LibreOffice 4 Released

Titus Andronicus writes "LibreOffice 4.0.0 has been released. Some of the changes are for developers: an improved API, a new graphics stack, migrating German code comments to English, and moving from Apache 2.0 to LGPLv3 & MPLv2. Some user-facing changes are: better interoperability with other software, some functional & UI improvements, and some performance gains."

Comments

But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Archeopteryx]

I think the issue that needs to be faced is that it seems likely that Java is dead. As such, it seems unlikely to me that the interpreter will be maintained for much longer.

What are the options for a project like LibreOffice?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Until Java can be exorcised, this project is a non-starter.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[armanox]

Evidence please? Java is alive, kicking and screaming. Java 8 is coming down the turnpike. Java isn't going away anytime soon.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Desler]

OpenOffice/LibreOffice is like 90+% C++. The Java bits are mostly irrelevant.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[cognoscentus]

Not seen any evidence of this, other than the lack of security updates for browser-plugin based vulnerabilities on Oracle's part. Out of curiosity, if you mean server side Java as well as client-side java, could you cite references? This is not to doubt there are big issues with the JVM, and the seeming sloth of response of Oracle to some of them - I'm just wondering what the vast amount of server-side infrastructure would do if the JVM were to be EOLed. In terms of relatively high performance, managed platforms, given Microsoft's flight from CLR, what are the alternatives? And why does Oracle seem so indifferent?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Goddamn idiot mods can't handle the truth! The fact is, java must go. It's a toy 'language' to teach little kids about computers. It was never meant to do real computational work. For that you need assembly, or straight up binary.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[armanox]

write once, infect anywhere?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[medv4380]

Did someone up and rewrite it all to Java, because last I heard it's mostly in C++. Java's just used for optional things.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"I think the issue that needs to be faced is that it seems likely that Java is dead."

Well, you had better tell that to Google since it is the core language for all Android apps. You seem to be confusing a few vulnerabilities in Oracle's Java Runtime Environment with the entire Java software ecosystem. In general, Linux systems running Libre Office tend to not even use Oracles JRE. Java isn't going anywhere.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Admitting that you don't understand the difference between a plugin and Java itself brings you closer to actually knowing what you talk about.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[DickBreath]

I think the vulnerabilities are mostly confined to the browser plug in. Not the entire Java runtime.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[samkass]

It also trades back and forth with C as the single most popular programming language in the world, on which huge amounts of server software is written-- almost twice as popular as C++, which is what most of LibreOffice is actually written in and three times more popular than C#, its biggest competitor in the bytecode-on-virtual-machine environment.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Java isn't going anywhere - not forward, and not away either. It's here to stay and for last 5 years it has not introduced anything new significant - nothing wrong with that - there is nothing wrong with a stable language (it's something C++ people don't seem to get).

Oracle isn't the only JVM vendor. Oracle isn't going to EOL Java anytime because their whole business stands on Java - if you installed anything since Oracle 8i, you'd understand why Oracle bought Sun, and why Java isn't going to have any problem surviving.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[colfer]

And you do not need the JRE to run LibreOffice.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

...or straight up binary.

Unless you're keying the bits with a set of telegraph keys attached to your CPU's data bus, it's cheating!

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Zero__Kelvin]

I think that you are correct. I know that the way I said it nobody can say I misinformed anyone. I stated it that way I did to avoid the case where I might be more explicit and then have misinformed someone.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Enderandrew]

Java is dead?

Last time I checked, enterprise shops are still hiring more Java developers than any other kind. There are a lot of reasons I don't care for Java, but I would never in a million years say Java is dead.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[DarwinSurvivor]

Then show us a virus that took advantage of Java.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[ADRA]

The last 5 years introduced 2 enterprise Java standards enhancements which were in fact very big deals. The JVM and the language itself are getting rather slow, but its not the job of a language to constantly adapt to a changing world. That's why Java has thousands of potentially competing libraries that sit on top of the base implementation. The same could be said for C/C++, or most other languages. The innovation will come from the communities driving them.

Does Java have a vibrant development community? IMHO yes, there are a lot of paid and independent projects that really make programming for the platform easier and more effective.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[serviscope_minor]

Goddam idiot AC,

Dude, did you actually read the original post?

It was never meant to do real computational work. For that you need assembly, or straight up binary.

If that's not an obvious (and actually quite amusing) troll, then I don't know what is.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[swillden]

OpenOffice/LibreOffice is like 90+% C++. The Java bits are mostly irrelevant.

To be precise, as computed by sloccount, libreoffice-4.0.0.3.tar.xz contains:

cpp: 3990644 (87.04%)
java: 400958 (8.75%)
ansic: 91036 (1.99%)
perl: 42456 (0.93%)
python: 17392 (0.38%)
sh: 17256 (0.38%)
yacc: 8228 (0.18%)
cs: 6648 (0.15%)
asm: 3269 (0.07%)
objc: 2602 (0.06%)
lex: 2030 (0.04%)
awk: 907 (0.02%)
pascal: 800 (0.02%)
csh: 235 (0.01%)
lisp: 115 (0.00%)
php: 104 (0.00%)
sed: 7 (0.00%)

However, as Desler said, the Java bits are actually optional.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[shitzu]

But last time i checked, LibreOffice still complained about missing java runtime (on my OSX) although i have switched it off in LibreOffice prefs.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[MightyMartian]

In twenty years, it will be the COBOL of the time... except of course COBOL will probably still be around then too.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[armanox]

Java is optional in modern LO/OO (I seem to remember Star Office being enirely in Java ~2001). I was making a remark at the OP about Java in general.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Go back to coding in VB6, asswipe.

False dichotomy alert!

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[seyfarth]

Why didn't they write a little Fortran, Cobol and D to round the number of languages to an even twenty?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[denvergeek]

Can a brother get a "whoosh"?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[kdemetter]

Ezekiel 23:20

ancient porn ?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[cbhacking]

No brainfuck? Can that tool even recognize Whitespace? Hmph...

On a more serious note, why the hell are there 6 kloc of C# and a hundred lines of PHP in there??

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[niiler]

I think the real issue is that Anonymous Coward has dissociative identity disorder. He/She/It keeps making statements and then disagreeing with him/her/itself.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[swillden]

PHP, I don't know. I'd guess the C# has to do with some bit that integrates with .NET environments.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[LordLimecat]

Oh look heres one from 4 weeks ago.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57563567-263/new-malware-exploiting-java-7-in-windows-and-unix-systems/

Its worth noting that there have been 3 new iterations of Java in the last 4 weeks, each fixing security holes that the last left. All software has security flaws, but Im beginning to think that all security flaws had their genesis in JRE; it certainly seems like an endless source of them.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[LordLimecat]

what the heck are the 115 lines of lisp for?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[LordLimecat]

You dont etch magnetized disks, unless you wish them to cease functioning.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

what the heck are the 115 lines of lisp for?

