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Apache OpenOffice: We're OK With Not Being Super Cool (theregister.co.uk)
The Register's Thomas Claburn, interviews Jim Jagielski, Apache Software Foundation President and Apache OpenOffice project mentor. From the story: Despite being the subject of a deathwatch -- perhaps mainly by fans of rival LibreOffice -- AOO appears to be rather popular, with the 4.1.4 update racking up at least 1.6 million downloads. [...] While AOO and the ASF formulate a formal statement of direction for the project, Jagielski said more or less that all's well. "AOO is not, and isn't designed to be, the 'super coolest open source office suite with all the latest bells and whistles,'" Jagielski continued. "Our research shows that a 'basic,' functional office suite, which is streamlined with a 'simple' and uncluttered, uncomplicated UI, serves an incredible under-represented community. "Other office suites are focusing on the 'power user' which is a valuable market, for sure, but the real power and range for an open-source office suite alternative is the vast majority which is the 'rest of us. Sometimes we all forget how empowering open source is to the entire world."
The whole point of OO is that it lets you load a MS Word document. Once loaded, you can get the text onto the clipboard and paste it into a text editor. And then, you finally have a fuckton of ridiculously powerful tools to do whatever it is that you need to do. OpenOffice, LibreOffice, MS Office, none of them can even get into the ballpark. But once you get the text freed from the weird file format, the sky is the limit.
I'm also totally OK with not being a billionaire and dating supermodels.
This gives the impression that AOO is all about being small, simple, and stable, but it appears they're having a tough time even getting critical bugfixes deployed.
One of the strengths of open source is the diversity of choice. But that diversity can also be considered a weakness when it spreads valuable developers too thin, to the detriment of the entire community.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
... make it not suck.
But that also means a significant number of people – 77,000-plus, according to SourceForge stats – have downloaded the macOS version which contains a significant bug: if Apache OpenOffice is used to create a diagram in a Calc spreadsheet, the file becomes corrupted when saved.
I don't respond to AC's.
I thought their main competitor was LibreOffice, which is also open source. Are they in denial?
I will let the other guy know too about the article
http://saveie6.com/
Sounds like you should make one of those then.
...but that does not necessarily make it so. Everyone loves the idea of open source (including me) but the reality is that there is an awful lot of really bad projects out there. Without the cash incentive that comes with paid-for software, a lot of open source contributors don't want to do the hard stuff. There is plenty of 'grunt work' that goes into building a really good piece of software (documentation, fixing bugs, well designed interface, etc.) that no one seems to want to do right. If a particular project can get over that 'hump' to become popular enough that lots of contributors depend on it and have a financial incentive to fix its problems, then you can get a polished product for free. Otherwise, you generally get what you paid for...
Nope, and for even more fun for the uninitiated, they no longer roll a JRE package into the installer.
https://www.openoffice.org/download/common/java.html
As far as I can tell, LibreOffice does likewise possess some java-dependent stuff. That being said, it is not a hard dependency for either, but some functionality will be lost (wizards, mostly, it seems).
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Google docs is pretty bare bones too. But the online collaboration is a pretty big deal.
VBA support? No? Didn't think so.
How are these multinational insurance companies supposed to build their risk models?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
The UI is so 2003. Not doin' it.
As in, it works and is clear and discoverable?
I am of course being sarcastic, and while I'm not claiming that 2003 was the pinnacle of UI design, I do think a large number of heard learned lessons from the 80s and 90s have been forgotten and/or thrown under the bus in the name of newness.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
...is completely delusional.
Apparently having a safe and functional office suite is for power users, while using a bug ridden obsolete builds of what was years ago basically the same thing is for normal users? WTF is he smoking?
Apache is doing a tremendous disservice to all OpenOffice users, who are still unaware of the actual status of the project, and in this case, to open source community as a whole.
This is really sad to watch and has been for a long time now.
"We're OK With Not Being Super Cool", "We are OK in our niche", "We are OK by only having the smart customers"... this is how fading away starts. OpenOffice is going down the road and they can not feel it while they are on their "1.6 million downloads" comfort zone. This is exactly is happening the Thunderbird, while they are happy with their monthly download rate they don't want to see what others are doing. This is how the begining of the end of the road feels.
