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LibreOffice 3.5.1 Released With Fixes
Thinkcloud writes "The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 3.5.1. Some of the core fixes include: don't crash for empty input data in charts, UI fix on PDF export dialog, don't copy page styles into temporary clipboard doc, and use the correct db range for the copy. 'Another milestone for the LibreOffice project was hit this past month as well. "The number of TDF hackers has overtaken the threshold of 400 code developers, with a large majority of independent volunteers and several companies paying full time hackers." Although some are paid developers, no company employs more than 7% of developers, keeping the project independent and self-governing.'"
It's more like MS Office than current versions of MS Office... ribbonless, the way I likes it. Now get off my lawn!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I wish they'd improve the Base application. It's horrendously slow and clunky and has a horrible interface. I can't stand that I have to right click on the table name and hit paste to paste data into a table, rather than just doing it directly in the the table view editor (the way most people would think to do it).
I'm a Libre Office fan, it's one of the only good office solutions on the market as it's free and cross platform, something Microsoft Office can't say for itself;. My only lasting big peeve is that Libre can't seem to open a docx document with out having formatting / rendering issues. It also can't copy charts from a doc / docx and keep the chart in tact. Other then that's it's a bullet proof office suite, does any one have this issue or have a fix for this issue?
No it's not, it's an office suite meant to work!
The Document Foundation is eating Open Office's lunch. When will Open Office merge with the Document Foundation?
I hate office suites, but they're a necessary evil. And I'm beginning to mellow and even like certain parts of LibreOffice like the spreadsheet component.
Thanks for all the hard work, TDF guys and gals.
Did they, finally, remove that nonsensical Java dependency?
It made strategical sense as long as it was Sun's baby. But, technically, it really is just a huge "WTF?"
The ribbon is a nice UI that really isn't very different than the old UI. It takes vertical drop-down menus and makes them horizontal. Then it ads pictures.
Big deal.
Some people claim that it takes up more space, but that is debatable. If you're truly hard-up for space you can always minimize the ribbon. Apparently in the next version of Office it will be minimized by default.
Dunno why people bitch about the ribbon so much. I think it's a combination of "I don't care why they changed it, it's different and I HATE different" and "Look! Microsoft is doing something! LET'S HATE ON IT!"
W8 is clearly going to be a massive flop, so Office is MS's last living cash-cow and for most people, Libre is just a much better suite. The shills will be desperate to spread FUD before people realise just how much better.
Expect more dirt than discussion.
The one thing that I find very unfortunate about the timing of the 'ribbon' is that it managed to coincide with the massive shift in the most common and cheapest PC displays(especially in laptops) from 4:3 to a brief period of 16:10 followed by a rush to 16:9. Having the menu bar expanding even as vertical resolution was being nibbled away at made the always-slightly-awkward editing of 8.5x11 or A4 documents on computer screens even more irritating.
I mostly blame the fuckers who killed 16:10, since that can't be fixed in software; but it wasn't a helpful coincidence.
Oh, not so different, eh?
How about those who use keyboard shortcuts? Alt+F, P. Hmmm, no printing? WTF? Alt+F, A. No save as?
Yes, totally identical.
Yes, people are adverse to change. That doesn't mean change is bad, but neither does it mean it is good. Rather, it puts the onus on the person suggesting the change to show why the disruption and re-learning that will need to take place is worthwhile.
If, as you say, it is a "nice UI that really isn't very different than the old UI" then why is it necessary to force people to spend any time re-learning the interface? Why take up more real estate to do so and then tell users "well if you want it back, just minimize our annoying new UI?" This isn't somebody's pet project; it's an enterprise-class software suite used by literally millions and millions of people around the world. Change for the sake of change is not helpful; it is actively counter-productive in the most literal sense of the term.
I honestly can't decide if communication is Microsoft's great failure or if they really don't have a coherent reason for the things they do. It's happening again with Windows 8. Is the UI change just the stupidest possible idea in the world, or is it the greatest thing since sliced bread and they have just been utterly failing at actually communicating why? Don't get me wrong, I see how it's beneficial to THEM to essentially be able to focus on one UI across devices, but I don't see why I should want a touch-driven UI for my computer with mouse support tacked on top instead of an operating system built for that usage--and more importantly, one I have been largely familiar with for what, 15 years?
