The background colors do, indeed, stink. The funny part about the background color setter is that it changes the menubar icon to the last set color, but there doesn't seem to be a way to re-invoke it with the same color.

Re:New features

[dotancohen]

Like you, I have had bugs linger in OOo for years. LO seems to get them done, though. I often see my LO bugs being resolved, whereas in OOo I would be surprised whenever one would get attention.

Re:New features

[Enderandrew]

A developer has already stepped up to implement one of these. This is why I love open source.

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46070

Re:New features

[vandamme]

Visio support => I will finally be Microsoft free!

Uhhh, check that, I still have a MS mouse...

Re:New features

[dotancohen]

Just to let anyone following along know, both these RFEs have been implemented, 24 hours after posting them. LibreOffice really does care about user feedback, please do not equate the old OpenOffice.org development mess with LO!

Not available in the repository yet

[uigrad_2000]

$ yum list libreoffice-core

Available Packages
libreoffice-core.x86_64 1:3.3.4.1-2.fc15 updates

As you can see, I'm on Fedora Core 15. Is it available at other repositories?

Re:Here we go again

[petermgreen]

Office documents are fundamentally fragile.

In a text processing program the tiniest change to character spacing rules or line breaking rules or margin rules or image placement rules can radically change the way a document is rendered. So the only way to keep complete compatibility is to NEVER change any existing behaviour of the rendering engine. In a calculation program the tiniest change in formula imlementation can change the calculated results.

The problem with word processors and spreadsheets is they blur the line between input and output. The user is continuously looking at the output so the user thinks of the file as storing the output but what is really being stored is the input. So they load the file into a program with a slightly different engine and get surprised when the results of thier poorly formed (remember the user doesn't see the input so they don't see how horriblly unstructured it is) turn into a mess.

Frankly I find it damn impressive that OOo/Lo do as good a job of dealing with MS office documents as they do.

A. delete the contents of the cell - like it does

[Anonymous Coward]

You've apparently not used LibreOffice, which actually gets this right - though certainly OpenOffice.org did not, backspace on the other hand pops up the dialog you hate ;-) c'est la vie.

"As is typical with major releases of LibreOffice"

[tverbeek]

Have there been enough major releases of LibreOffice to say what's "typical" of them?

Crashes before even starting on Win7 64-bit

[kriston]

On Windows 7 x86_64 it, unfortunately, crashes before even starting. This is highly unusual.

I'll be waiting for the point release.

Re:Crashes before even starting on Win7 64-bit

[innocent_white_lamb]

Did you try removing the old configuration files from your home directory before starting the new version?

It's in ~/.libreoffice on linux. I'm not sure where it is on Windows, but someone else can probably chime in with the facts.

Re:Crashes before even starting on Win7 64-bit

[mcswell]

I just tried opening writer and yes, it crashed (Win7 64-bit, like you). I then opened the default LO starter (the program that asks you which LO program you want); it opened writer just fine. Now I seem to be able to start writer ok. So I would expect it's some kind of old config file problem as another poster suggests. I did uninstall LO 3.4.4 before installing 3.5, since the LO website said you had to do that, but I suppose that leaves some config files laying around. Or maybe it's leaving some resident code running, in which case I'll have trouble if I re-boot. At any rate, it does seem to be a problem.

Re:Crashes before even starting on Win7 64-bit

[kriston]

I should never have to do this, and, indeed, I haven't had to do anything special with LibreOffice and OpenOffice (and StarOffice) except de-install and re-install.

This release has problems.

Re:Here we go again

[glodime]

I don't believe that the following are real people (otherwise, I'd have to kill myself to make the pain in my head stop) :
pj
dwheeler
ooo
jbfaure

You, Dotan Cohen, may be superhuman. You, Marc Sinclair, and Eike Rathke have made the world a better place.

How are the MS Office compatibilities?

[antdude]

Are they better than OpenOffice? I am waiting for LibreOffice to have better format compatibilities. V3.4.3 still didn't show my documents' formats correctly. :(

Re:How are the MS Office compatibilities?