Funny that you worry about Lisp, while the PHP code leaves you unfazed. :-)

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[ericcc65]

Unless you're keying the bits with a set of telegraph keys attached to your CPU's data bus, it's cheating!

I prefer a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

http://xkcd.com/378/

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[vladmihaisima]

Real people write directly hardware description languages. Why write binary when you can design your own custom hardware?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[aztracker1]

I would state that JavaScript is probably the most popular, in terms of developers that write something in a given language in a given year. I doubt that there are 3x the number of developers writing in Java than C#... I know that private/intranet development is pretty much split between Java, C# and *other*... which accounts for most actual development, not necessarily use.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

if you read the article and click through to the Sophos website that describes the Mal/JavaJar trojan, you will realize that this is another instance of the browser plugin being exploited and not Java itself.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[shutdown -p now]

It's here to stay and for last 5 years it has not introduced anything new significant - nothing wrong with that - there is nothing wrong with a stable language (it's something C++ people don't seem to get).

It's not so much stable as it is slow-moving. It's getting most of the same features that e.g. C# does, it just takes twice as long.

But as far as "anything new significant" goes... did you see the current drafts of Project Lambda? That's supposed to be a part of Java 8...

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[shutdown -p now]

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even C may die

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[labnet]

...or straight up binary.

Unless you're keying the bits with a set of telegraph keys attached to your CPU's data bus, it's cheating!

I hear Chuck Norris just twitches his left eye while sleeping to encode binary updates to the BSD kernal.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[hairyfeet]

Why was this labeled troll? I've been saying since the ODF took control that we frankly shouldn't judge LibreOffice until they had time to excise Java (which Sun jammed in all over the place) and modularize the code, until then they are gonna be busy cleaning up the mess that Sun made.

But considering how risky Java is and how much of LO depends on having Java it should really be looked at as just writer with some WIP stuff that really won't be useful until its rebuilt. If you don't install java there is just a lot of LO that doesn't work, sorry but its true unless they've managed to do a rewrite since 3.4 which i kinda doubt.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[sproketboy]

Of course. Many of the C# features are garbage so why add them to Java?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[ThePhilips]

In LibreOffice, Java parts are being slowly rewritten in Python.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[ilsaloving]

Luxury! When I was your age I had to walk (without shoes) to a canyon, and bang two rocks together to make my zeros and ones. I'd do the calculations by timing my bangs so that the resulting constructive and destructive interference between the different echos would act as a full adder!

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Why make hardware when you can just run the algorithms in your mind?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[ChunderDownunder]

emacs key-bindings ??? :)

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[TsuruchiBrian]

BIll just schooled you.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[TsuruchiBrian]

They probably had a surplus of parentheses that they needed to stash somewhere.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[shutdown -p now]

Given that Java ended up adding pretty much all of them anywhere, your point seems pretty weak. Care to name any specific "garbage" features, anyway?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[greg1104]

You had two rocks?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...you DO know that various flavors of VB, "programs" written in Excel and Access and IE 6 only Intranet apps are ALSO big in the enterprise, yes?

Just because something is "big in enterprise" doesn't make it good or even right, it just makes it big in enterprise, that's all.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[hairyfeet]

That would be a legitimate argument IF Oracle didn't have Java re-enable the damned plug in (along with providing crapware) every time you run the latest security update. So whether the Java fans like it or not if you didn't install java there wouldn't be the constant security updates that re-enable the plugin that then leaves a door you could drive a truck through ready for the next malware.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[jafac]

Penetrating children with toys? What is this, 4chan?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[pspahn]

Maybe something to do with using Base to connect to a MySQL database?

Everyone rags on PHP and that makes me sad. =(

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[swillden]

Actually, I looked and it's a little script that generates various sizes of icons.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[jbolden]

Java started life as Oak an embedded language. It was always meant to do real work.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[jrumney]

Maybe something to do with using Base to connect to a MySQL database?

Yeah, because it is of course, impossible to use MySQL from any other language. Base's database connectivity is all via native code for more popular databsaes, and java for the rest.

The actual use of PHP in LibreOffice seems to be to allow running the headless version of libreoffice to be called from PHP to do document conversions etc.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[sproketboy]

Really? Java didn't add shit enums (Java's implementation is better and does not repeat the same mistakes as C++), partial classes, structs, operator overloading, etc.. assinc methods, the whole linq retardedness. ShitPascalCamelCaseConventionForEverything. You see being a microsoftie like you means you're too fucken ignorant to see how shit this all is.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[shutdown -p now]

Java didn't add shit enums (Java's implementation is better and does not repeat the same mistakes as C++)

It's better, yes... except for performance, which is quite a bit worse.

partial classes, structs, operator overloading, etc.. assinc methods

And the problem with all these things is?..

(oh, and it's spelled "async")

the whole linq retardedness.

It's going to be halfway there as of Java 8 with Project Lambda - no special syntax for sequence comprehensions, but a full set of library operators.

ShitPascalCamelCaseConventionForEverything

It's a code formatting convention, not a language feature.

You see being a microsoftie like you means you're too fucken ignorant to see how shit this all is.

So why don't you enlighten me? Please, be specific. I'm eager to hear a well-reasoned argument about why exactly all these things are "shit".

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[sproketboy]

"It's better, yes... except for performance, which is quite a bit worse."

Well google it. You'll find most benchmarks put Java ahead of .NET so.....

Let's see:

Partial classes: Do I really have to explain that one? This is just a hack around limitations of the UI design tools.

Structs: Really? In a modern OO programming language? No reason for these and they complicate the type system. Also they behave differently than objects but they look identical. At least in C++ they use a different operator. The M$ marketing department who designed C# didn't learn that lesson.

Operator overloading: Ah yes, the single feature that killed SmallTalk. Back in the day IBM was pushing this language as their "enterprise" language. Trouble was with bigger applications the code became less and less readable and maintainable. Java fixed that problem and then the M$ marketing department who designed C# reintroduced that problem for you. They didn't learn that lesson either.

"async" methods: Lots of unforeseen side effects here. Complicates the already complicated and slower C# compiler. This one's new so we'll have to wait and see.

I forgot properties at the language level: No good convention for them. Hides performance deficits.

There's others I think but It's 4 am and I'm tired. ;)

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[DarwinSurvivor]

That's the java BROWSER PLUGIN. Different beast entirely.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[shutdown -p now]

Well google it. You'll find most benchmarks put Java ahead of .NET so.....

The reason why many benchmarks put Java ahead is because Sun/Oracle JVM (a particular implementation) has better GC and better JIT than Microsoft .NET (a particular implementation). It has nothing to do with language design.

And we were talking about enums specifically. If you write a benchmark on them, you'll quickly see that they, in particular, are slower. No surprise there, given how they're implemented.