So yeah, I'm not adverse to change but somebody needs to show me why the learning curve and lost productivity is ultimately worthwhile. I don't care if that learning curve is five seconds or five years. If they can't do that, they deserve the derision. It's not like they don't have the budget for it, so I have to assume it's because they don't have the rationale.
There should be a fallback. I shouldn't be forced to learn new crap for no reason other than Microsoft thinks it will improve my performance. That's not for them to decide.
Which I love they do. IT helps me push Libre office.
Not only does it have Lower TCO, but it also has ZERO training for the users.
Allowed us to avoid the MSFT Office tax cince 2005.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I hope they never merge, and instead each project takes a different path and we end up with two great choices.
Once again, you are an excellent fungus. Good comment.
Microsoft has to change Office every so often. Its necessay otherwise how do they sell the same product over and over again ? It sure isn't getting new functions is it ? Oh maybe in 2 decades we will make the emacs joke about Office. But until then, to get the suckers (consumers, enterprises, etc...) to lay down $$$ every 3 years for whats basically a glorifed typewriter they have to change, even if its superficial change. Office attaigned maturity with the 95 version. Since then its been about superficial changes and format changes of course.
And then it plays dice with the buttons.
"A two and a three? Then that button goes onto the fifth tab".
"A five and a six? We don't have eleven tabs, I guess we need to hide this somewhere completely different".
WTF, WTF'er?
Word 2007.
ALT-F. A. Save-As dialog pops up
ALT-F. P. Print dialog pops up.
For crepe's sake, it even DISPLAYS the letters for you for keyboard navigation of the ribbon. It's almost like EMACs, except you can see where the heck you're diving down into.
People bitch about the ribbon because they knew exactly where to find features in the past, and now they can't find it.
It's so simple... first you look across the TOP to find the ribbon you want. Click that. Then, look across the BOTTOM to find the group of icons you want. Then, look in the MIDDLE for the icon you're looking for. If you can't find it, see if there's a tiny arrow in the lower right of the icon group. Click that, and you will get a dialog with more options. Now, isn't that easier than a boring old top-down menu?
Good luck having another supplier, vendor, or another business view your documents and have them all looking funny?
Their is a reason businesses standardize on Office. Every office user who is not a FOSS zealot hates Libra Office with a passion and I have worked in projects before where it was replaced with Office so they can work and do things like everyone else.
Maybe in the future it will take off, just like these same office workers scorend Firefox and went back to IE 6 because it felt better. But Libra Office needs to be faster and have more functions and start to do things that iWorks and MS Office does before people prefer it.
http://saveie6.com/
I love the ribbon now and I cringe going back to menus.
It has its benefits and if you hit the alt key, it will even number the shortcuts. You can preview changes by just having the mouse cursor over all the settings. I love it and the ribbon bashing is so 2007.
It reminds me of those whinning about guis and how CLI terminals and DOS were soo awesome.
It took a week to learn but unlike METRO solid R&D was behind it in usability. Word is certainly more tolerable.
http://saveie6.com/
And this is why my start bar is on the side of the screen and not the bottom. And why my second monitor is vertical.
> Good luck having another supplier, vendor, or another business view your documents
Who has to conform to whom depends on who is the dominating partner in a communication. If the dominating partner mandates that all communication with him from now has to be LO-compatible, as a supplier you have to become LO-compatible, or you wont get his business.
The key to establish LO in the office space is to make a few influential players start using it, everybody who depends on them in some way will have to follow.
> and have them all looking funny?
If they depend on getting money from you, it suddenly is their documents looking funny, not yours. It is just a matter of perspective.
For all those who are questions why we should use LibreOffice instead of something proprietary like MS Office, I just want to leave this obligatory XKCD here.
Call me cynical.
But I once told an I.T. consulting executive, that I love FOSS because it is free and it is the best!
He rolled his eyes and decided I not important enough to do business with. Doesn't even prefer expensive solutions and loves shareware?? This was 10 years ago and Linux was a toy compared to NT 4 in his eyes probably. But it was embarasing for me.
