LibreOffice 5.3 Released, Touted As 'One of the Most Feature-Rich Releases' Ever (omgubuntu.co.uk)

Not Another Office Clone! by TechyImmigrant · 2017-02-01 06:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

I didn't like using Word for large documents.

I invested time and learned to use Latex. It has addressed my problems.

Using an alternative office clone that doesn't also solve the problems of wysiwyg editors is not appealing.

--
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.

Re:Not Another Office Clone! by squiggleslash · 2017-02-01 06:10 · Score: 2, Funny

Cool story Grandbro.

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Not Another Office Clone! by perpenso · 2017-02-01 06:18 · Score: 1

I invested time and learned to use Latex.
I think there is an OpenOffice extension that outputs latex. :-)
Re:Not Another Office Clone! by TechyImmigrant · 2017-02-01 06:34 · Score: 3, Funny

Cool story Grandbro.
Get off my lawn!

--
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Re:Not Another Office Clone! by chipschap · 2017-02-01 08:08 · Score: 3, Informative

I think there is an OpenOffice extension that outputs latex. :-)
There is, and I've used it a number of times, once to convert someone's 700+ page manuscript so I could produce a proper book with LaTeX. It works reasonably well, actually, and is so much better than trying to typeset with a tool (like a word processor) not really suited to producing press-ready output.
Re:Not Another Office Clone! by TechyImmigrant · 2017-02-01 15:48 · Score: 1

>actually it occurs to me that I have precisely no clue how to change the font in Latex because I have never felt the need to change the font.
I'm writing a technical book in Latex. I started in word and quickly gave up and decided to relearn Latex which I had used when in college. After a couple of chapters, a bunch of bibtex entries and a whole bunch of equations, I was back to full speed and unencumbered by the horrible numbering and formatting in word.
The publisher is going to drop it into Adobe InDesign, where the fonts can be easily changed. However the equations are going to have to be converted using latexit.

--
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Re:Not Another Office Clone! by TechyImmigrant · 2017-02-01 16:59 · Score: 1

I'm writing a book. It's full of equations and references and numbered entries. Word is a nightmare with numbering and equations and references and a nightmare with documents with hundreds of pages. Latex is a lot easier after a week of learning. You just type in equations using a simple text syntax, references with things like \label{name} and \ref{name}, section headings with \section{name} and so on. You can also use a normal text editor (I use VIM and BBedit mostly) instead of one of those annoying pointy clicky interfaces.
I tried Scrivener, but it was not good with equations. I haven't tried Docear. I used to like Framemaker, which we used for editing IEEE 802 specs, but it seems to have gone off the rails recently.
Also my publisher can take documents written in Latex, so it's a fine solution for me.

--
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Re:Not Another Office Clone! by mcswell · 2017-02-02 17:01 · Score: 1

Amen, brother, preach it!
Looking at the other replies, it reminds me that we old people are not just better, we're smarter. These young whippersnappers just can't handle something like LaTeX.
Re: Not Another Office Clone! by TechyImmigrant · 2017-02-03 05:52 · Score: 1

I could, but why? With a text editor I am unencumbered with formatting details. I use make to build the documents so it only regenerate graphs if the data changes.

--
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.

Just like MS Word ... by perpenso · 2017-02-01 06:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Touted As 'One of the Most Feature-Rich Releases' Ever

That is a very Microsoft like statement, "goodness" defined by feature count, and probably not a good path to go down.

Re:Just like MS Word ... by Tablizer · 2017-02-01 06:16 · Score: 1

Translation: "We added gimmicky crap instead of spending time to fix existing bugs"

--
Table-ized A.I.
Re:Just like MS Word ... by tinkerton · 2017-02-01 07:04 · Score: 1

Usually a new release increases the feature-count with features the previous didn't have but in this case they appear to be not quite sure.
Re:Just like MS Word ... by AthanasiusKircher · 2017-02-01 07:22 · Score: 2

That is a very Microsoft like statement, "goodness" defined by feature count, and probably not a good path to go down.
Agreed. Take word processors, for example. The features available in standard word processor software 30 years ago are still probably adequate for 97% of tasks today. If companies like Microsoft had just focused on improving those core features, that would have been great. But instead, you get these bloated hybrids that don't work well for text-editing and basic word processing (because they're overfull of unnecessary crap, some of which screws up basic editing). And they're not good for proper "desktop publishing" either, because the features aren't organized in a way that enables and encourages the kind of flexibility that professional typesetters and layout designers want (since it enables efficient management of layout and formatting).
Legitimate question: Maybe this thread would be a good place for people to recommend "lighter" but stable open-source alternatives to LibreOffice, preferably stuff available cross-platform. For example, I've tried out AbiWord in the past, though last time I used it (probably 6-7 years ago), it still seemed somewhat buggy. I also remember using Gnumeric as a spreadsheet several years ago, but is it still a stable and lighter option?
Nothing against the LibreOffice folks, who are doing a reasonable job to try to "keep up with the Joneses" in terms of having features for people who want to move from MS Office. But what are the lighter and GOOD alternatives out there?
Re:Just like MS Word ... by Nutria · 2017-02-01 07:25 · Score: 1

That's what point releases are for, you numb nuts.

--
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Re:Just like MS Word ... by Nutria · 2017-02-01 07:27 · Score: 1

The problem with your thesis is that your 97% isn't *my* 97%.

--
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Re:Just like MS Word ... by Tough+Love · 2017-02-01 07:28 · Score: 1

Translation: "We added gimmicky crap instead of spending time to fix existing bugs"
Wow, salty, is it supposed to sound cool? Maybe better check your facts.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Just like MS Word ... by AthanasiusKircher · 2017-02-01 07:52 · Score: 2

The problem with your thesis is that your 97% isn't *my* 97%.
No, I'm talking about 97% of general office tasks, not MY tasks. MS Word is crap for many of the tasks **I** want to do.
Most people in offices use MS Word to do pretty basic stuff on an everyday basis -- crafting memos, simple short documents, etc. Outside of offices, the primary uses are probably people like students, who need to write short papers and such. All of these things could have been done with the features of MS Word decades ago.
For the majority of more complex common office tasks (e.g., making nicer brochures, newsletters, etc.), they'd be much better off using dedicated publishing or layout software.
Re:Just like MS Word ... by chipschap · 2017-02-01 08:12 · Score: 1

But what are the lighter and GOOD alternatives out there?
Get a copy of WordStar 5.5 from somewhere and run it with DosBox.
You think I'm joking but it does all the basics. In its time it was considered great stuff. What's better about today's word processors? More fonts, lots of graphics? Fine if you're doing a newsletter or an advertising piece. If you're writing a report or a letter or a memo, not much added value.
Re:Just like MS Word ... by mmell · 2017-02-01 08:44 · Score: 1

I'll bet you liked VisiCalc, too.
Oh, wait - I liked VisiCalc. Lotus 1-2-3 wasn't bad either, now that I think of it.
Re:Just like MS Word ... by chipschap · 2017-02-01 15:09 · Score: 1

I'd say that there is more of a difference with spreadsheets; today they are capable of much larger models with many more formulas, etc. These are things that actually make a difference, although for modest needs, something dead simple like SC (on Linux) still can be useful, as can even VisiCalc (which is available free nowadays).
Presentation software is another story, of course; in the old days there wasn't much of it that I can recall.

one of the most feature-rich releases by pablo_max · 2017-02-01 06:12 · Score: 1

so... is that another way of saying that the current version has less features than previous versions?