All that said, I do not dispute that, for a higher-level language, Java enums are better designed than C# enums - I personally prefer the former, and don't much care about the minor perf hit that entails. So, okay, Java has one language feature that came in later and was designed better as a result. But only one.

Partial classes: Do I really have to explain that one? This is just a hack around limitations of the UI design tools.

Partial classes are there for any kind of code generation, not just UI design tools - and code generation is pretty common for advanced scenarios in any language that doesn't have proper macros, be it Java or C#. And they're far more convenient than what you see with most Java Swing UI designers, which crap all over the code you actually edit.

(to remind, C# did not have partial classes in 1.x, and it had the same problem with generated code inserted in the middle of user-editable files)

Structs: Really? In a modern OO programming language? No reason for these and they complicate the type system. Also they behave differently than objects but they look identical.

Structs are semantically different - they are value types, meaning that they don't have an intrinsic object identity, and compare field-by-field by default. This alone is difference important enough to surface it in the type system - but then there's also the performance benefit. Even today, Java JIT is struggling to do escape analysis well enough to stack-allocate classes like Point in many cases. And this is especially prominent when you use generics, and something like ArrayList<Integer> is slow as molasses.

Operator overloading: Ah yes, the single feature that killed SmallTalk. Back in the day IBM was pushing this language as their "enterprise" language. Trouble was with bigger applications the code became less and less readable and maintainable. Java fixed that problem and then the M$ marketing department who designed C# reintroduced that problem for you. They didn't learn that lesson either.

Indeed - writing a.multiply(b.divide(c)).negate() is so much more convenient than -a*b/c when you're working with something like BigInteger - right?

Operator overloading is a necessary language feature to enable expressive libraries. It can be abused, yes, and historically it was abused in C++ - but not in C#.

"async" methods: Lots of unforeseen side effects here. Complicates the already complicated and slower C# compiler. This one's new so we'll have to wait and see.

Async methods don't add any new side effects compared to manually written continuation chains with lambdas - they just make the code more familiar and easier to reason about. And you don't use them willy-nilly - you use them where you'd have a continuation chain otherwise, Node.js style.

I forgot properties at the language level: No good convention for them. Hides performance deficits.

And the difference with explicit getX/setX calls is?.. (other than brevity) In Java, where every field is similarly wrapped, you also cannot reason about performance etc - one get may be a thin wrapper over a field, another might launch an expensive computation.

In fact, in C#, this difference is more profound, since the convention is that property access should not be expensive. So in C#, if I see Foo, it's cheap, but if it's GetFoo(), it's expensive - provided that the person who wrote that class was good enough to make that difference. But even in the worst case, it's no worse than Java.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[tehcyder]

Yes, but if something is "big in enterprise" it's unlikely to get replaced overnight on a whim.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[freezin fat guy]

Well, you had better tell that to Google since it is the core language for all Android apps.

Not to mention server side and Google Web Toolkit.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[LordLimecat]

I realized after posting that you were referring to "Java the language", but it should be realized that when non-developers say "Java has a security hole" they are generally referring to the JRE (in fact you see that in the ambiguous wording in my last sentence in the post above).

I dont know what a "security hole" in a programming language would look like, it seems like an absurd notion on the face of it. Security "holes" have to do with the fact that a program can be made to operate in a fashion unintentioned by its author; conceivably one could be caused by a bad compiler, but in all other cases it seems to me that it must be due to programmer error or ignorance of the language / compiler.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

The context of this thread was Java's alleged vulnerabilities tainting the code base of LibreOffice. No browser was mentioned. The java plugin is a "helper application" that a browser uses to start up a Java applet from within the browser. The plugin itself is where the vulnerabilities originate not the JRE. Disable the plugin then you have cut off most (if not all) the vulnerabilities people talk about.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[vandamme]

If they had used Ada, maybe they'd let the military use it.

I had to use Microsoft Turd all the time, yuck.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[ilsaloving]

I concede to you, sir. :)

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[hairyfeet]

Oh I agree completely, just look at how VB 6 even after all these years of abandonment by MSFT is still the #3 language. But the poster I was responding to was making it sound that being "big in enterprise" somehow made something "good" and that just isn't the case. if something is big in enterprise its just big in enterprise, not like they have a panel of "experts" that judge various software and declare "yes this IS good enough for the enterprise, blue ribbon". Be nice if that were so but all the badly written Excel and Access "apps" show that is far from the case.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[sproketboy]

Partial classes: He explains it better than me. http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2006/05/partial_classes.php

structs: open your project and change a class to a struct - recompile. Everything is fine except YOUR APP IS NOW TOTALLY BROKEN.

"And the difference with explicit getX/setX calls is?.. "

In C# Foo is just as expensive as GetFoo() - that fact is just hidden from you.

It's obvious to see where performance deficits lie in code like this:

for (int j=0; j getTotal(); j++) {
}

rather than
for (int j=0; j Total; j++) {
}

See the difference?

"Indeed - writing a.multiply(b.divide(c)).negate() is so much more convenient than -a*b/c when you're working with something like BigInteger - right?"

Except that it's abused when this is used for non numeric purposes like er, Microsoft does with event handling code. I agree that bigint should have an overloaded operator - as long as operators are not definable by the dev.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[shutdown -p now]

Partial classes: He explains it better than me. http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2006/05/partial_classes.php [whattofix.com]

There's not a single mention of the phrase "code generation" in that post (or even "generation"). Which means that the guy has completely missed the point, and has nothing useful to say on the topic.

Have you ever dealt with build-time code generation in an OO language? If you think it's limited to UI designers, you are missing on a great many things...

structs: open your project and change a class to a struct - recompile. Everything is fine except YOUR APP IS NOW TOTALLY BROKEN.

Open your Java project and change all mentions of int to a float, and recompile. Everything is fine, except your app is now likely quite broken.

Why the hell would you just randomly change something from a class to a struct? They are different semantically - classes have object identity, structs don't - and, correspondingly, they are used to model very different things.

In C# Foo is just as expensive as GetFoo() - that fact is just hidden from you. ... See the difference?

No, I don't see the difference, because there isn't any. In Java, you never access fields on other objects directly, and therefore your code will always have something like foo.getTotal() - and there's no way to tell whether it's expensive or not - and any mention of getTotal() can be expensive if the guy who wrote it was an idiot. Similarly, in C#, you never access fields on other objects directly, and therefore your code will always use property accessors, like foo.Total - and there is no way to tell whether it's expensive or not - and any mention of Total can be expensive if the guy who wrote it was an idiot. So in both cases you hope for the best, but remain prepared for the worst.

The only real difference is that C# version is shorter, and that properties are distinct entities on type info / Reflection level, with enforced uniformity - as opposed to Java's defined-by-convention bean properties.

Except that it's abused when this is used for non numeric purposes like er, Microsoft does with event handling code.

For one thing, operators + and - on delegates and events are not introduced by operator overloading - they're part of the language itself, just like + for strings. If you want an actual example where the standard library uses operator overloading, it's System.Decimal.