I guess it depends how big you are. There is a reason many businesses still use IE 6 in 2012 like I mentioned above. It is because if you are Volkswagan you can simply demand to support it for their logon site if you are an auto parts supplier. Not everyone is.
In small business or if you send a resume you need to look professional. I remember 15 years ago if you didn't have a fax number no one would want to do business with you. Then it was an email, and now it is MS file formats. I am hoping this will change but right now it is not.
I do not like LO as OpenOffice was slow, ugly, and didn't do things that MS Office did. The file formats and personal and corporate image were one. I started becoming more cynical of zealots over the years.
http://saveie6.com/
No it doesn't. I've tried to use the Ribbon, but quite frankly, it's a mess. If you're making comments like that about CLI terminals then I think that's a pretty clear indication that you don't understand what you're talking about. CLIs when done right are incredibly efficient at the expense of requiring a more significant investment in time to learn the. The most efficient interface I've seen is in vi, but it has a significant learning curve to master it.
Ribbon itself doesn't bring any particular benefits other than hiding things in random places where people who don't use it regularly won't find it.
So, yes, it is great, if you're working at MS and want to force people to buy the newer versions. As those using ribbon can't use the older copies without relearning everything.
Problems with the Ribbon:
- the change was done with no regard for longtime users who lose ALL of their knowledge of where to find what feature, with no option to revert to the old ways.
- Worse, Microsoft threw out conventions like the menu order (File, Edit) that have been the same in all Windows programs since W3.1. Again, loss of knowledge.
- it takes much longer to go through all the Ribbons to find a feature than to drag through the menus. You could drag through all of the menus with a single click-and-drag action. You have to click on each of the Ribbon tabs.
- minimizing the UI has its own cost in annoyance when the Ribbon deploys when you don't want it.
- The Ribbon relies on icons more than text. I find that it takes me longer to find the correct icon than it took me to find the correct menu. Not everyone thinks visually.
All of this for the sake of being more newbie-friendly and ooh-shiny.
Dunno why people bitch about the ribbon so much.
I'll list my particular grievances:
1. It undoes 15 years of expertise I had in using Excel and Word. I've been using the ribbon now for over a year and still find myself hunting occasionally - my productivity has still not caught up to the "old" interface.
2. It changes depending on window size/screen size. On my laptop with a small screen, the ribbons are subtly rearranged compared to those on my desktop. On my desktop, I don't run Word full screen, since my monitor is large. Depending on how large I make the windows, the buttons on the ribbon rearrange themselves. This breaks a fundamental human interface rule that MS loves to break - things should not move around.
3. Adding custom buttons is now murderous, and the built-in selection of buttons is very limited. They've had a icon editor built in to MS Office since, what, 1996? And they take it out because... they want to force you into this cumbersome XML editing workflow for user-defined icons. Ugh.
4. You are absolutely correct - it isn't very different from the old UI. It takes vertical drop-down menus and makes them horizontal, then adds pictures. Humans are worse at scanning lists horizontally than they are scanning vertically. This change makes no sense. It now takes me longer to scan through the ribbon than it did to scan through the drop-down menu.
In short, I am angry that Microsoft didn't spend more time fixing obvious flaws in Office and instead screwed up the GUI.
Take VBA... it is the killer feature of Excel, and really the only reason to use it over other spreadsheets. Unfortunately, they haven't really updated it in 10 years and it is stale. Big macros have to be split into multiple procedures. The performance is awful. User-defined functions fail silently. Mostly, though, the IDE and language have not seen any modernization in 15 years and even simple things like a Perl "associative array" or a Python "dictionary" are painful to implement (via Collections is usually how I do it...). Meanwhile, Open/Libre Office has steadily improved their macro support and it is almost usable. I can see a day where I start writing to that package instead - especially if I can abandon VBA and use something more modern.
Take graphing... Quattro Pro had better graphing tools in 1997 and it still does today :) No, I haven't compared them recently :) But Excel's graphing options are pretty much stuck in 1996. Heck, the formula bar still shows graphs as Excel 4 macros! Goodness... Meanwhile, Open/Libre Office has steadily improved their graphing capabilities and it is pretty much a credible alternative.