This project team is completely irresponsible. They have unpatched bugs and haven't had a major feature addition in the past 4 years. They make Open Source software look bad. Yet they still tout the Black Knight line about their dying project. Tis but a scratch..
Miss the Ribbon huh?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'm not using a product that sounds like a Mexican Wrestler. Sorry.
Please tell us: What free / open source cross-platform mail client has recently overtaken Thunderbird in terms of feature-completeness and usability?
(I do of course know some, like mutt or Evolution, but did not notice any significant shift in their respective differences.)
And while Oracle may have meanwhile passed the corpse on to somebody else, it still has Oracle's foul stench of pure corporate evil on it. I don't think anyone who worked with or on LibreOffice wants to smell that stench ever again.
Could someone at Google steal your book, or ideas from your book?
"... it still has Oracle's foul stench of pure corporate evil on it."
Don't you hate it when people are overly positive about Oracle?
I tried to switch to Libreoffice but then I discovered a that paragraph borders look terrible. Filed a bug and they responded with some jargon about not being their fault but rather "Cairo" is the one to blame, and they set it to FIXED. Whatever. Still their text borders look like a joke and anyone can test my claims, just type some text, select it, create a thick border around it and look how it appears awful and prints with jaggies on the edges.
AOO works for me. I've been using Writer and Calc for many years without any issues.
Google agrees: no matter where you are, you've needlessly chosen to trust a spy agency with your work instead of carrying a USB key with strongly-encrypted copies of your documents with you, or setting up a server carrying strongly-encrypted copies of your documents with proper access controls (so even if someone breaks in, they get an encrypted file). I suggest switching to something that makes it a little more difficult to get to your data.
Digital Citizen
When I was a kid my mom use to put this disinfectant on cuts that stung like crazy. Years later I learned that the actual active ingredient didn't sting at all, but the manufacturer added alcohol for the sole purpose of making the stuff hurt: without the sting, people doubted whether the disinfectant was actually doing anything.
There really haven't been any compelling reasons to update Office's UI in the last twenty years. Security fixes? Sure. Updates to help Microsoft pitch whatever products they were using the leverage of the Office monopoly to promote? Yep -- although people would be hacked off about paying for either of those things, even though security is a legitimate need.
So Microsoft added the sting of having to regularly re-learn one of your most used tools, so you know you're getting something new for the upgrade money you send them every few years.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Superfluous comma after "Claburn".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I wanted to use LibreOffice, but couldn't. Having already lots of Excel spreasheets filled with information and formulas, I needed something compatible. Opening the .xls files with LO (Libre Office) would break the formulas because there's a function incompatibility (Indirect's syntax), where OpenOffice would open them just fine.
Actually the incompatibility is this one:
https://superuser.com/question...
Why would they do that?? Can't understand. Even if there were a simple solution, I already have lots of macros written for OO and adapting them to LO would be a total waste of time.
I'm not that sure about LO, STABLE software is really appreciated and OO is just fine. We need stuff that works fine for years, so we can get stuff done.
Seems like a huge waste of development effort to maintain both projects. TBH, the only thing that The Document Foundation needs from AOO is the name. OpenOffice is a much better name than LibreOffice. It's also more well known.
I'm sure there are worse reasons for picking a software product, but it would have to be something like "it tastes weird" or "it reminds me of my uncle's scrotum".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Every time I open something from the file browser in MS Office, I marvel at the sheer number of clicks it now takes to do what used to be a single menu choice. We're 10 years in and I still hate the ribbon.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This reminds me of the articles in Windows Central about his Windows Phone was not competing with Android and the iPhones—and thus not failing tremendously—because it was a completely different product to a smart phone. How long until AOO is dead? Everybody I know has moved to Libre Office years ago.
The UI is so 2003. Not doin' it.
As in, it works and is clear and discoverable?
I am of course being sarcastic, and while I'm not claiming that 2003 was the pinnacle of UI design, I do think a large number of heard learned lessons from the 80s and 90s have been forgotten and/or thrown under the bus in the name of newness.
You mean like going through catogories of categories of menus on Word 2003. I hated that back then.
