LibreOffice 3.5 Released

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Posted by timothy on Tuesday February 14, 2012 @04:12AM from the because-it-is-awesome dept.

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."

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10000 sheets per workbook? by Quantum_Infinity · 2012-02-14 04:15 · Score: 5, Funny

10000 sheets per workbook? Yup, lack of sheets was exactly what was stopping me from using Calc.
1. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by ogrisel · 2012-02-14 04:21 · Score: 2
  
  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.
2. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by Ginger+Unicorn · 2012-02-14 04:23 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
  
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3. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by Captain+Hook · 2012-02-14 05:08 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I think the point was that, it was never the interface quality which was putting off Wikipedia contributors, it was the background politics.
  
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4. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by mspohr · 2012-02-14 05:50 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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5. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by Anrego · 2012-02-14 05:57 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
6. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by Abreu · 2012-02-14 06:08 · Score: 2
  
  Dude, I have seen people using Excel to write letters!
  
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7. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by TheRaven64 · 2012-02-14 06:11 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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.
  
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8. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by MonsterTrimble · 2012-02-14 06:12 · Score: 2
  
  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.
  
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9. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by mspohr · 2012-02-14 06:13 · Score: 2
  
  If all you know how to use is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.
  
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10. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by jdgeorge · 2012-02-14 06:22 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  No kidding... I used to use a hammer to write letters, too. Then I learned how to use the nailgun. Bam!
11. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by StormReaver · 2012-02-14 06:25 · Score: 2
  
  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.
12. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by mspohr · 2012-02-14 06:28 · Score: 2
  
  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.
  
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13. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by rbrander · 2012-02-14 06:33 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  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.
14. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by Capt.DrumkenBum · 2012-02-14 07:18 · Score: 2
  
  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. ;-)
  
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15. Re:10000 sheets per workbook? by Ginger+Unicorn · 2012-02-15 04:06 · Score: 2
  
  i need a better way to be doing a lot of things
  
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  (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
DropBox? by Joehonkie · 2012-02-14 04:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

They don't have their own hosting for this stuff? More seriously, how much RAM does this take up.
1. Re:DropBox? by samael · 2012-02-14 04:20 · Score: 2
  
  Particularly as those of us behind corporate firewalls can't get to Dropbox...
  
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2. Re:DropBox? by royallthefourth · 2012-02-14 04:22 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  http://www.libreoffice.org/download/3-5-new-features-and-fixes/
3. Re:DropBox? by royallthefourth · 2012-02-14 04:36 · Score: 2
  
  No problem. Can't imagine what the hell the submitter and editors were thinking. Business as usual for this place, I guess...
4. Re:DropBox? by Ihmhi · 2012-02-14 08:04 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  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.
  
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315ml by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-14 04:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.
1. Re:315ml by Amouth · 2012-02-14 04:34 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  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.
  
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2. Re:315ml by Dystopian+Rebel · 2012-02-14 06:02 · Score: 2
  
  I recommend OpenProj: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openproj/
  
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3. Re:315ml by Luckyo · 2012-02-14 09:39 · Score: 2
  
  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).
10000 sheets per workbook? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-14 04:17 · Score: 3, Funny

Are those sheet double ply?
While, in the same time... by jcreus · 2012-02-14 04:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

OpenOffice.org is in version 3.3.0 and remarkably worse than LibreOffice. LibreOffice has way more future.
1. Re:While, in the same time... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-14 04:29 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
Visio import FTW by drinkypoo · 2012-02-14 04:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

Visio has long been one of the programs for which there is no satisfying substitute.
Is there a non-crossing line tool in Draw? :)

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1. Re:Visio import FTW by Anrego · 2012-02-14 04:26 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  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.
2. Re:Visio import FTW by xaxa · 2012-02-14 04:52 · Score: 2
  
  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).
3. Re:Visio import FTW by ITShaman · 2012-02-14 04:59 · Score: 2
  
  There's also OmniGraffle...
  http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/
  
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4. Re:Visio import FTW by sqldr · 2012-02-14 09:16 · Score: 2
  
  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.
  
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Nicely done -- by IGnatius+T+Foobar · 2012-02-14 04:32 · Score: 3, Interesting

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...

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Still no auto-update. by Kenja · 2012-02-14 04:46 · Score: 2

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

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1. Re:Still no auto-update. by Kenja · 2012-02-14 04:55 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  And actually, looks like they DID add version checking at long last. They just didn't tell anyone about it. Nifty.
  
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2. Re:Still no auto-update. by truedfx · 2012-02-14 05:31 · Score: 2
  
  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:docx support? by Vaphell · 2012-02-14 04:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

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? by xaxa · 2012-02-14 04:55 · Score: 2

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:Here we go again by dotancohen · 2012-02-14 04:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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Re:docx support? by dotancohen · 2012-02-14 04:58 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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New features by sakdoctor · 2012-02-14 05:18 · Score: 4, Informative

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.
1. Re:New features by uigrad_2000 · 2012-02-14 05:30 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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2. Re:New features by Enderandrew · 2012-02-14 05:37 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  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.
  
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3. Re:New features by Enderandrew · 2012-02-14 05:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Open bugs with that feedback.
  
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4. Re:New features by dotancohen · 2012-02-14 11:34 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  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
  
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5. Re:New features by Techman83 · 2012-02-14 17:37 · Score: 2
  
  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.
  
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Re:Here we go again by petermgreen · 2012-02-14 05:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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A. delete the contents of the cell - like it does by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-14 05:42 · Score: 2, Informative

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" by tverbeek · 2012-02-14 05:51 · Score: 2

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

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How are the MS Office compatibilities? by antdude · 2012-02-14 07:54 · Score: 2

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. :(

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LibreOffice Base by sjbe · 2012-02-14 12:56 · Score: 2

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.