For another, speaking of strings, why aren't you objecting to + being used for "non-numeric" purposes in that case? Java does it just the same, and so do most languages. That ship has sailed a long time ago. So, then, if + concatenates strings, why shouldn't it also union delegates?

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS?

[BevanFindlay]

Of course, one could argue that the "set the universal constants..." comment from the mouseover text on that would suggest that only God is the only real programmer... :-) It's a bit like the old "If you want to make a cake from scratch, start by creating the universe."

Damn!

[Skiron]

I just pre-paid £140.00 for MS Office on Gnu/Linux! :(

Re:Damn!

[Zero__Kelvin]

Do you mean that you bought Crossover, which allows you to run Office along with many other Windows programs, or did Microsoft suddenly start supporting Linux?

Re:Damn!

[devjoe]

He refers to this story, though we've only heard that MS plans to release Office on Linux, not that you can already pre-order it.

Re:Damn!

[Skiron]

Yes, I guess he's new here - I was joking of course

Re:Damn!

[chthon]

+1 Funny, Please!

Re:Damn!

[bestadvocate]

mod points are limited, one must use them on comments that truly annoy.

Re:Damn!

[Lord Apathy]

Bull fucking shit. The day I see Microsoft release a version of office for linux is the day I'll reviel my true name and vow to never write a star trek book again.

Bullshit is say, bullshit!

Minor Annoyance

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's just a minor inconvenience, but I wish open source projects would Osborne themselves on their download pages when they know a new release is imminent so I wouldn't have to download projects that I don't keep close track of twice in two days.

That said, thanks for the awesome software!

Re:Minor Annoyance

[Zero__Kelvin]

For future reference, if you googled Libre Office Release Schedule you could have saved yourself some trouble. Substitute any other project with admittedly varying results. e.g. Mageia 3 Release Schedule.

MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Dystopian Rebel]

For the sake of order on this sadly degenerating News for Nerds site, please add your post to this parent if the essence of your "thinking" is one of the following:

= LibreOffice is not MS Office, therefore it's crap.
= LibreOffice uses Java, which everyone know is not as fast and portable as .NET.
= LibreOffice lacks MS Office proprietary features and misfeatures, therefore it disappoints me terribly.
= LibreOffice doesn't read or write the constantly mutating, rubbish file formats of MS Office the way only MS Office can.
= LibreOffice isn't backed by a large corporation that Only Wants The Best For Me.
= LibreOffice is bloated, and I insist on the lean responsiveness and stability of MS Office!
= LibreOffice doesn't have ribbons to help me not find features that I used to use.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[hedwards]

Libreoffice uses very little Java at this point. That's one of the things that's changed since they forked from OO.org.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Desler]

It didn't use it much before that point either. It's always been predominately a C++ codebase. It was just mostly ancient and crappily-written C++. Java was only needed for the HSQLDB, accessibility/assistive features and some of the wizards. The vast majority of its users can get away without those features.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Bill_the_Engineer]

How dare you use facts on slashdot! ;)

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[fermion]

LibreOffice doesn't read or write the constantly mutating, rubbish file formats of MS Office the way only MS Office can.

While it may not write the file formats developed by the marketing teams to encourage users to upgrade, it certainly reads them quite well, and often more reliable than MS. Not in the sense that it 100% present the random formatting exactly as MS would, but in that it will, in my experience, read 100% of the files and present the text in relatively accurate manner.

In my experience, MS office will not, mostly because one does not always have the most up to date version of MS office, and one does not always have the most up to date filter.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[denis-The-menace]

The resulting code base is rather different from the original one, as several million lines of code have been added and removed, by adding new features, solving bugs and regressions, adopting state of the art C++ constructs, replacing tools, getting rid of deprecated methods and obsoleted libraries, and translating twenty five thousand lines of comments from German to English.

RTFA

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Enderandrew]

That started happening as soon as they forked.

Sun made it really hard to get some changes made upstream, and some developers were unwilling to hand over copyright on their code contributions. So OpenOffice stagnated for many years.

There was a cleaner, more feature-rich version called go-oo (which many Linux distros shipped, without really telling anyone they were getting the fork). That fork because the basis of LibreOffice. Once they weren't tied to staying close to the OpenOffice base, they started cleaning cruft like mad.

In case you didn't notice, they added a bunch of new features, while the size of the installer dropped from 200 MB to 183 MB in this latest release.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Silentknyght]

= LibreOffice doesn't read or write the constantly mutating, rubbish file formats of MS Office the way only MS Office can.

While I recognize it's perhaps not a fair judge of LibreOffice, life isn't fair. I use LibreOffice and like it, and can handle the quirks when using non-native documents. But when even faced with "it's free vs. it costs you money", even ridiculously frugal people like my father WILL NOT SWITCH. His primary concern is his clients are able to read & use the documents he provides--and that conversely, he's able to read & use the documents his clients provide--without any hassle whatsoever. Let's face it, perfect interoperability with zero hassle is a big seller these days; look at Apple.

Only some people will comprise on price vs functionality. But nearly EVERYONE will switch to Libreoffice when they can save big on price without any compromise on functionality.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[mspohr]

I have had better luck with LibreOffice being able to read old/odd MS Office formats better than MS Office itself.
MS often breaks compatibility with itself to force upgrades.
YMMV

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[lister king of smeg]

If your customers need to be able to veiw your documents properly and consistently couldn't you just save the documents as a pdf which will display properly everywhere?

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Knuckles]

It's a good helper for old MS Office files when MS Office itself chokes on it. But if your daily work involves exchanging current MS Office files with co-workers and customers, with all involved parties editing the documents, you absolutely have neither time nor will to constantly deal with even minor issues. And like it or not, that's the reality for a lot of office workers.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Desler]

Yes, I read that. And? How does that change the fact that OO.org used ancient and crappily-written C++?

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[clong83]

Fair points, all. I have no problem with using LibreOffice myself, I find it works as good or better than Office for most things.

However, the lack of interoperability with MS Office is a major sticking point. You may be correct that this is mainly because of the multitude of crappy and proprietary file formats that MS puts out, but as a practical matter, MS Office is what most people use. When I have a client or my boss that asks me to send them a few power point slides, or someone sends me some powerpoint slides, I simply can't use LibreOffice, as much as I would like that. And I can't simply tell clients and authority types that "You're doing it wrong. Use this other software that I use!" I have to pull up Office in wine, or reboot. It sucks, but that's where it's at.

So, it may not really be LibreOffice's fault, but it's still a problem. Even for people who would like to use it.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[snadrus]

Look at Apple? No iOS Flash, Little attempt at interoperability outside their walls. No competing apps.
There isn't a "no hassle" file format except maybe a Google docs link (as it adjusts for various browsers).

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Dynetrekk]

LibreOffice doesn't read or write the constantly mutating, rubbish file formats of MS Office the way only MS Office can.