Feature-rich by arth1 · 2017-02-01 06:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

In my experience, there's a direct correlation between "feature rich" and "buggy" for any new release.

In other words, I'll presume it to be the most buggy release ever, until I hear otherwise.

Re:Feature-rich by Tough+Love · 2017-02-01 07:30 · Score: 1

Maybe git it a try and see for yourself.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Feature-rich by arth1 · 2017-02-01 09:42 · Score: 1

Maybe git it a try and see for yourself.
No, my time is too important to spend it on being a guinea pig.
I'd like to see what others have to say, as well as how many/severe bugs are reported first, before investing any time.

Tagged Microsoft? by Neuroelectronic · 2017-02-01 06:13 · Score: 1

Come on..

just because you have a feature rich office suite doesn't mean it's a competitor to Office yet.

at least they added the "Open Source" tag since then.

Re:Tagged Microsoft? by Tough+Love · 2017-02-01 07:33 · Score: 1

just because you have a feature rich office suite doesn't mean it's a competitor to Office yet.
Just because you have a feature rich, mature, popular, cross platform office suite that costs $0.00 doesn't mean... oh wait.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Tagged Microsoft? by JamesTRexx · 2017-02-01 08:33 · Score: 1

Just because you have a feature rich, mature, popular, cross platform office suite that costs $0.00 doesn't mean... oh wait.

Which makes a mistake in the number of reported MS Office licenses pretty costly; Dutch police paid nearly 3 million too much when 14000 licenses were listed but unused. linky to Dutch news
Microsoft refused to pay back and now it's in court.

--
home
Re:Tagged Microsoft? by Neuroelectronic · 2017-02-02 01:52 · Score: 1

That's a nice bit of trivia

finally, Ribbon in LibreOffice by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 06:13 · Score: 2, Interesting

I've been holding off switching away from Office because I use the Ribbon constantly and navigating through the maze of pulldown menus in other office suites seems like transporting back to the 90's and using punch cards. I'll dl this version and give it a shot.

Re:finally, Ribbon in LibreOffice by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 07:32 · Score: 1, Insightful

I've been holding on LibreOffice because I FUCKING HATE RIBBON but now it looks like I have to find something else. So, any suggestion? And do not even think of mentioning Google.
Re:finally, Ribbon in LibreOffice by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 08:33 · Score: 2, Informative

It's optional. Did you really read the article?
Re:finally, Ribbon in LibreOffice by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 13:24 · Score: 1

I've been holding on LibreOffice because I FUCKING HATE RIBBON but now it looks like I have to find something else. So, any suggestion?
According to the release, LibreOffice now offers a choice of interfaces, one of which is ribbon like.
My suggestion is LibreOffice using the interface that you use right now.

Multicore for spreadsheets..? by xanadu113 · 2017-02-01 06:15 · Score: 1

One disadvantage Calc has had compared to Excel, is it didn't support multicore when processing large spreadsheets. Has this been addressed yet..?

--
-Myke

Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 06:22 · Score: 3, Informative

If you need multi-core threading to evaluate your spread sheets you are doing it wrong. Cell errors in spread sheets of that size can be pretty much impossible to find. At that size the process described by the calculations in the spread sheet is too big to be checked/audited. There are better ways to do things that are less subject to errors than multiple page thousand line spread sheets.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by MightyYar · 2017-02-01 06:35 · Score: 4, Funny

I could tell you a story that would make you weep, but in the interest of brevity let's just say that sometimes you are Igor and you just do what Dr. Frankenstein says.

--
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by serviscope_minor · 2017-02-01 06:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

One disadvantage Calc has had compared to Excel, is it didn't support multicore when processing large spreadsheets. Has this been addressed yet..?
They put HSA support in a while back which had the interesting side effect of meaning a puny AMD APU absolutely caned the top end i7 for spreadsheet calculation. One of those tasks where having near zero latency, memory coherent access to a huge array of floating point processors helps I guess.

--
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by Captain+Splendid · 2017-02-01 06:45 · Score: 1

I could tell you a story that would make you weep, but in the interest of brevity let's just say that sometimes you are Igor and you just do what Dr. Frankenstein says.

Nah man, dish up. Slashdot could use a good old-fashioned horror story from the trenches. Used to be common around here back in the day.

--
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by Camel+Pilot · 2017-02-01 06:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

I was reading a prospectus on Mathworks and was surprised that they listed Excel as the main Matlab competitor. It is simply horrifying what some people will do with Excel.
Re: Multicore for spreadsheets..? by jonnyj · 2017-02-01 06:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's easy to sneer at big spreadsheets but, if you used them yourself, you'd realise that sometimes they really are the best tool for the job. If you were to try building flexible financial forecasts across a group of companies with fast-changing assumptions and a wide range of scenarios, you'd understand what I mean.
But there are other legitimate reasons for big spreadsheets. We have complex financial models that are coded in C# for production use but which also exist in spreadsheets for the purposes of documentation and independent model validation. Some models would take an age to refresh on a single core machine, which would seriously undermine our ability to test the production systems. How else would you suggest that we test the end to end results coming out of C#?
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by Lehk228 · 2017-02-01 06:54 · Score: 3, Insightful

when the job needs to be done and you can't get approval to get the proper tools installed, you sometimes need to use improper tools.

--
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 07:05 · Score: 1

I'm not the OP, but the most "interesting" use of Excel that I've seen was at a company which was too cheap to pay for Microsoft Project licenses. But Excel was part of the standard install. People had literally implemented Gantt charts in Excel, with conditional formatting to paint the bars based on the dates from other cells.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by MightyYar · 2017-02-01 07:56 · Score: 5, Interesting

OK...
I got a call from a guy that I used to work with. He was an engineer who went for a lobotomy and came back as a manager at a company that I contract for. He knew that I was good at VBA and that I was contracting, and he had an idea to track and plan all engineering resource allocation in a half-billion dollar company through the use of Excel spreadsheets. Specifically, he envisioned a system where his master Excel sheet would burp out individual worksheets that each functional manager would fill out, then send back to him. He would then compile them all and run the analysis.
I tried to talk him out of it - first of all, there are off the shelf resource planning apps. Nope. Well, I could make you an intranet site. Nope. Hey, you guys shell out for Sharepoint - I could put together something using that. Nope. Excel. "The managers all know how to use it." Uh-huh.
So, I'm a contractor and I need the work... what the hell? I spend some time on it, and it was beautiful in its horrificness. Lots of delightful event-driven macros, changing things automatically as you copy or create sheets or change cell contents. It interfaced with Active Directory to get the list of engineering employees and contractors and their direct managers. I worked with HR to have the proper data fields filled in. It verified the integrity of the HR data in Active Directory. It even eventually lived on Sharepoint and did automaticy things when people opened and closed it. It churned through and made sure that everyone in the company was allocated to a project and that all the allocation numbers add up to 100%. It gave detailed analysis in pivot tables for pretty much anything that they wanted to see.
Anyway, I created this abortion, fixed a few bugs upon initial use and then didn't think about it again. The guy got fired for obvious reasons. Maybe a year or so after that, I was again contracting for this company and one of the other managers calls me into his office. I get there and he starts asking me questions about some error message he got in "my macro". I look at what the hell he's talking about, and to my horror THEY ARE STILL USING THIS THING. I showed him how to fix it and eventually taught the SharePoint admin how the damned thing worked so that he could support it.
So just think about that the next time you buy stock in a publicly traded company.
Also, I hate VBA.