Now to be fair, the ribbon in 2010 makes more sense than the ribbon in 2007, so there is hope.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Not everyone automates server oriented tasks with batch files. I love VI myself. My guess is your conservative who hates change.
However a gui like Visual Studio or Netbeans can do a lot more.
Guis show what you are printing exactly how it is viewed on the screen. Normal computer usage is creating documents for others to view them. This is why the gui is necessary in business. Sorry Latex does not cut it for marketing shops creating brochures and imageMagik or whatever it is called is no photoshop.
Menus hide things in illogical and places that are hard to find. Ribbons show all the options and lets you preview them. It is a wonderful tool and if you open your eyes you can find out it is the most hot key friendly Office yet if you hate the mouse. My productivity is much higher as I do not have stop typing and look for functions in a sea of menus.
http://saveie6.com/
Oh, not so different, eh?
How about those who use keyboard shortcuts? Alt+F, P. Hmmm, no printing? WTF? Alt+F, A. No save as?
Yes, totally identical.
What about those keyboard shortcuts? A quick test in Excel 2010:
Alt+F,P -> Print
Alt+F,A -> Save As
The ribbon is a nice UI that really isn't very different than the old UI.
Sorry but I found the ribbon tedious and confusing but maybe that's because I'm an infrequent MS Office user.
The ribbon is a nice UI that really isn't very different than the old UI. It takes vertical drop-down menus and makes them horizontal. Then it ads pictures.
Big deal.
Some people claim that it takes up more space, but that is debatable. If you're truly hard-up for space you can always minimize the ribbon. Apparently in the next version of Office it will be minimized by default.
Dunno why people bitch about the ribbon so much. I think it's a combination of "I don't care why they changed it, it's different and I HATE different" and "Look! Microsoft is doing something! LET'S HATE ON IT!"
It is also clear that many criticizing the ribbon here on Slashdot clearly haven't even used it (as evidenced by being wrong about basic facts about the ribbon, like keyboard shortcuts, option to collapse it, what it shows and doesn't, how many mouse clicks to reach certain basic options, etc. And I don't mean being ignorant about options, but making factual wrong statements that are easily disproven if you have the damn thing in front of you. What we used to call spreading FUD). They are just jumping on the opportunity for a anti-MS circle jerk.
I don't think Metro's problem is lack of R&D, it's probably R&D too focused on tablets and phones, with mouse and keyboard functionality tacked on at the last minute.
Personally, I have found the buttons to be meaningless and totally non-descriptive. Words do a much better (and more consistent!) job of explaining what a task is supposed to do rather than a picture. For example, how does one distinguish between single spacing, 1.5 spacing and double spacing using an image? The icons are about 30 pixels square, and the image is basically just a series of vaguely shaded lines. On the other hand, it makes a lot more sense to me to click on the Format menu, then Paragraph, then find the Spacing portion of the dialog box. There are some things you just can't express using images (much less images which are less than a centimeter in size) that you can using words for directing workflow in a complex program like a document typesetter. I also take issue with the way things are organized, but I can't really give a concrete example - it's been years since I've used Office anyways.
I think the appeal of the ribbon is not cause it's better but because it caters to people who don't spend any effort thinking about how they can do what they want to. Usability, organization and workflow suffer as a result. This is why a disproportionately large fraction of /.ers hate it while pretty much everyone else likes it.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
No problem at all, we send them PDF files. What fool would send a contractor or supplier/vendor a DOC file? In fact we have less problems with all the customers and suppliers/ etc cxince we changed from MS office.
P.S. The office people LOVE that save as PDF is native unlike the substandard MS office product.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
OpenOffice/LibreOffice is not Microsoft Office.
Now, in OOo/LO, try
Tools/Macros/Organize Macros/LibreOffice Basic (or Python, JavaScript, BeanShell).
If you've choosen LibreOffice (since this major discussion is about LibreOffice 3.5.1 and the minor discussion appears to be about "VBA" or LibreOffice BASIC), you will see My Macros/LibreOffice Macros, and the individual documents. Under each of these, you will see library names, module names, and then the macros.
I assume you knew this, given that you were trying out the macro!
