LibreOffice 4 Released

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by armanox · 2013-02-07 04:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.

Damn! by Skiron · 2013-02-07 04:30 · Score: 5, Funny

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

Re:Damn! by devjoe · 2013-02-07 05:05 · Score: 4, Informative

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:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by Desler · 2013-02-07 04:41 · Score: 5, Informative

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

MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here! by Dystopian+Rebel · 2013-02-07 04:43 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

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Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.

Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here! by hedwards · 2013-02-07 04:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

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! by Enderandrew · 2013-02-07 05:12 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here! by mspohr · 2013-02-07 05:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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Re:MS Office mewlers and shills, queue here! by Dynetrekk · 2013-02-07 07:27 · Score: 3, Insightful

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! by westyvw · 2013-02-07 09:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

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! by Enderandrew · 2013-02-07 11:42 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

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http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-07 04:45 · Score: 4, Funny

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? by armanox · 2013-02-07 04:47 · Score: 4, Funny

write once, infect anywhere?

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I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by Zero__Kelvin · 2013-02-07 04:50 · Score: 4, Interesting

"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.

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Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun

Pre-fork OO by Anne_Nonymous · 2013-02-07 04:52 · Score: 3, Informative

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 by DarwinSurvivor · 2013-02-07 05:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by Bill_the_Engineer · 2013-02-07 04:53 · Score: 5, Informative

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

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Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by DickBreath · 2013-02-07 04:59 · Score: 4, Informative

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

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I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by colfer · 2013-02-07 05:03 · Score: 4, Informative

And you do not need the JRE to run LibreOffice.

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2013-02-07 05:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

...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!

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Ezekiel 23:20

Re:Why this dilution? by denis-The-menace · 2013-02-07 05:04 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by Enderandrew · 2013-02-07 05:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.

Re:Why this dilution? by jfengel · 2013-02-07 05:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

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:"migrating German code comments to English" by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2013-02-07 05:31 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

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Ezekiel 23:20

Re:Why this dilution? by robmv · 2013-02-07 05:57 · Score: 3, Informative

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:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by swillden · 2013-02-07 06:03 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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Re:Why this dilution? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-07 06:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

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

Re:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by seyfarth · 2013-02-07 06:51 · Score: 4, Funny

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

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Ray Seyfarth, ray.seyfarth@gmail.com, http://rayseyfarth.blogspot.com

Re:Grammar Check by Skiron · 2013-02-07 07:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

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:But what if Java is the next WAIS? by TsuruchiBrian · 2013-02-07 11:21 · Score: 5, Funny

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

Re:"migrating German code comments to English" by MaskedSlacker · 2013-02-07 22:24 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

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