True. LibreOffice actually helped me salvage a Word 2003 file into Word 2010, as Word 2010 itself would scramble the whole darned thing. Libre is much better, in my (limited) experience.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[LordLimecat]

Just because Office is bloated doesnt mean that LibreOffice isnt.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[mspohr]

My reality using LibreOffice is that I constantly exchange MS Office files with collaborators and don't have any issues.
(Actually, I prefer to use Google Docs for collaborative work but some people are still stuck with MS Office so I am forced to exchange files.)

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Knuckles]

Good for you, I've never seen a PowerPoint file open fully correctly. I guess it depends.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[David Gerard]

LibreOffice does write DOCX.

AOO doesn't yet, but they're apparently working on it for the 4.x line.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[hobarrera]

Sadly, they departed too much from their OpenOffice origins.

As a former OO user (who never really used MSO), I find LO very alienating. There are some stupid features that annoy me to a point where it becomes unusable.

Here's a really stupid, but extremely annoying example:
OO opened ".pps" files in impress, so I could quickly view attachments from my email client and quickly scroll through them.
LO attempts to imitate MSO by opening them only in a fullscreenviewer, with transitions and music (which I'd rather avoid). There is no way to go back to the OO behaviour. The path is now:
1) save file to RW disk.
2) rename file
3) open renamed file.

The worst part isn't the change in default, but the fact that there is no option to go back to OO behaviours. Sure, MSO users feel more at home, but OO users feel they're using some new, wierd office suite they don't quite understand.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[westyvw]

Except Libre office has much better functionality, even though its less on price. Better integration with Calc, better formatting, better large document handling, the ability to extend it through the language of your choice, the ability to use scripts to update presentations without ever opening them, etc. I had both Microsoft and OpenOffice years ago, and when working on large (3000 + page documents) that I didnt want to use Latex for (mostly due to sharing with my editor), I prefered OpenOffice. In the end, we all use these "office" suites for purposes that are better served in another application. How many of us fought with layout in a word processor, when we all know Illustrator or Inkscape would have been a better choice? In the end LibreOffice has functionality, particularly today, that rivals or exceeds the suites you pay for.

To address your father, he really should not be sending documents to his clients in a processing format, but rather a PDF or use an online tool for collaboration. In the business I worked for, you could get fired for sharing a document in its raw format: too great a risk of sharing redacted or edited information.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[westyvw]

Such as?

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Osgeld]

huge spread sheets and the ability to take a ms document given to me by a customer and not totally fuck the formatting

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[TsuruchiBrian]

I don't like LibreOffice because using it brings back horrible memories of flunking English class with a fancy new open source word processor back in 1999.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[TsuruchiBrian]

What's an email client?

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Enderandrew]

You may not be aware, but that is correct behavior.

A PPT file is meant to open in edit mode. A PPS file is meant to auto-play a presentation when opened.

If you don't want it to auto-play, then blame the person who saved the file as a PPS file.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[yuhong]

to force upgrades

They do so for security reasons. How often do you receive Office 95 files as email attachments, for example? Many of them that are disabled by default can be reenabled by using a registry key setting.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[siride]

What people use who don't have time to futz around with overcomplicated terminal readers and have real work to get done.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[tarball_tinkerbell]

How about: LibreOffice loses images from documents regardless of which file format you use, resulting in hours of extra unnecessary work & a great deal of annoyance for coworkers? http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/2515/writer-with-pictures-often-fails/

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[vandamme]

They usually lead off with
= LibreOffice is not absolutely 100% compatible with the Gold Standard Of All Word Processing Formats, that has been used since the dawn of time and cannot be changed or else many middle managers, IT staff and purchasing agents will be fired and civilization will collapse

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[hobarrera]

You may not be aware, but that is correct behavior.

The correct behaviour for software I use, is for me to be able to control how it behaves, not for MS to dictate how I should use it.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[EvanED]

Except Libre office has much better functionality, even though its less on price.

I'd just like to issue a counter-argument. I use word processors... well, basically only ever to read stuff other people have made, and then rarely. Almost all of my writing is done in plain text, in HTML, or in Latex.

But what I do use office suites for with some regularity is presentations. And to be honest, IMO Impress doesn't even hold a candle to PowerPoint. A few years ago I was gearing up for something which I expected would need me to make a lot of presentations. (Turns out I did something different, but whatever.) I spent a fair bit of time just trying to use both PPT and Impress, so I could figure out which I wanted to use. And for whatever reason, Impress was just really frustrating to use. At the time, it was far worse than even old versions of PPT, and 2007 was (I think) a large improvement over 2003 for reasons other than the ribbon. (Actually even 2010 made some very nice UI improvements over 2007, which surprised me.) The situation is a bit better now with Impress, but it's still not even close IMO.

PowerPoint has some problems, and it's not really the presentation software that I actually want. But it's still worlds better than Impress. (I'd like to try Keynote, but my usual line there is I don't want to spend $1000 on presentation software, even if it does come with a free computer. :-))

(For all the Beamer fans out there, as much as I like Latex for other things, I think it's kind of crazy for presentations. IMO, presentations are a medium where Latex's strengths are unimportant and its weaknesses are important.)

(Also, just to be clear, I am somewhat a MS fanboy by /. standards, but my closest relation with them was failing to get an internship with them not quite a decade ago.)

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[EvanED]

Also, I needed to make a diagram just this morning, and decided to give LibreOffice Draw a try. Even in the new LO release, the corner block arrow has no handle for changing the width of the line, which means that AFAICT the thickness scales to the overall size of the diagram portion.

This one thing basically left Draw dead in the water for what I wanted to do.

(Actually Impress seems to have the same problem. I wonder if lack of control like that was part of why I disliked Impress.)

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here!

[Enderandrew]

You do get to control how it behaves, by choosing the correct file format.

If you are ignorant of how the feature works and choose the wrong file format, that doesn't mean MS is to blame.

Difference between GPL and MPLv2?

[TheNinjaroach]

I'm having a hard time understanding the difference between GPL and MPLv2 - can anyone help explain, or link me to a resource that's more helpful than the ones I've found?

Re:Difference between GPL and MPLv2?

[danhuby]

GPL: the whole of a derived work, even new components, must remain under the GPL
MPL: only the code files licensed under the MPL must remain under the MPL

Re:Difference between GPL and MPLv2?

[danhuby]

And for completion:

BSD/MIT: all derived works can be relicensed as proprietary

Re:Difference between GPL and MPLv2?

[samkass]

I'm having a hard time understanding the difference between GPL and MPLv2 - can anyone help explain, or link me to a resource that's more helpful than the ones I've found?

Also note that LGPL is very different from GPL...

Re:Difference between GPL and MPLv2?

[cozziewozzie]

Essentially, MPLv2 is like the LGPL, except it only applies to the same file.