--
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by Tough+Love · 2017-02-01 08:05 · Score: 1

Maybe this is what you are looking for.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by afgam28 · 2017-02-01 08:10 · Score: 1

Wow, I'm surprised this is a common thing. Nice to know I wasn't suffering alone.
Yes, a Project license costs money, but not as much as paying managers to build their own versions (plural because there were many implementations floating around) on top of Excel. At least not at the company I used to work at.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by gosand · 2017-02-01 08:55 · Score: 2

I have done some pretty complex spreadsheets, and some things that I consider cool in Excel. Like being able to do a data extract from our system, plop it into a tab, change the name in a cell to that of the tab, and have all of my 10 tabs of graphs / charts / tables update by reading that cell. It uses an INDIRECT call, makes for big and ugly formulas, but cut down a manual process from 2 days worth of work to about 5 minutes.
[yes, I know you can set up a data source and just read the data into the spreadsheet, but I was able to hand this off to some business people to do and they loved it]
Now, having said that... :)
Excel is over-used for things it is not well suited for. People on my test team use Excel to create test data load files in csv format for an application. It has about 100 columns, and usually no more than 50 rows or so. One of the fields needs to be unique, so it's easy in Excel to make it a number, then just drag the cell to increment it. The problem arose where we were doing a load test, and needed 1MM rows. They were trying, but failing, in Excel. It struggled with 30k rows, let alone that the process to create them was painful.
With a quick shell script I was able to create a 1mm row csv in about 5 minutes. They were amazed. Then we needed to create another file. This time, I used the 1mm csv and vi, and made the new file in about 2 minutes. They were astounded! I have since made many more files for them, even a 5mm row file. Even in csv, it was 2.1GB in size although it compressed quite nicely. :)
I have also started teaching them how to fish by having them download gvim for Windows and giving them pointers on how to use it. We are a Windows shop, so to many people csv=Excel, and I am trying hard to break them of that.

--

My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by The-Ixian · 2017-02-01 09:16 · Score: 1

This is super common as far as I can tell.
Excel makes a decent Gantt chart...

--
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by 0100010001010011 · 2017-02-01 09:25 · Score: 1

A VBA script that downloaded data from Oracle. Ran calculations on Sheet 1. Passed that data to Matlab. Returned the data to Sheet 2, did some more data analysis and uploaded it to a separate database.
In production.
Re: Multicore for spreadsheets..? by bigal123 · 2017-02-01 09:34 · Score: 1

There are many reasons why you may need mult-core support for Excel. I still wish Excel was faster at some parts. Financial models, and lookups with a bunch of data still is easier than a true database. Some formulas don't require it, but toss in a few volatile formulas, and some lookups for validation and it can slow down. Most everything i have may only slow down to a minute for a calculation, but i know of sheets that take longer.
I have found that making an Excel file more dynamic in some cases can actually reduce the risk. Put in a good formula and let it to checks instead of hard coding references as I have seen some do.
Re: Multicore for spreadsheets..? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 09:36 · Score: 4, Informative

ProjectLibre is the leading open source alternative to Microsoft Project. It has been downloaded over 2,700,000 times in over 200 countries and has won InfoWorld "Best of Open Source" award. ProjectLibre is compatible with Microsoft Project 2003, 2007 and 2010 files. You can simply open them on Linux, Mac OS or Windows.
Re: Multicore for spreadsheets..? by Rutulian · 2017-02-01 15:01 · Score: 1

We have complex financial models that are coded in C# for production use but which also exist in spreadsheets for the purposes of documentation and independent model validation.

You might want to have a look at RMarkdown (http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/index.html). It's pretty much designed for exactly that purpose. You get to use the very nice R framework, and be able to very naturally document changes to your models. You can use revision control if you want to. You can even embed interactive widgets if you want to go that far. This guy (http://vnijs.github.io/radiant/) wrote a business intelligence platform on top of R using Shiny. There is lots of cool stuff to do here. More importantly, you get to take advantage of a lot of very robust statistical models, a very active development community, and proper data management support (ex: relational databases). R project files are just text files, so it's pretty easy to archive and version control using whichever tools you have for those purposes.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by fph+il+quozientatore · 2017-02-01 19:04 · Score: 1

Do you have a link? That is a very interesting Matlab trivia for an user like me.

--
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Re: Multicore for spreadsheets..? by jonnyj · 2017-02-01 19:49 · Score: 1

We use R and R markdown more than C#. I didn't mention it in my previous post because it's niche.
I personally use R as my preferred tool 90% of the time and Excel for the remainder. But sometimes big spreadsheets are by far the best tool for the job.
Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..? by MightyYar · 2017-02-02 00:35 · Score: 1

Yeah, it works - though I pity the poor dude who has to maintain all my magic tricks - VBA can be hard to debug because within Excel there are a lot of cases where it fails silently. I'd question the wisdom of micro-managing by spreadsheet, but it's not my company to run.
I'm not making any claims as to the worst thing ever - hell, I think I've personally done worse. We have a product that I program for. My boss, who is quite smart but is no programmer, likes to design her logic in Excel. I typically need to convert her spreadsheet work into a home-grown language that we use to give the machine instructions. Then, depending on the application, I need to do that translation again for the machine's GUI in c/c++.
To speed things up, one obvious step was to write a c library that could be called from both the home-grown machine language and the machine's GUI. So far, so good. The unholy part comes from writing an Excel macro to dump her logic out of the cells into a text file. The text file is then read into a Python script that uses a symbolic algebra library (sympy) to convert the Excel formulas into algebra and then dump them into c equations. It works surprisingly well for an awful kludge, and it saves me a buttload of time. The code is not as compact as it could be, but at the end of the day things are very easy to debug because the variable names and logic all match her spreadsheet exactly. I even have debug output that is meant to be pasted back into the spreadsheet where another macro puts that back in as inputs to verify that everything matches.
Should I sell this as a product? :)

--
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.

Muffins... by jfdavis668 · 2017-02-01 06:15 · Score: 1

Derpy approves.

Re:Muffins... by Gornkleschnitzer · 2017-02-01 07:13 · Score: 1

I just don't know what went wrong.

Why does this article have the Microsoft logo tag? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 06:16 · Score: 1

I get that this is "Office" related, but is it really necessary for an article about Libre Office to be tagged with the "Microsoft" logo?

A ribbon clone? by rnturn · 2017-02-01 06:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Was there serious demand for this? I suspect one of the features that many -- if not most -- users of LibreOffice enjoyed was that it didn't have the damned ribbon.

I do more writing using Emacs/LaTeX than I do with any word processor but when I do need to create a Word-compatible document I do resort to Writer (and save as ".doc"). Thanks guys for bringing the Office ribbon hassles to Writer. I'm sure everyone's tickled pink to now be able to experience Word's ribbon headaches on Linux.