What the ribbons can do is preview changes without selecting them. Word is my least favorite Microsoft product of the Office suite. Its formatting bugs are notorious. One of the things i like to do is move the mouse cursor over a style or paste to preview what it looks like. If it fucks it up I move the mouse over to paste (text only) etc.
Also R&D is on Microsoft's side on this one with 85% of new feature requests were from features already there. After moving to the ribbon it went down to closer to 20%. It was a success.
It took me over a week to change guys. Jesus LEARN you are all IT professionals here and slashdot should be the least place on the internet for those set in their ways. It is not oatmeal.org news for grandpas stuff that is old.
I understand you all maybe used to something, but I also like how the ribbon can show keyboard shortcuts (beats LibreOffice and Office 2003) by hitting alt. SO no more hitting alt and sorting through menus upon menus if you are on a tiny airplane seat with no mouse. Just hit "alt" and select the letter you want DONE.
I do not want to go back at all. The only thing that pisses me off is the formatting bugs in Word and awkwardness of Outlook but that is unrelated.
http://saveie6.com/
I used to use it briefly in my very old, updated Windows XP Pro SP3 desktop PC since LibreOffice refused to work. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Only if you explicitly enable it in the settings...
>>>
The whole point of OO is that it lets you load a MS Word document. Once loaded, you can get the text onto the clipboard and paste it into a text editor.
>>>
Nobody will hinder you to save a document from MS Word or OO or LibreOffice as text file.
Yeah those would be the Microsoft products.
Also R&D is on Microsoft's side on this one with 85% of new feature requests were from features already there. After moving to the ribbon it went down to closer to 20%. It was a success.
So in other words, you think it's better because it panders to people who can't find their own ass because they were sitting on it? I'll stick with something that doesn't eat up 20% of my vertical screen space on a wide-screen laptop display.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Come to think of it, "Excel" does sound like an undergarment for seniors.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm not sure if you count it as a UI improvement, but the addition of SmartArt to PowerPoint is a huge improvement and is (I think) only about 10 years old. For anyone who hasn't seen this, it maps from an outline view to one of a few dozen pre-defined diagram types. It's a very quick way of turning a slide of text into a slide in a graphical representation.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
When LibreOffice forked from OpenOffice the latter was not being well maintained. Important bugs had been left unfixed for years, it was locked to Java and there wasn't much development happening. Since then the LO team has done a tremendous amount of work improving the underlying code. The result is a faster and more stable office platform.
OpenOffice burnt it's brand through neglect. Now LibreOffice is better known and it's earning a good reputation. However odd the name might be that fades away when people get used to it. I now see LO being installed side by side with MS Office in business environments and that was not happening with OpenOffice.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
At work - Office all the way, and I am glad for it. Yes, it's annoying, and the integration with the cloud/OneDrive can be maddening! OneDrive has a hiccup synching, and all of my open Excel documents freeze and never come back. There's a reason that it creates recovery files, because it crashes a lot.
I don't care about Word, I basically use it to convert things to PDF. I use Excel and Powerpoint a lot, Visio on occasion. For the home user, LibreOffice for sure, but if you want to do anything significant MSOffice is the way to go.
And I don't have a problem saying that. It's just better. I run Linux at home so it's not really an option, but the two times a year I need to use LibreOffice for something I find the general operation to be confusing. I am sure if I used it more I might get used to it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Also R&D is on Microsoft's side on this one with 85% of new feature requests were from features already there. After moving to the ribbon it went down to closer to 20%. It was a success.
So in other words, you think it's better because it panders to people who can't find their own ass because they were sitting on it? I'll stick with something that doesn't eat up 20% of my vertical screen space on a wide-screen laptop display.
Yep. The ribbon is a superior UI component for the majority of people and for myself. You can auto hide the ribbon too in Office 2016 if you are concerned with space. 20% screen real estate is excessive.
But the reason I don't use Libraoffice is because it lacks the ribbon and it still is missing some functionality.
If you learn it and open your mind you may find it is better than the other method with a nightmare of nested menus and doing undo/redo since it lacks previews.
http://saveie6.com/
Go to file -> account -> Update Options -> Update and then restart your PC. This will upgrade both Office as well as OneDrive for business.
http://saveie6.com/