If you modify a file under MPLv2, you have to release the source code to your modifications. If you add your modifications in a separate file and combine the two, then you don't have to release your code.

With LGPL, you would have to release the source code in both cases, since both are derivative works.

Re:Difference between GPL and MPLv2?

[TheRaven64]

LGPLv3 is not actually very different from GPLv3. It was rewritten as GPLv3 + some extra permissions. It is compatible with Apache 2.0, but it is not compatible with GPLv2 or LGPLv2.

Re:Difference between GPL and MPLv2?

[mister_playboy]

And for a shot at starting a "my license is freer than your license flame war":

BSD/MIT

Fixed for completion's sake. :p

Re:Difference between GPL and MPLv2?

[TheRaven64]

LGPLv2 upgrades to GPLv2, which contains the "or any later version" clause

False. LGPLv2 does not contain an 'or any later version' clause. The rest of this paragraph is not quoted because it didn't make any sense.

(It may not be compatible with GPLv2 minus the "any later version" clause, but that's an obvious result of having one thing saying version 3 or newer, and the other thing saying version 2 only).

The 'or later' clause is not part of any version of the GPL or LGPL. It is simply a convention that the FSF encourages users of their licenses to adopt. You don't have to modify the license to remove it (which, by the way, you can't legally do because the FSF asserts copyright on their licenses and does not permit derived works).

Pre-fork OO

[Anne_Nonymous]

I have been using the last pre-fork version of OO. It works fine and mostly does what I want.

Is there any good reason to switch to the latest Libre?

Re:Pre-fork OO

[DarwinSurvivor]

I've found it to be more stable and support the Microsoft formats with less errors (for the few times I'm forced to use them). It also seems a LOT more responsive and 4.0 is supposed to be even more so. At this point there's really no reason not to.

Why this dilution?

[trifish]

OpenOffice is under Apache Foundation now and it is proper FOSS. This activity only dilutes the efforts to develop a FOSS alternative to MS Office. End it. Don't be childish. Thanks.

Re:Why this dilution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consensus is with libreoffice, openoffice being flossed, was flossed w/o a community. LibreOffice was forked when Oracle cocked up.

Re:Why this dilution?

[denis-The-menace]

Oracle tossed OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation after LibreOffice took-off in terms of features, bugfixes and mind-share.

OpenOffice is about 2 years behind thanks to Oracle.

Re:Why this dilution?

[gQuigs]

LibreOffice is the office suite with the momentum at this point. So I agree in part, except it it is the Apache Foundation that should stop and let the organization created specifically for this purpose, The Document Foundation, to develop the premier FLOSS office suite.

Oracle had OpenOffice frozen in place for over a year. You can't just freeze a project and expect the community will just sit there doing nothing for that long of a time.

On another note, I find the LibreOffice name much better. Although part of that might be remembering when OpenOffice was called OpenOffice.org.

Re:Why this dilution?

[jfengel]

Has there been any significant work on OpenOffice since the split?

I'm not crazy about having efforts diluted, but if they have to pick one and go forward with it, are there any advantages to going with OpenOffice rather than LibreOffice, aside from the less dreadful name?

Re:Why this dilution?

[Ded Bob]

I am pleased with OpenOffice (v3.4.1). I have not seen any need to try LibreOffice personally. My take is that both are developing new features.

Regarding new features in OpenOffice, https://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/merging_lotus_symphony_allegro_moderato talks about what is being merged into OpenOffice from IBM's Lotus Symphony. As long as IBM continues to develop Lotus Symphony, I think that OpenOffice will benefit earlier than LibreOffice as IBM tends to do a lot with the Apache foundation. I say earlier since LibreOffice can always get the code from OpenOffice.

Re:Why this dilution?

[robmv]

I am a Java developer, love the JVM, but if you think merging the Lotus Symphony code base with OpenOffice will be a good thing, you never used Symphony. Symphony is the Eclipse platform with added plug-ins that add old OpenOffice code to it. If an office suite is already a big program, running a big JVM process with OpenOffice inside is an awful monster. In the other hand LibreOffice is removing Java dependencies where it shouldn't be used, like the embedded database and some wizards and using it for what is a good tool, Java APIs for automation and access to core LibreOffice functionality from Java programs

Re:Why this dilution?

[steelfood]

Open Office is more or less playing catch up right now to LibreOffice.

And it kills me that such a good product has such a ridiculous name. It's a complete embarassment to say out loud. /rant

Re:Why this dilution?

[TheRaven64]

Once there was StarOffice, owned by Star Division.

Star Division was bought by Sun and the bits they owned were open sourced as OpenOffice. It was then renamed OpenOffice.org once they noticed someone else owned the OpenOffice trademark.

For years, Sun contributed 80% of the new code. Novell contributed about 10% and sulked that they weren't recognised as much as they felt they should be.

Novell started go-oo.org, containing their own patches to OpenOffice.org, including several things that were of dubious legality (e.g. implementing Microsoft patents that Microsoft guaranteed that they would not sue Novell for, but didn't extend this guarantee to anyone else).

Sun bought Oracle and most of the OpenOffice developers left (some voluntarily, others not) and found new employment.

Novell saw this as an opportunity to become the dominant players and pushed the LibreOffice brand for OO.o plus their patches. Lots of people fell for this and LibreOffice started to gain a lot more traction.

Most of the work in both forks is now by ex-Sun people. The code is horrible in both, although both teams are slowly trying to fix it.

Re:Why this dilution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look on the bright side: LibreOffice is about 2 years ahead, thanks to Oracle!

Re:Why this dilution?

[aardvarkjoe]

And it kills me that such a good product has such a ridiculous name. It's a complete embarassment to say out loud. /rant

Hey, I didn't realize that they finally renamed OpenOffice, getting rid of the idiotic ".org" at the end of the name. Naming a piece of software after a website made it sound far stupider than "LibreOffice" ever did.

Re:Why this dilution?

[hardie]

I think this is incorrect. I use OO at work remote at my home office. Work is in another state, they all use MS.

I started with LO but ran into a couple of significant issues. This was in the October-December 2012 timeframe, with the then current release.
1. My tech sent me an Excel file of data and plots. The plots were on the same sheet as the data, four columns of data, four plots. In LO one of the plots has the wrong data--it is plotting a different column than specified in the Excel file. I consider this a major error/problem. This alone would keep me from using LO.
2. If I put pictures into a text document and send it to the folks using Word, there are lots of format problems. Pictures are off center, so much as being half off the page. They are the wrong size, which screws up formatting from then until the next manual page break.

OO has neither of these problems. For that reason, I think it is far more compatible/reliable with MS Word and Excel.

Re:Why this dilution?

[euxneks]

This activity only dilutes the efforts to develop a FOSS alternative to MS Office.

"And we should only have one linux distro too! And only one car! And everyone should wear a turtleneck"

"But I don't like turtle-"

"SILENCE, HERETIC!"