--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M

Re:A ribbon clone? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 06:29 · Score: 1

The ribbon is optional. It will be ok.
Re:A ribbon clone? by NominalLoss · 2017-02-01 06:29 · Score: 2

Not a fan of ribbons myself but the LibreOffice ribbon is completely optional and can be turned off. Soooo, no real issue there. Also, RTFA. ;)
Re:A ribbon clone? by ISoldat53 · 2017-02-01 06:42 · Score: 2

Maybe adding this feature will attract more people to move away from MS Word. If the UI works the same it will take lees re-training to move.
Re:A ribbon clone? by NoSalt · 2017-02-01 06:54 · Score: 1

Good to know ... thanks.
Re:A ribbon clone? by rnturn · 2017-02-01 07:29 · Score: 1

Sorry. I did but I didn't see the words "option" or "optional" anywhere in the article where the ribbon was being mentioned. It was mentioned as optional in a linked page, though. No, I didn't watch the damned video.
If it's optional, then fine. My big feature request would be to reduce the time it takes for Writer to become usable--which takes around ten seconds on my desktop system. I'm hoping that's part of this release and, frankly, I'd rather they work on things like that instead of "features" that were widely reviled by users when introduced by MS--and still are by many. Slavishly mimicking Word's bloat ain't all that interesting.

--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Re:A ribbon clone? by afgam28 · 2017-02-01 07:30 · Score: 1

Yeah, I really wish LibreOffice wouldn't spend its time copying a 10-year-old design that was quite poorly received at the time.
The ribbon interface always struck me as the result of a company that just couldn't make decisions. I imagine product managers at Microsoft were fighting over whose features were important enough to be on the toolbar, and which ones would be hidden away in the menus. Corporate empire builders would fight to keep their pet features prominently advertised, and they'd get locked in a political stalemate. Meanwhile the toolbars were so bloated that users couldn't figure it out where anything was (and don't forget the bazillion optional toolbars). Then some UI designer comes along with a way to side-step the decision - make the menus look like toolbars and put everything there!
So users get the worst of both worlds. It's essentially a menu with icons, so you have to dig through menus, which makes it not as fast as a toolbar. And it's not as compact as a menu, because there's always this big UI element taking up tons of vertical space.
What's wrong with just having a small number of the most frequently used functions on the toolbar, and putting everything else in the menus?
Re:A ribbon clone? by AthanasiusKircher · 2017-02-01 07:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

Was there serious demand for this? I suspect one of the features that many -- if not most -- users of LibreOffice enjoyed was that it didn't have the damned ribbon.

Yes, I rarely pay much attention to this, but on the few occasions I've checked in with LibreOffice's forums, I've definitely seen people complain about the lack of a ribbon OPTION. Like it or not, MS Office has had that interface for about a decade now, and many younger users have never used anything else.
[Personally, I dislike the ribbon and have never gotten used to it. The only reason I am able to use MS Office at work in a reasonable fashion is because I have a Mac that still has actual menus. But I also know a lot of people who LIKE the ribbon, or at least grew to like it over the years.]

Thanks guys for bringing the Office ribbon hassles to Writer. I'm sure everyone's tickled pink to now be able to experience Word's ribbon headaches on Linux.
It's an OPTION. Apparently one of FOUR possible ways to organize your UI. If you don't want it, don't use it.
But if LibreOffice actually still wants to sell itself as a competitor to MS Office, it needs to present a UI that isn't a shock to new users... many of whom have been using a "ribbon" in MS Office for years.
You're correct that there was a big upsurge in use of LibreOffice (back then, OpenOffice) with the introduction of the ribbon interface. The issue is that users didn't want to learn a new interface, so OpenOffice was a good alternative. Now LibreOffice has to adapt to a new public, whose default experience is WITH the ribbon.
Re:A ribbon clone? by Nutria · 2017-02-01 07:35 · Score: 1

it will take lees re-training to move.
Who else remembers when MS said it would take too much retraining to migrate from MSO to OO.o (and then introduced the Ribbon Bar, which required lots of retraining)?

--
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Re:A ribbon clone? by squiggleslash · 2017-02-01 08:05 · Score: 1

I know, it's worrying, I mean, they implement the Ribbon, but they haven't implemented Clippy yet? Does this mean they'll never get around to implementing Clippy?
Well, good news...

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:A ribbon clone? by Espectr0 · 2017-02-01 08:24 · Score: 1

Yes there is demand for it. The ribbon interface can actually be productive. If only the office 2007 developers had been employed to do the windows 8/10 start menu...
And libreoffice's implementation seems to be quite flexible

--
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Re:A ribbon clone? by jitterman · 2017-02-01 08:29 · Score: 1

You don't have to use the Ribbon UI. It's simply there for those who either like it or never used Office prior to its introduction.

--
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
Re:A ribbon clone? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 08:32 · Score: 1

Maybe adding this feature will attract more people to move away from MS Word. If the UI works the same it will take lees re-training to move.
fucking hell, how about we test all employees on libreoffice with no training, and any who can't do it get sacked for being useless? This would be an excellent way of clearing house of idiots.
Re:A ribbon clone? by AmiMoJo · 2017-02-01 08:42 · Score: 1

I'm one of the people who likes the ribbon and was looking forward to this. Unfortunately it's not really much of a ribbon, more like just a different kind of toolbar. The key features of the ribbon, like showing examples of the settings rather than just a generic icon or applying them temporary when you hovered over them are missing.
I have LibreOffice installed but I find that apart from the odd letter I usually end up with Google Docs. Google's spreadsheet app is a bit slow sometimes but a mixture of easy access and cross-platform compatibility (including Android, with flawless scripting) is very attractive. I worry that one day Google will kill it or change something that breaks my workflow, so I keep exported ODF copies locally too. Unfortunately scripts don't export.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:A ribbon clone? by rahvin112 · 2017-02-01 08:49 · Score: 1, Insightful

I hated the ribbon as much as you do. But after using it for a while I see why it's better and also easier for new users to learn. MS was right about this UI change, in fact I'd argue it was their most researched and tested UI changes that they've ever implemented. The one problem was it made learning it for existing users harder but the trade off in usability was worth it IMO.
Re:A ribbon clone? by jitterman · 2017-02-01 08:59 · Score: 1

"I'm used to this" does not equal "it's better for everyone," just as "I'm not used to this" doesn't mean "it sucks." And it works in both directions. If you are proficient in lightweight editors (VI, etc.), they are fast, effective, and do most of what you need. But there is a learning curve (am I in edit mode? Did I save my changes?). I certainly understand why people, if exposed to both, side by side, for the first time, would choose a GUI-heavy app. And then to have one with pictures in the menu that might indicate what the commands do along with the text - well, just pamper me, whydon'cha!

For those of us who use keyboard shortcuts, I don't believe those have changed, even if the layout of the menu has (did I miss something there?). Since I'm not looking at the menu when executing my shortcuts, it doesn't really matter if they moved the entry (as long as the keystroke combo didn't change), and if I'm looking for something I don't do frequently, I already didn't know where it was, so whether I'm looking through a list of expandable text menus or an already-expanded ribbon, who cares? I don't get the fuss. I really don't. I'm not criticizing those who don't like it, just saying that I really don't see what's so bad about it, as I don't find there to be any drawbacks.

--
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
Re:A ribbon clone? by rnturn · 2017-02-01 15:06 · Score: 1

``It's an OPTION. Apparently one of FOUR possible ways to organize your UI. If you don't want it, don't use it.''