Using My Macros/Standard/Module1/Main, I entered your code.
REM ***** BASIC *****
Sub Main
If Cell.Row = pBegin(0) Then
'Do Something
Elseif count = 1 then
'Do Something
Elseif count > 2 then
'Do Something
End if
End Sub
(including the boilerplate produced by LibreOffice). You are in a combined editor/debugger IDE, by the way. Now "Cell.Row" and "pBegin(0)" doesn't work when I run this thing. Instead of converting to a LibreOffice script, I replaced with 0 = 0. You claimed syntax errors, which I never received (with your code exactly, or with the 0 = 0 replacement).
Script accepted and runs. And, I know I got it right, because I cut&pasted from your post.
You can redress the menus, the keyboard or toolbars. "Edit Macros" is an available function. These can be individually edited by application (with the BASIC IDE considered its own application). These features are under Tools/Customize.
"I can't actually find any way to manually open the Script Editor to access the code."
I don't think you are asking what you think you are asking... You had to access the Script Editor manually in order to enter the original script. Please clarify.
LibreOffice is not Microsoft Office. I personally prefer LibreOffice -- you may not.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
> All of this for the sake of being more newbie-friendly and ooh-shiny.
Thats the PR make-believe.
The real reason is that many businesses refuse to upgrade their XP/2003 offices because they work too well. So you have to intentionally break them by getting all new office users used to the ribbon, so when they get into a company still using XP/2003, they feel helpless and ask for 2007 because of the ribbon.
This is something I've observed over the years, users accustomed to the ribbon complain much more about having to work with menus than menu users complain about the ribbon.
The one and only raison d'Ãtre of the Ribbon is to enforce office upgrades. Once companies stop upgrading their ribbon versions, they'll change it again.
The folks in Redmond were caught by surprise again. Only this time, it was by tablets (which is surprising since they tried to push it ten years ago) and they are reacting how they always react. That is, by leveraging their desktop monopoly to break into new markets.
The new ui in windows 8 is forcing people to learn how to use their new fancy tablet UI so users can transition between Microsoft devices with little adjustment. That's the idea. While this ui appears to be pissing off the technical crowd, I'm wondering how it is being regarded by the non-techies as they will ultimately determine the fate of this effort.
Honestly, I though the Kinnect was a dud, but Microsoft really pulled it off so I'm hesitant to dismiss this effort. One thing is certain, though. I will not be using it. Or so I hope :/
How would they edit the forms then?
How can someone highlight your resume and make amendments when copying the file back and forth between people?
http://saveie6.com/
With Further investigating, it appears Calc is attempting to Interpret code that isn't supposed to run --- Older versions of functions (backed up) before significant changes were made to the functions. So the interpreter is bailing cuz unused code has errors in it. As I stated the Script Editor was opening due to interpreter errors. When I would close the Script Editor, there is no way to manually re-open it.
"Edit Macros" - does not exist in the Tools Menu, or any of Tools' sub-menus.
The last time I used OO's Calc, 3-4 years ago, Calc couldn't even apply background colors to cells. SO I didn't proceed any further than that.
After deleting the "unused code/function" now Calc is choking on a simple Cells() query/assignment:
BASIC runtime error.
'1'
Type: com.sun.star.uno.RuntimeException
Message: unsatisfied query for interface of type ooo.vba.excel.XWorksheet!
Otherwise, print-repeatability is out the window.
You were saying...?
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Dumb argument anyway. I have TONS of clients that are moving to LO. Big stodgy corporate clients, too.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
This is the wonderful thing about corporate software. If there's something that they decide is too expensive to maintain, they drop it. Then you have to retrain all your employees. Remember that again the next time someone talks about TCO...
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Why would a contractor or supplier/vendor highlight your resume? I believe that the GP doesn't want to send editable forms to such people.
Calc doesn't do VBA. Different Macro semantics. If you want help in the conversion, you can contact me at fred (dot) weigel (at) zylog (dot) ca.