Forking is fun, and everyone should be forking like rabbits. The strong code will survive and the weak will dwindle and die out from resource starvation. Forking is a healthy practice in FOSS and should not be shunned.

Re:Why this dilution?

[Ded Bob]

For what they have done, I think it is a good thing since it looks like a lot of the changes are bug fixes where language would not matter.

From the description of Lotus Symphony ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony#Features ), it looks like Eclipse is for some shell, so I do not know if that is part of what they will even consider using or not. OpenOffice may be taking ideas from it without the Eclipse requirement to develop their new task pane: http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Sidebar. The only thing I can tell is that there is a lot of C++ work in the sidebar branch of their repo.

I agree that Java was overused in places that it did not need to be. I personally prefer C and/or Python for work I do.

Re:Why this dilution?

[MaskedSlacker]

You forget the part where Oracle left OO.o in limbo for several months (?someone with a better memory and less beer may remember the exact timeline better than I do) after deciding not to develop it further before handing it off to Apache. THAT was what gave LibreOffice its momentum because no distro wanted to ship an EOLed office suite. By the time Oracle finally handed it off to Apache the damage was done.

"migrating German code comments to English"

[Dystopian Rebel]

Great, now I will know what the function with the following comment does:

"Gott vergib mir, das ist eine schreckliche Hack!"

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Great, now I will know what the function with the following comment does:

"Gott vergib mir, das ist eine schreckliche Hack!"

And, as we already know, this should speed up builds because your US-made compiler won't have to consult the German dictionary all the time to find out what all the texts actually mean.

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[Anonymous Coward]

posting AC since I don't have a /. account.

in fact, not "code-comments" in LibreOffice were german. Rather it were "germanisms" in the code itself. I can't remember specifics ATM, but it was naming of variables and functions that "looked akward" to native english speakers.

I'm not aiming for informative modpoints, although appreciated :)
I know the specifics because I speak english & german and considered attacking this bug 1-2 semesters ago.

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[LordLimecat]

English natives dont have a conception of masculine vs feminine words, and it honestly is a little confusing; Why must a word have a gender?

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

English natives dont have a conception of masculine vs feminine words

Of course they have, it's an obligatory grammatical category in all Indo-European languages. The fact that in most sentences, the gender is degenerated, doesn't actually matter. (BTW, I'm not a native, but wouldn't "notion" be more natural than "conception"? The latter sounds like German or French English.)

Why must a word have a gender?

Because the language works that way, for many values of language. Non-IE languages often have noun classes (for "'masculine' versus 'feminine'", substitute "'round things' versus 'long, thin things'"). You even have whole new grammatical categories in some language families, e.g., evidentiality (obligatory, of course).

Re: "migrating German code comments to English"

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who did a lot of those translations I may be able to explain the necessity for these:
First, LO's source code is old and massive. Most of the comments I translated were written somewhere in between 1999 and 2004.
Second, as anyone who has ever dealt with old, mature, complex code bases will tell you: you need as much information as possible about your code. This is due to bug fixes and quirks that evolved that code over time (=maturing a code base).
Of course, many of the comments are simple and obvious, but there's always the suspicion that some of them contain crucial information. This is exactly the reason why we're not using software translation programmes (e.g. Google Translate), but rather translate all comments by ourselves.

Finally, please note that the remark about translated comments is not meant as a feature advertisement for end-users, but as a public sign of gratification for those many volunteers that put much of their free time into doing them.

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[shutdown -p now]

The point is that grammatical gender for non-living things (and sometimes even for living ones) is assigned completely arbitrary, and is not even consistent from language to language, often even between ones in the same group. Why is "sun" masculine in French, feminine in German and neuter in Russian? (yes, I know about association with pagan gods, but from modern perspective it doesn't make any sense - and there are many things where there aren't even any mythological roots to derive the gender from)

And if gender is an obligatory grammatical category in I-E languages, then what is the gender of the English word "table", for example?

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[ACS Solver]

Because languages work differently and, inevitably, a language's features allow for methods of expression not found in languages lacking these features.

I agree word gender is arbitrary for most non-living things, and in German the genders can give me nightmares. But most Indo-European languages have gender and I can't really say that English is better off not having it (though it sure is simpler).

Then again, English is a pretty strange Indo-European language. It has a lot of complexity where it doesn't really add anything, like the plethora of irregular verbs, or the many words that end with the letter e for historical reasons, despite it not being pronounced for centuries. And in other areas, the simpler rules of English come at the cost of expressive ability. Almost non-existent verb conjugation makes things simple, but it also requires 3 words to say "we will run" as opposed to a heavily conjugated verb like "correremos".

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[shutdown -p now]

My native language (Russian) has gender, so I don't have a problem with the concept itself (though I still do when learning other languages and finding that it differs even for the most common word).

I was mainly just addressing your point that all I-E languages have grammatical gender. It's certainly very common, because PIE had it - and even English still has some remaining vestiges - but it's not a hard requirement.

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[RazorSharp]

English natives dont have a conception of masculine vs feminine words, and it honestly is a little confusing; Why must a word have a gender?

I'm not blonde! I'm blond! Don't call my canine a dog. She's a bitch. A ship is referred to using feminine pronouns. Okay, I'm nitpicking, but English speakers ought to have some conception of gender in language. Here in the states most high school graduates have to take a few years of a foreign language, usually Spanish/French.

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[MaskedSlacker]

Then again, English is a pretty strange Indo-European language. It has a lot of complexity where it doesn't really add anything, like the plethora of irregular verbs, or the many words that end with the letter e for historical reasons, despite it not being pronounced for centuries. And in other areas, the simpler rules of English come at the cost of expressive ability. Almost non-existent verb conjugation makes things simple, but it also requires 3 words to say "we will run" as opposed to a heavily conjugated verb like "correremos".

Compulsive linguistic fetishist chiming in here:

The "irregular verbs" are not irregular in English (at least, not if you're referring to the stem changers; there are some true irregulars but not many). Swim-swam-swum, sing-sang-sung, etc. (and several other varieties of stem-changers) are ALL regular. They were mislabeled as irregular by 19th century prescriptivist grammarians who didn't know what they're talking about (and who thought that Latin was "perfect" and that any deviation from Latin represented grammatical corruption). The "irregular" verbs are Anglo-Saxon strong verbs. They follow clear, regular patterns and pre-date the influence of Norman French.

Spelling peculiarities are a product of the (relative) freezing of orthography with the invention of the printing press. This is not a linguistic issue, it's one of editorial culture. We COULD have changed spellings as pronunciations changed (and other Indo-European cultures did change their orthography as pronunciation changed in the centuries since the invention of the printing press), but for political reasons have not. It has nothing to do with the language itself (other than the fact that freezing orthography tends to retard language change).