Yeah, I get that (though it wasn't mentioned in the original article; you had to follow links in that article to learn that). One would hope that that menu selection is modular in that, by selecting one of those four options, you were only loading the desired interface and eliminating the memory demands for the three unused options. I rather doubt that's the case, though. The somewhat older version of LO I'm using now is a memory pig as it is.

--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Re:A ribbon clone? by Gussington · 2017-02-01 19:51 · Score: 1

Was there serious demand for this? I suspect one of the features that many -- if not most -- users of LibreOffice enjoyed was that it didn't have the damned ribbon.
So many comments in here about the possible impact of a ribbon interface. I took 30 seconds to download and install it, it still has file edit view menus, so nothing to see here...
Re:A ribbon clone? by mcswell · 2017-02-07 10:21 · Score: 1

I've adapted to be able to use it, because I have to use it at work. That doesn't mean I don't still complain about it, much less that I'm too dense to comprehend. It does mean that I can imagine something better (menus).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

He's got a point. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 06:30 · Score: 1

"Features" was the big story.

I have an i5 Mac Mini and it creeps along. An i-fucking-5!

Developers keep adding all these features and bloating the software.

And add in the fact that I MUST run anti-virus software and backup software, an i7 is the minimum to just do anything. Otherwise, your system hangs all the time.

I see the spinning beach ball of death all the time.

It's not the hardware. It's the fact the today's devs suck.

You have been taught wrong. You have been taught with so much abstraction to be "computer scientists" that you forgot about the actual computer - the hardware.

Whatever. It's pushing 1:30 EST and there's Matlock marathon on and it's banana pudding day. I'm outta here.

Re:He's got a point. by TechyImmigrant · 2017-02-01 06:32 · Score: 2

Editing Latex on a mac in bbedit is pretty snappy.

--
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Re:He's got a point. by tibit · 2017-02-01 06:43 · Score: 2

Huh? I use the latest LibreOffice regularly on a late 2008 MacBook Pro with a 128GB Crucial SSD, on El Capitan. Works great, and that's a Core 2 Duo CPU with 8GB of DDR3 RAM. It'd be considered obsolete by pretty much anyone these days - yet it performs admirably.
OS X versions past 10.7 suck donkey balls on mechanical hard drives for some reason. The CPU on your Mac Mini has nothing much to do with its sluggishness. Replace the drive with an SSD and you'll fell like you've got a completely different, new machine. Just do it, you'll thank me later.

--
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Re:He's got a point. by TechyImmigrant · 2017-02-01 06:52 · Score: 1

bbedit? Vim is the One True Way to edit text...
I use VIM most places. But I've used bbedit on macs for years. If I'm in terminal on the mac I might use vim out of muscle memory, or if I need to do some real regexing, but bbedit is good for in the way notepad++ is good when mouses are the tool of choice.

--
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Re:He's got a point. by squiggleslash · 2017-02-01 07:16 · Score: 1

Not if you're copying a 17Mb file at the time time (but I'm not sure I want to start a holy war over that...)

--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:He's got a point. by Ayanami_R · 2017-02-01 07:17 · Score: 1

It's actually probably your storage is slow. I have a 5 year old i3 laptop that hums along and never see any noticeable disk access, it's also got an SSD.

--
"Science is the power of man"
Re:He's got a point. by ilsaloving · 2017-02-01 08:08 · Score: 1

Just wanted to confirm that I've noticed the same thing. I have an i7 Mac Mini, and while OSX has been overall ok, I noticed that after upgrading to 10.12 my performance basically fell through the floor. The machine is almost useless now. I'm due for an upgrade anyway so I have a new machine coming in, so it'll be a moot point, but it's bloody annoying.
I'm guessing that they've eliminated a lot of the caching systems that they used to have, because things as simple as bringing up a list of applications from the Open With... finder context menu takes excruciatingly long.
Also, upgrading to an SSD would be a fantastic idea.... IF YOU COULD. *grump* The original Mac Minis were user serviceable. Not anymore. The last one we tried to upgrade ourselves ended up being a freaking nightmare, cause you literally cannot replace the hard drive without doing a full iFixIt teardown of the entire unit. In the process we somehow managed to break off one of the connectors from the logic board so now the unit won't even boot and we need to get it repaired.
If anyone does want to upgrade their Mac Mini with an SSD, take my advice and just take it to a AASP to do it for you. Unless you have a lot of free time and the hand stability of a surgeon, it just isn't worth trying to do it yourself.
Re:He's got a point. by TechyImmigrant · 2017-02-01 09:08 · Score: 1

Not if you're copying a 17Mb file at the time time (but I'm not sure I want to start a holy war over that...)
In 1997 with 1024 times less RAM than we have today.
http://www.everymac.com/system...

--
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Re: He's got a point. by cyber-vandal · 2017-02-01 11:15 · Score: 4, Funny

That's the answer - throw more hardware at it. Heaven forbid devs should write efficient code.

Sure sure but does it still crash? by js3 · 2017-02-01 06:33 · Score: 1

Last time I tried it, it was crashing way too much to be useful

--
did you forget to take your meds?

Re:Sure sure but does it still crash? by Tough+Love · 2017-02-01 07:44 · Score: 1

Sounds like the last time you tried was years ago. I see the occasional crash, but pretty rare as in weeks or months, and losing work is even rarer. Probably, stability is similar to Microsoft's product. Pretty damn good for what you pay.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Sure sure but does it still crash? by rnturn · 2017-02-01 14:51 · Score: 1

Yeah, it only occasionally crashes. The bad thing about that is that, when Writer goes and crashes, it seems to want to take down the spreadsheet I have opened on a different virtual desktop--or any other LO component I have running. Sure, there's likely some memory savings by having Writer and Calc sharing some code but there's something just wrong about a Writer snafu taking down the whole LO environment.

--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Re:Sure sure but does it still crash? by Tough+Love · 2017-02-01 17:09 · Score: 1

Yeah, it only occasionally crashes.
Microsoft office crashes too. I have no idea which one crashes more at this point in time but I have my suspicions, given that multiple studies indicate that open source generally ends up with fewer defects than similar proprietary products. Indeed, Libreoffice is runs as one single process, so it all goes down if any component does. Who knows if that is worth a change (a la chrome) but even better is, don't crash. On the rare occasions it does crash, Libreoffice does a very good job of recovering. I say, roughly a tie on that front. It's no contest on the price. Plus Microsoft UI design just isn't ready for prime time.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.

Not really... by QuietLagoon · 2017-02-01 06:42 · Score: 4, Informative

...One of the headline features is called MUFFIN interface, a new toolbar design similar to the Microsoft Office Ribbon UI....

From TFA:

...We’ve told you about the MUFFIN interface project — MUFFIN stands for My User Friendly & Flexible Interface — a fair bit over the past few months, but if you haven’t heard of it it’s a new UI initiative that introduces 4 different layouts for LibreOffice applications, including a Microsoft Ribbon-esque tabbed UI and a slim, simplified, single panel toolbar....

.
It appears that the new interface will allow the user to use the ribbon-esque interface, a feature for the one or two people who actually like that UI. Muffin also provides other interfaces besides the weird ribbon-esque one, if you prefer a more intuitive UI.