Assuming you want to go it alone:
ActiveWorkBook is replaced with ThisComponent
ActiveSheet is replaced with ThisComponent.CurrentController.ActiveSheet
ActiveCell is replaced with ThisComponent.getCurrentSelection
etc.
try http://www.openoffice.org/api/docs/common/ref/index-files/index-1.html
Basically, OOo BASIC macros are really not that useful for beginners -- there is a lot of crufty stuff.
msgbox WorksheetFunctions.Average(Range("A1:A5"))
is replaced by something like
Dim oSheet, FuncService
FuncService = createunoservice("com.sun.star.sheet.FunctionAccess")
oSheet = ThisComponent.CurrentController.ActiveSheet
msgbox FuncService.callFunction("AVERAGE", _
array(oSheet.getCellRangeByName("A1:A5")))
As you can see, the VBA can be replaced, but it's not easy.
What version of OpenOffice/LibreOffice are you using? Did you (or someone) use Tools/Customize to delete Tools/Macros? (possible, and I might do it for a delivery platform). In which case, use Tools/Customize, and select Menus. Select "Tools" from the Menu pull-down and add the Macro Editor again. Or, reinstall.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Sorry for replying to my own post. Note that I don't do this for free -- it's a commercial service. There should be some other benefit for your selection of OOs over Microsoft Office. Simply saving a couple of bucks on licensing won't make up our conversion fee. However, platform support, ability to control both the app and platform layers, ability to write extensions in other languages, whatever, may justify the conversion.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Sorry Latex does not cut it for marketing shops creating brochures and imageMagik or whatever it is called is no photoshop.
If marketing shops are too stupid to use LaTeX, then why should I bother with them?
OpenOffice faithfully replicates the MS Office way of doing things, even if it is the wrong way.
Text styles for instance.
Every sensible program assigns a style to a paragraph, and a style update will change all paragraphs that have this style assigned. Same for character styles.
MS Word messed this up royally. Half the documents I open have all paragraphs use the Normal style with different customisations on every paragraph. Cleaning this up is a nightmare. And the list goes on.
If marketing shops can't delivery files where the customer can't see exactly how their material looks because they run GUIS and they run green screen terminals then why should I do business with them?
Still no outlook equivalent! And evolution simply doesn't cut it when communicating with an exchange server. No Address Book, Calendar syncing etc. Open/Libre Office development is sooooooooooo slow.
Personally, I have found the buttons to be meaningless and totally non-descriptive. Words do a much better (and more consistent!) job of explaining what a task is supposed to do rather than a picture. For example, how does one distinguish between single spacing, 1.5 spacing and double spacing using an image? The icons are about 30 pixels square, and the image is basically just a series of vaguely shaded lines. On the other hand, it makes a lot more sense to me to click on the Format menu, then Paragraph, then find the Spacing portion of the dialog box. There are some things you just can't express using images (much less images which are less than a centimeter in size) that you can using words for directing workflow in a complex program like a document typesetter. I also take issue with the way things are organized, but I can't really give a concrete example - it's been years since I've used Office anyways.
I think the appeal of the ribbon is not cause it's better but because it caters to people who don't spend any effort thinking about how they can do what they want to. Usability, organization and workflow suffer as a result. This is why a disproportionately large fraction of /.ers hate it while pretty much everyone else likes it.
From a lot of the comments, including yours, it actually sounds like a lot of the /.ers that hate the ribbon are very infrequent users, or not users at all (as you yourself say you haven't used Office in years!). As a frequent (eg. daily) user of Office, the change to the ribbon took some time getting used to, but now I would never go back. I really don't get this claim that it is unclear what the buttons do. Most have both icon, text and keyboard shortcut-guidance. Your example of spacing - there is a button on default home ribbon that very clearly depicts line spacing (you'll get it after first attempt) and then directly gives you an option of single, 1.5, 2 etc. In numbers, just as you want.
Wow!
Also, in Linux, typing "del *.*" says "zsh: command not found: del".
So Linux is so buggy that it is, as you said, USELESS. It can't even handle a simple delete command using del/erase.
Like if your English would not work eg in Spain. That's because Spain is a defective, useless country. Right?
*Chuckle* Ah, I got flamebaited.
Can't question Open Source on Slashdot, I guess.