Verb conjugation was not nonexistent in Anglo-saxon words (your "irregular verbs"), and its slow disappearance is the result of Norman influence. Conjugation in Anglo-Saxon was a stem-change, not an inflection. Initially, the only nonconjugating words were borrowed from Latin and Norman French. Over time, because of the prestige status of Norman French, those words became the new normal in English, and old strong verbs begun to lose their conjugations. As an example, it used to be Climb-clamb-clumb, not Climb-climbed-climbed.

Your "we will run" vs "correremos" point about the Spanish being shorter is silly. The English version is 3 syllables and the Spanish is 4. So which is actually shorter to say?

English is weird for an Indo-European language because it is actually a hybrid of the Germanic and Romance branches. This hybridization stripped out incompatible features between the two source families.

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[LordLimecat]

"It" is used for all inanimate objects. Grammatical gender isnt about what pronoun you use-- that depends on the physiological gender of the subject-- but on the word itself.

Teacher in english, like with every impersonal noun, is "the teacher". In german it is the masculine "der Lehrer", rather than "das..." or "die...". In both cases you would use either "he" or "she" depending on the sex of the teacher, irrespective of the "gender" of "Lehrer".

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[LordLimecat]

Can you please give me an example of a gendered word, and what its gender is?

My understanding is generally that "grammatical gender" implies that for example different articles and endings are used by words syntactically around that word. I cannot think of an english sentence where swapping out one noun for another would affect the words around it,

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[LordLimecat]

Don't call my canine a dog. She's a bitch.

That is specifically a word for female dogs-- not all dogs.

Take the following with a grain of salt.

A ship is referred to using feminine pronouns.

That is not the same thing as grammatical gender.
Look up ship in English; note how there is no indication of its gender, nor is there any difference in usage.
Now look it up in German; note how it indicates "neuter" next to schiff, and it indicates that for neuter nouns, you use "das Schiff" as opposed to "der Schiff".

It also has nothing to do AFAIK with wither you use he or she vs it-- lets look at "teacher". It has no gender in english, and you would generally say "he" or "she" depending on whether the teacher in question was male or female. In german, "der Lehrer" is masculine, but once again, you would use "er" (he) or "sie" (she) depending on the gender of the teacher.

I am fairly certain we have no grammatical gender as I cannot name a single masculine noun, or their corresponding articles (eg, "[das / der / die] Noun").

You are right that many places teach foreign language but at least where I went to school that was always an elective, and my point was more that "gendered" words arent a native english concept.

Re:"migrating German code comments to English"

[oboeaaron]

Aber sicherlich ist diese Phrase im Nominativ, also:
"... das ist ein schrecklich Hack!"
Nicht wahr?

I think the volunteers shouldn't have slept in

[mrmaster]

I just upgraded a few machines to 3.6.x of whatever was on the site this morning. If they all are going to sleep in could they have at least put a message on the downloads page?!

Re:Grammar Check

[Skiron]

Grammar checking is always fuzzy in a computer algorithm. And because people do not understand grammar (especially in pure English) they rely on word processor nonsense.

That is why it is always crap, and perhaps also explains why (especially young) people cannot do correct grammar (i,e, correct grammar is a bit hard to learn, like it takes work - but letting the computer do it [wrongly] is easy).

Re:Grammar Check

[denvergeek]

To be fair, I dropped this into MS Office, and followed the suggestions until Office stopped flagging:

"This here grammar check don't work none ."

"This here grammar check don't work any."

"This here grammar checks don’t work any." (MS Office says this is correct)

Clearly, LibreOffice sucks donkey balls.

Re:Grammar Check

[sourcerror]

Because it's a spelling checker not a grammar checker.

Still some basic issues

[gelfling]

I use LO as my main tool but there's a few things it can't do it should be able to do:

Embed an OLE object as an ICON
Paste a spreadsheet table where I put it not where LO anchors it
Have the same bullets as the document viewed in MSO
Save ODP -> PPTX better and cleaner than ODP -> PPT
Show how export to PDF is different from print to PDF, since they are
Markup-Redline in DOC/DOCX saved as ODF still doesn't work

Re:Grammar Check

[MiniMike]

"This here grammar checks don’t work any." (MS Office says this are correct)
 

FTFY, MS style.

Re:But will it correctly run 12_1040.xlsx ?

[westyvw]

Strange, given that the site recommends OpenOffice and Gnumeric as alternative spreadsheet applications.

Update failed

[ISoldat53]

I would love to use libreoffice if it would just work. It constantly crashes. Even the update function failed.

Re:And again...

[MetalliQaZ]

This. It reflects so badly on the software, and they still don't fix it?

XKCD

[GrantRobertson]

Thank you for looking that up for me. I knew the obligatory XKCD link would likely already be in here.

Is there a name yet for the phenomenon wherein: "For every absurd claim there is likely to be an appropriate XKCD cartoon"?

Re:XKCD

[ericcc65]

Thank you for looking that up for me. I knew the obligatory XKCD link would likely already be in here.

Is there a name yet for the phenomenon wherein: "For every absurd claim there is likely to be an appropriate XKCD cartoon"?

I think it's the Robertson Conjecture. There you go, now you're famous...on slashdot. You should create a wiki page.

Damnit, Skiron!

[Qubit]

First $699 to SCO back in 2003, now £140lbs to Microsoft for Windows Write..I mean MS-Office for GNU/Linux.

What did we say about impulse purchases with your allowance?

Sorry about that

[Qubit]

I can't speak for everyone else, but I was answering questions and testing bugs until 11am. Then I was very tired and got a couple of hours of sleep.

The Infrastructure team was trying to migrate several of the websites over to a new server about the same time as 4.0 was released. After some brief downtime, everything pulled through. Due to a perfect storm of problems during the previous two days, the server upgrades were delayed all the way until release day (oops!)

If you grabbed 3.6.5 this morning, you didn't miss a new release on that branch -- 3.6.5 came out on Jan 30th, and 3.6.6 won't come out until the 2nd week of April. The 4.0.0.3 release is working pretty well, running into a few bugs and issues, but we're working to iron those out as quickly as possible.

Feel free to Ask questions or Report a bug if and when the fancy strikes you.

Uninstall 3?

[Errandboy of Doom]

Does the installer automatically remove version 3 for you?

Also, why doesn't all software have an "update" button in the help menu?

Re:Grammar Check

[K. S. Kyosuke]

What is the point of having a "grammar" check if it is going to treat the phrase "This here grammar check don't work none" as if it were the Queen's English?

Probably because there's nothing wrong with that sentence?

Re:Grammar Check

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And because people do not understand grammar

The vast majority of English natives don't understand that the above quoted sentence has no grammar problems at all. It's not a pidgin, it's a sociolect (most likely).

So, have you filed a bug report yet?

[zapyon]

No? No further questions.

Re:So, have you filed a bug report yet?

[hobarrera]

I have. It's a WONTFIX, since the interest of LO developers is to attract as many MSO users as possible.