[antdude]

Thanks fiend. :P

Re:Here we go again

[geminidomino]

I have to AOL this. I got so sick of that stupid bug I actually stopped using Calc for Gnumeric.

Re:Here we go again

[temcat]

Try Softmaker Office Standard 2012. Almost perfect MS Office compatibility, LO/OO.o just don't compare. Inexpensive. Good old UI style without the dreaded Ribbon. One gotcha: no macro recorder, though there is a VBA-like macro language for it called BasicMaker.

Re:Here we go again

[dotancohen]

Thanks Eric, but you put me in too good of company! Marc and Eike actually hack on the code, I just try to file and triage good bugs.

Overkill

[sjbe]

I shudder whenever I see someone using a spreadsheet to make important business decisions because I know there are errors in every non-trivial spreadsheet.

There are errors in every non-trivial database too. And pretty much every non-trivial program of any sort.

I tend to think of a spreadsheet as a data prototyping tool. It's very easy to mock up a tool to manage a moderate amount of data. You don't have to have to model built before starting. Once you've got the basic kinks worked out you can then rebuild it in a database if appropriate. While I am an engineer (and an accountant too) I'm not a programmer and a database would be overkill for much of my needs. Worse, the tools to create and manage a database are not designed for a non-programmer and are much slower for many tasks. A spreadsheet is approachable and easy to use by comparison and I can get useful work done. Show me a general purpose database that makes it as easy to prototype and analyze data sets of moderate size as a spreadsheet and I'll be all over it but right now no such beast exists.

It's really impossible to properly audit or verify a spreadsheet. They are so easy to corrupt with improper references and random data entry

You are assuming such auditing is necessary. For many tasks it simply isn't. I actually do work with databases too. I use Access, LibreOffice Base and occasionally PostgreSQL but most of the time I live in a spreadsheet. My job isn't programming or database administration. Software is just a means to an end for me.

Spreadsheets are only widespread because most office drones don't have a clue about proper data management

Spreadsheets are widespread because they get the job done and are sufficiently easy to use. Databases are undeniably valuable but for many tasks using a relational or similar database would be like hunting ducks with a howitzer. It's just overkill much of the time.

Paper tape calculators

[sjbe]

I've seen senior accountants use pocket calculators to sum columns of numbers in Excel.

Sadly this is very common. I am a certified accountant and it continues to flabbergast me why so many of my fellow accountants keep using paper tape calculators when they have a spreadsheet at their fingertips. It makes no sense whatsoever.

LibreOffice Base

[sjbe]

Anyone used this suite's database component?

Daily. I actually use it as a middleware layer between our MRP database and some accounting functions I'm responsible for. I use ODBC to get at the tables and then do the actual analysis mostly in a spreadsheet with some custom queries in the Base part. It has worked extremely well, has been easy to use and hasn't cost us a penny in capital expenditures.

As a standalone database, I think Access is significantly better right now but as a way for your office suite to communicate with another database, LibreOffice Base is terriffic.

Re:OH SHUCKS! Backward Incompatibility

[greg1104]

Even Blowfish's author Bruce Schneier recommends against using Blowfish now. The world at large has moved onto AES instead, and any sensible user would want that instead of the old solution. There is a big difference between that and the sort of user hostile changes the GNOME team has made. You can't add serious feature changes like this to a file format and expect old versions to read them.

Calculator

[wreakyhavoc]

I constantly have people come to me asking for a "calculator".

"What about that thousand dollar calculator you have sitting on your desk?", I ask.

They stare in confusion.

---
office win for the win

Re:Calculator

[nobodie]

Yeah, I work in offfices (full of teachers) where they can input numbers to a calculator, but are terrified of spreadsheets.
Og course now they have some specialty software that they can use (even though it restricts how you can think about grades and grading) to input raw numbers from papers and automgically get a final grade. Not my fault if the grade is wrong, it was the computer!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Here we go again

[dave87656]

I've been using OO and recently LO for many years. I've yet to run into a MO spreadsheet I couldn't read. On the other hand, internal users of previous versions of MO do have problems with spreadsheets created in new versions of MO. I'd say the LO people are doing a pretty good job.