It was actually a valid question I thought. I didn't realize OO/Libre Office was so broken that it couldn't understand VBA. I don't see how any IT Manager could convince Upper Management to switch over from MS Office to OO/Libre when VBA is broken out of the box.
Sometimes I'm amazed at the compatibility which DOES exist in LibreOffice for reading MS Office files. As an example, at work we have a travel budget calculator in the form of an .xls (Excel spreadsheet) file. Out of curiosity I loaded it in LibreOffice 3.5.1 and it worked almost perfectly - it even understood all the macros. The only stuff wrong were some slight misalignment of some labels but I doubt anyone would notice or care since it's an internal document. Of course I have MS Office here as well but it was still an interesting test of the capability for reading such files in LibreOffice.
I remember when Linux was good... too...
Uh... You aren't the smartest kid in the family, are you?
OO is NOT supposed be an MSOffice clone. It is a DIFFERENT piece of software dammit. It is NOT a drop-in replacement. Never was, never will be, and it was not advertized as such.
It's not that VBE support is "broken", it's that it does not exist at all, as also does not exist any support for Clippy, Facebook, speech recognition, cloud integration, Windows Scripting, etc.
If you rely on VBE stay with MSOffice, you IT Manager, Upper Management, Supreme Management and Ultimate Emperor.
If your company has so many Managers, and Upper Managers, and Supreme Council, it has some shitload of money to pay $200/pc to Microsoft every 5 years.
And don't talk about open-source, I don't think that companies are so idealists.
If GNU was a copy of Microsoft products, I swear to my life, I would switch to OSX.
I agree with this completely. You dont communicate with other businesses with office documents, you send PDF's. You want something that maintains presentation, while giving you some piece of mind that some desk jockey isnt editing away at your document only to be picked up by a manager/executive and then wondering why you are offering low prices etc.
Normal computer usage is creating documents for others to view them
Depends how you define "Normal". This is definitely not my normal usage of a computer.
Note however that I agree with you on the ribbon thing, I prefer it over old menus, even if it took me a while to get used to it and every now and then it still takes me a few minutes to find that old option that I haven't used in the past months/years (but I'm a linux guy, using Office only once in a while).
Why would a contractor or supplier/vendor highlight your resume? I believe that the GP doesn't want to send editable forms to such people.
This argument really refers to recruitment agencies, who love to receive people's CVs (resumes) in Word format so they can quickly copy and paste the information into their own template and thus make it look like they have added some value as part of the justification for their fees..
But this is a relatively specialised case, normally when you send documents to external customers, contractors or whoever you don't normally want them to be editable.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Sorry Latex does not cut it for marketing shops creating brochures and imageMagik or whatever it is called is no photoshop.
If marketing shops are too stupid to use LaTeX, then why should I bother with them?
Businesses exist to provide a service/product and make money, not to take part in software religious wars. They want common tools to be good enough to do what they want and not require specialised knowledge or expertise. If you can knock out your material on Word, anyone you employ can get straight down to working on it rather than having to learn LaTex
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
But Excel's graphing options are pretty much stuck in 1996.
MS Office's graphs are intended for general business users. If you have some especially complex technical graphing requirement, you should be using another or an additional piece of software. But for the majority of people, it's more convenient to have adequate graphing features built into the software you're already using.
For work, most people use basic line/.bar and pie charts, and that's about it.
Right tool for the right job, as always.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I didn't realize OO/Libre Office was so broken that it couldn't understand VBA.
Yes, 'Broken' in the same way a C compiler is broken because it can't compile Fortran.
Whatever Excel was "for", it has become a jack of all trades. It is often the quick dirty way to look at some data. And some of it's features, like pivot tables, make it even more powerful than some of the "additional pieces of software" you mention. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty with Matlab - but Matlab is really more suited to analyzing the same kind of data set over and over. Excel is far more flexible, even though it is not nearly as powerful overall.
The only place I would caution people away from Excel is in statistical analysis. Until very recently, some of the basic functions were simply broken. Even now, I don't always trust the results (though that may not be fair to the current version). Let's just say there has been a long history of problems.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Why do resume's need to be in an editable format? You ought to send the resume in PDF.
"resume's need to be in an editable format" so you can remove the offensive extraneous apostrophe's!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.