Re:Not really... by hawk · 2017-02-01 13:00 · Score: 1

MUFFIN is quite important, even critical: without it, you can no longer boot your older 13 sector diskettes from prior to DOS 3.3 . . . :)
hawk

Re:"one of the most feature-rich releases" by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 06:42 · Score: 1

full compatibility

Try to open a non-trivial MS Office 95 document. You have a much better chance with LibreOffice than with MS Office 2003...2016.

Put a fork in it by CrashNBrn · 2017-02-01 06:53 · Score: 1

Is it better than Office 2000 yet?

Reveal codes by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 06:59 · Score: 1

Does it have reveal codes yet? Only been on the feature request for twelve years now.

Impress presentation by vossman77 · 2017-02-01 07:07 · Score: 1

I have been using the presentation in LibreOffice on my various macbooks for over 7 years and you know what it has only gotten worse. Sure they change user interface, but not really much else. Minimal bug fixes, but no improvements to performance.

It crashes so often, in order to turn my slides into PDF file, I not only break up my presentations into small files, but I wrote a shell script to keep trying the conversion until LibreOffice manages to not crash.

Serious question, is there a latex-like tool for making presentations. I mainly work with jpeg, png and text (LibreOffice is not kind to movie viewing). Bonus if I can click the mouse to have a pop up text window display. I really want something low latency that allows me to manipulate slides in an efficient manner.

Re:Impress presentation by Gibgezr · 2017-02-01 07:19 · Score: 1

Dunno if this is what you are looking for, but check out DocOnce: http://hplgit.github.io/doconc...
Re:Impress presentation by N7DR · 2017-02-01 07:26 · Score: 1

Serious question, is there a latex-like tool for making presentations.
There are several of them. The most common is probably Beamer: https://bitbucket.org/rivanvx/...
A couple of others are mentioned on the Beamer Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Re:Impress presentation by vossman77 · 2017-02-01 07:53 · Score: 1

Thanks for the recommendation, but typing this out seems to be a lot more tedious that copy/pasting an image.
\begin{frame}{Example of columns 2}
\begin{columns}[T] % contents are top vertically aligned
\begin{column}[T]{5cm} % each column can also be its own environment
Contents of first column \\ split into two lines
\end{column}
\begin{column}[T]{5cm} % alternative top-align that's better for graphics
\includegraphics[height=3cm]{graphic.png}
\end{column}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}
I am a slave to copy and paste, which locks me into a GUI program. Also, there no way to go from PPTX (provided by others) to beamer:
http://tex.stackexchange.com/q...
I tried working with the xml structure of the OpenDocument Format and it is similarly tedious. I guess I should create my own :)
Re:Impress presentation by dbIII · 2017-02-01 14:34 · Score: 1

IMHO the stupid powerpoint slideshow idea should have been dead and buried in 1996.
Do it as a web presentation since intranets are the final resting place of any slideshow of any importance. You'll save yourself or another conversion hassles and future compatibility problems.
Re:Impress presentation by vossman77 · 2017-02-02 13:23 · Score: 1

Using the cloud is the opposite of low latency. Ugh.
Re:Impress presentation by dbIII · 2017-02-02 14:56 · Score: 1

Do I have to spell out everything?
Web browsers can open files.

When are they fixing the spell checker by ukoda · 2017-02-01 07:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's great software but I do wonder when they will fix the spell checker so you can change the language from US English to the local language without the need to read help pages every time.

New version? BAD by Merk42 · 2017-02-01 07:29 · Score: 1, Insightful

New version of {thing} came out. We all know {thing} is bad because it is new. MY issue wasn't fixed, therefore nothing the latest version of {thing} has to offer counts.

Re:New version? BAD by ilsaloving · 2017-02-01 09:23 · Score: 1

Depends on the issue. In my case, transitions in Impress are fundamentally and shockingly broken, and it's been like this for years with no change in site. I haven't tried the Windows version, but both in Linux and Mac the OpenGL transitions just plain don't work, which makes presentations look like all you did was dust off something you made in the early 90s.
It's shockingly unprofessional, and quite frankly, embarrassing. If they wanted to be taken seriously as a competitor to Microsoft Office, they *need* to get these basic features working.
Re:New version? BAD by dbIII · 2017-02-01 14:48 · Score: 1

transitions in Impress are fundamentally and shockingly broken
IMHO if you want effects like that do a movie. Going halfway between a static slideshow and a movie is almost asking for pain if you push up from the slideshow end. If it's art use an artists tools. If content is more important than distraction perhaps the effect isn't so important - not to excuse how broken it is, just to point out the effect is an afterthought outside of the purpose of content presentation.

So yes, while it would be annoying that dissolves and all that art is broken it annoys me more than a little to wait for the presenters idea of art to finish before I can watch the next slide.

like all you did was dust off something you made in the early 90s
It's a fucking slideshow done digitally. It's ALL like something from the 1970s only on a computer.

Ribbon...?!?!?! by cayenne8 · 2017-02-01 07:37 · Score: 4, Informative

Well, I was happy to read this, till I saw they fscked it up with the "ribbon" interface....

This has been the worst thing MS has ever done to a GUI interface.....and now, Libre has copied the abomination.

If they at least will give you a choice of that or menus, that would be cool, but if ribbon only, I guess I'll stick with the older versions....

--
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........

Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by Tough+Love · 2017-02-01 07:57 · Score: 2

Difference is, this one is entirely optional. I will withhold judgment until I know for myself whether the Libreoffice incarnation rules or sucks.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re: Ribbon...?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 08:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

People still complain about this? Seriously, you get used to it, and its not nearly as horrible as slashtards keeping going on about. You going to make fun of systemd next? How about throwing around an M$ insult?
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by mmell · 2017-02-01 08:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yes, ribbon.
Libre Office (previously: Star Office) was intended as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office. It was designed from the beginning to provide file-format compatibility as a free and open-source alternative to the costly (if powerful) suite of tools marketed by Microsoft.
Making it function as identically as possible to MS-Office (ironically, even replicating bugs and security exploits) has been an intentional choice, not an accident. The presence of the ribbon in Libre Office assures that users accustomed to MS-Office will benefit from greater familiarity with the software. It'll facilitate migration from paid software to free software for users and organizations which may not want to expend the time, effort and expense to learn to use a different software package from the one they've become accustomed to.
Re: Ribbon...?!?!?! by jonnyj · 2017-02-01 09:06 · Score: 4, Informative

People still complain about this? Seriously, you get used to it, and its not nearly as horrible as slashtards keeping going on about. You going to make fun of systemd next? How about throwing around an M$ insult?
I can understand the principles of the ribbon, but the implementation in MS Office is dreadful. The icons shown on the ribbon include dozens of things that no normal user ever uses, while things that are used every couple of minutes are hidden away in pop-up modal dialogue boxes. Most of the cell formatting functionality in Excel can't be accessed through the ribbon, for example, even though almost all users need to prettify or format their spreadsheets. Other crazy omissions include one-click icons to email the document, to export to pdf or to save the file to a new folder.
The other problem with the ribbon is discoverability. I use Excel most days, but I regularly need to use google to help me find functionality that I use infrequently. The ribbon would be much more effective if it had a built-in search facility.
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · 2017-02-01 11:35 · Score: 2, Funny

MS Office can't even present MS documents without distortion. What are you talking about.
Re: Ribbon...?!?!?! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2017-02-01 12:02 · Score: 1

