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

An anonymous reader shares a report: A new month, and a brand new version of open-source office suite LibreOffice is now available to download. And what a release it is. LibreOffice 5.3 introduces a number of key new features and continues work on improving the look and feel of the app across all major platforms. The Document Foundation describes LibreOffice 5.3 as "one of the most feature-rich releases in the history of the application." One of the headline features is called MUFFIN interface, a new toolbar design similar to the Microsoft Office Ribbon UI.

Comments

Not Another Office Clone!

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..?

[serviscope_minor]

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.

Re:Multicore for spreadsheets..?

[Camel Pilot]

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:A ribbon clone?

[AthanasiusKircher]

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:Multicore for spreadsheets..?

[MightyYar]

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.