The icons shown on the ribbon include dozens of things that no normal user ever uses
Microsoft were collecting extensive telemetry about how Office was being used for a long time before moving to the Ribbon interface. They even had people blogging about the process and how they'd adjusted the UI based on the real data they had available.
Now, it's certainly possible that some people turned off that telemetry, and therefore that the design of the Ribbon is biased on data towards the functions used by people who left it on. In that case, it seems more likely that in fact the Ribbon is a very good representation of what normal users want, but not necessary of what the kind of geek who also turns off telemetry wants.
Personally, I'm with you on not much liking the Ribbon, but then I also only used a couple of icons on the toolbar of most Office applications before, and they were just the ones that were too much of a pain to do with just the keyboard and where it wasn't quicker to change lots of related things together in a dialog. I'm hardly a typical user, and I accept that mainstream software like Office is inevitably going to cater to normal people before it caters to my geeky tastes.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re: Ribbon...?!?!?! by dbIII · 2017-02-01 14:07 · Score: 1

It looks very much that they ignored the collected data when the alternative was making it look pretty.
There are people in my office who still find it slow to use and distracting despite having used the ribbon since it was imposed on us. A good exercise is to watch someone use it (someone who uses it daily) and then watch the same person use another frequently used application that still uses menus. You'll see how slow the ribbon is compared with the other interface and how there are small mouse movements for menus and half-screen back and forth to open a part of the ribbon and get to the correct icon.
The frequently used icons seem to require a lot of mouse movements to reach so I very much doubt that the collected data was used effectively.
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by kimvette · 2017-02-01 14:31 · Score: 1

> This has been the worst thing MS has ever done to a GUI interface.....and now, Libre has copied the abomination.
Although it is only alpha quality now (it is not feature complete and you need to turn on experimental features to enable the ribbon bar) it is already better than Microsoft's implementation, because you can keep the menubar AND display the ribbon bar simultaneously!
go to tools -> options -> advanced and tick "Enable experimental features"
click view -> Toolbar layout -> notebookbar
click the little icon on the left of the File tab, then select menubar
This solves the MAJOR problem with the ribbon bar concept that I had with Microsoft Office; instead of keeping both the advanced menu and the ribbon bar, Microsoft chose to sack the menu and show only the ribbon bar with its sometimes-meaningless icons, leading users on a wild goose chase. Had Microsoft Office included BOTH the menu bar AND the ribbon bar, I'd probably have given the ribbon bar more of a chance.

--
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by Gussington · 2017-02-01 19:45 · Score: 1

Well, I was happy to read this, till I saw they fscked it up with the "ribbon" interface....
Sooner or later you're going to have to come crashing out of the 1990's. Yes the ribbon was a shock for everyone else too, but once you get the hang of it, it is actually better. And it's 10 years old now, you're starting to sound like a loony who thinks the horseless carriage is the invention of satan.
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by iggymanz · 2017-02-02 05:50 · Score: 1

that's not the Microsoft definition of "distortion". MS Office presents documents The Microsoft Way(tm). All else is distortion.
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by lsatenstein · 2017-02-02 15:51 · Score: 1

Are they trying to catch up with wps.com's office product. I left LO for wps writer, wps spreadsheet pgm wps presentation
wps is a Windows clone, written with QT and with a ribbon menu system. So much faster to write text with wps than with LO.
However, I have not tried 5.3, which supposedly gives me an optional ribbon menu system (so they say)

--
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by mcswell · 2017-02-02 16:49 · Score: 1

Correct; smart people use LaTeX.
(Disclaimer: I use LaTeX whenever I can.)
Re: Ribbon...?!?!?! by mcswell · 2017-02-02 16:50 · Score: 1

I can get used to getting old, too. That doesn't mean I have to like it.
Re: Ribbon...?!?!?! by mcswell · 2017-02-02 16:57 · Score: 1

At the office, I'm pretty much forced to use MsOffice. (I use LaTeX when I can get away with it.) And I can tell you that the choice of things they put in the Word Ribbon is not even close to what I want/ use. Outlook is more reasonable, except for the lack of certain things that don't really have to do with ribbon vs. menu. I seldom use Excel, and have to google things when I do. Powerpoint...it results in such ugly looking presentations that I avoid it when possible. And I never use any of the other MS apps.
But I digress. I find the choice of default icons on Word's ribbon to be a head scratcher. What on Earth is the "Mailings" tab for? Is that like mail merge? How 1980s...
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by mcswell · 2017-02-02 16:58 · Score: 1

They say people can adapt to losing an arm or a leg, or all their teeth. That doesn't make it good.
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by mcswell · 2017-02-02 16:59 · Score: 1

Give me one reason why it's better. Not flashier, or newer, or shinier, or more colorful. Just better.
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by RockDoctor · 2017-02-04 15:24 · Score: 1

The ribbon panders to semi-literate morons and is a hinderance to those with a partly functioning cerebrum.
FTFY
Off to LO's office to see what the release notes say.

--
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by Gussington · 2017-02-06 23:03 · Score: 1

Give me one reason why it's better. Not flashier, or newer, or shinier, or more colorful. Just better.
Common functions are easier to find for most users, one of which I like is that for formatting changes I can hover over one and get an instant live preview.
But I'm sure that won't satisfy you. You grew up riding the steam train and there's no way you'll ever figure out these new horseless carriages...
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by mcswell · 2017-02-07 06:48 · Score: 1

You mean my Stanley Steamer isn't a horseless carriage? Then there's the steam plant I worked on that drove a 4000 ton destroyer at 35 mph... Ok, I'm getting off-topic.
So all seriousness aside, we use MsOffice 2013 at work. (I think--how can you tell any more? there's no "Help | About"! Ok, had to google it, and yes, 2013.) So I tried this preview you mention: selected some text, and moused-over the hieroglyphs, I mean icons. No preview. There's a little balloon that gives a text description of what it means to underline text ("Underline your text", duh), but the selected text doesn't change for this or most other changes. The only formatting change that seems to offer a preview is the font selection. But I never ever ever ever change the font of a piece of text; I always use Styles. So that does me no good. And mousing over the styles (which, as I say, I do use) again does not preview anything, which would be really useful (or preview changes I make to a style). Instead, mouse-over of a style just gives a balloon listing some (obviously not all) of the settings for the particular style, and there seems to be no way at all to preview changes to a style.
Maybe previewing works in Office 365?
And btw, I don't see why previewing wouldn't work just as well with menus as it does (in 365?) with the ribbon. So unless I'm missing s.t., this doesn't seem to be an advantage to the ribbon, it's just a somewhat useful feature that Microsoft happens to have added after replacing the menu with the ribbon.
"Common functions are easier to find for most users..." I guess I'm not "most users", because I don't find it particularly easy to find the functions I use commonly. On the contrary, I have to overlook a lot of features that are, for me, junk: nearly every formatting feature in the "Home" ribbon tab, for example--like I say, that's what God made Styles for. Every single thing in the Design and Mailings tabs, and almost everything in the Insert tab except "Table"--and then, once you've inserted a Table, you have to use an entirely different tab to do anything with it. Whereas everything having to do with Tables used to be accessible from a single "Table" menu. The Review tab has some useful things, but what on earth the Language stuff is doing in there, I don't know (nor who uses it--I'm a linguist, and I virtually never use it). And what's the difference between the Paragraph thingy in the Home tab and the separate Paragraph thingy in the Page Layout tab? I guess if I studied them, I'd figure it out, but it's not intuitive.
In short, I find most of the tabs/ icons in the ribbon useless, confusing, or hard to find. But I'm sure there must be some user somewhere who finds it all logical. You, I guess.
Like them tailfins on your horseless carriage?
Re:Ribbon...?!?!?! by Gussington · 2017-02-07 23:33 · Score: 1

"Common functions are easier to find for most users..." I guess I'm not "most users",
Well the evidence seems to support that assertion...

Re:That's just great... by ilsaloving · 2017-02-01 08:16 · Score: 1

On the upside, at least it gives you the option to not use it if you don't want to...

Here comes the hate by jitterman · 2017-02-01 08:26 · Score: 1

Cue all the "@#$!^@!%$# the Ribbon, and #@$%^@! these guys for caving in and selling out and being sheep and all the other overused phrases I've read on line for years that I can fit in my post.... Argh I'm just SO ANGRY over stuff that I can ignore and still be happy!"

--
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it

Export to LaTeX by Futurepower(R) · 2017-02-01 08:39 · Score: 2

Wow! I never would have guessed. Writer2LaTeX provides Writer export filters for LaTeX and BibTeX.

LaTeX/Export To Other Formats

This about LibreOffice WORRIES me: The download web page doesn't display correctly in either Firefox or Internet Explorer.

In Other Words... by RobotRunAmok · 2017-02-01 09:06 · Score: 3, Funny

Libre Office will forever be Showtime to Microsoft's HBO.

... could you post a template? by Herve5 · 2017-02-01 09:17 · Score: 1

All is in the title...

--
Herve S.

Just got v5.2.5! by antdude · 2017-02-01 09:20 · Score: 1

Argh. I just got that last week. :( Why even release v5.2.5 if v5.3 is out?

--
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).

Exchange client? by trevc · 2017-02-01 09:21 · Score: 1

Does it have an Outlook clone yet that works with Exchange?

Re:Exchange client? by dbIII · 2017-02-01 14:53 · Score: 1

Does it have an Outlook clone yet that works with Exchange?
The automatic virus vector functionally is taking a bit of time. Unlike Outlook you currently you have to click on the malware, save it and tell it to run.

I'd kill for a Keynote/pages clone by goombah99 · 2017-02-01 10:32 · Score: 1

I just adore the Keynote/Pages interface. Actually I adore the previous version where it had the NextStep Inspector interface. The new one isn't as good. But both are a step way above Microsoft's office.

What galls me with Pages and Keynote is they aren't compatible with Zotero the footnoting/reference manager. Ergo I must use Microsoft Office. oh the agony of that.

If only there was a work alike for keynote or pages interface but was open source. Then we'd have something.

Copy a good interface if you are going to copy something!

--
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.

Another link to OpenOffice extensions by Futurepower(R) · 2017-02-01 10:48 · Score: 2

OpenOffice LaTeX and HTML extensions

Bloat is even worse for open source ... by perpenso · 2017-02-01 10:56 · Score: 1

This path may be even worse for an open source project. At least Microsoft can pay people to work on uninteresting things and bloated/complicated code. For a volunteer based project its more difficult. Its much more interesting to add something new. If maintenance is made more difficult it could endanger the project.

Re:That's just great... by iggymanz · 2017-02-01 11:10 · Score: 1

I'm only reminded of slang from my grandparents' day:

Meadow Muffin: n slang for piece of manure left by grazing animal.

Casual users, office workers by HalAtWork · 2017-02-01 12:00 · Score: 1

People who work in an office or go to school are used to the ribbon now, and have a hard time finding what they want among the various drop down menus.

--
Twinstiq, game news

Re:Casual users, office workers by dbIII · 2017-02-01 14:30 · Score: 1

People who work in an office or go to school are used to the ribbon now, and have a hard time finding what they want among the various drop down menus.
But they only have to look once and then it's easy to remember. With the ribbon you've got to look every damned time for that little picture to click on and move across half the screen or more to get there. You even have to look to be sure your are on the correct tab (fuck that "ribbon" terminology - it's nothing like the thing it was named after).
Re:Casual users, office workers by HalAtWork · 2017-02-02 04:46 · Score: 1

Not always, drop down menus encourage keyboard shortcuts and looking for text that matches the option you want, ribbons are more visual and contextual as users expect now from using phones and tablets... So it depends what you're used to and what your mind is geared towards.

--
Twinstiq, game news
Re:Casual users, office workers by dbIII · 2017-02-02 13:33 · Score: 1

ribbons are more visual and contextual
IMHO that's the problem - a GUI that changes multiple times with context.
What was there before is not there any more so inexperienced users have trouble finding what they were using just the day before. It's like using "vi" only with half a dozen contexts instead of two.
Try talking someone through how to operate it over the phone and you'll get a bit of an idea of why I think it is a terrible design choice.
Even people who have grown up on phones and tablets take a bit of time to get used to what is effectively half a dozen different menu bars.

The hilarious thing is that there are still drop down menus under the "ribbon" elements.
Re:Casual users, office workers by HalAtWork · 2017-02-03 03:38 · Score: 1

But for example right-click menus change with context, actual options available to use change on context (you can't use drawing tools to manipulate text or add spreadsheet rows to a drawing) so instead of activating different toolbars or turning them on/off to reclaim screen space, some users prefer the ribbon. Sure you can get used to a certain style, but some users gravitate towards one and some another. That is why there are options to use either ribbons or traditional toolbars and menus on both office suites now. Options are good. I'm sure if it was an unpopular idea LibreOffice devs wouldn't have bothered and it would have disappeared from MS office (or wouldn't be the default).

--
Twinstiq, game news
Re:Casual users, office workers by dbIII · 2017-02-03 17:49 · Score: 1

I'm sure if it was an unpopular idea ... it would have disappeared from MS office
The MS who gave us clippy, Vista and Windows8 not pushing unpopular ideas?

And yet... by pixie.pt · 2017-02-01 12:36 · Score: 1

gmail docs keeps having a better font rendering on their doc platform.

Please reread. by mmell · 2017-02-01 15:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

Libre Office (previously: Star Office) was intended as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office.

"New Interface?" by Dr.+Evil · 2017-02-01 20:53 · Score: 2

"The issue is that users didn't want to learn a new interface"

No. My issues with the ribbon are:

Keyboard shortcuts?
"Responsive" design moves the icons around as you're using the product... e.g., shrink the window to work on two docs side-by-side
Cryptic icons require hovering over or clicking on to figure out what they do, icons change between versions of course
Screen real-estate wasted displaying 80% of features I rarely or never used
Features given prominence which sabotage the use of styles and screw up documents
They removed the menus (In Windows)

Re:"New Interface?" by mcswell · 2017-02-07 10:14 · Score: 1

Wow, you really are negative about the Ribbon. Just like me. Only diff is, I don't call them icons, I call them hieroglyphics. (There's a reason alphabetic writing systems took over nearly everywhere except China, and to some extent Japan.)

If LibreOffice can't make a web page...? by Futurepower(R) · 2017-02-02 04:02 · Score: 1

The problem is the incompetence of the LibreOffice group. The Download page doesn't display correctly? Amazing.

Slashdot Mirror

LibreOffice 5.3 Released, Touted As 'One of the Most Feature-Rich Releases' Ever (omgubuntu.co.uk)

148 of 224 comments (clear)