Slashdot Mirror


LibreOffice 6.2 Brings New Interfaces, Performance Improvements To the Open Source Office Suite (techrepublic.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: New interface styles and feature improvements are available in version 6.2 of LibreOffice -- the most popular open-source office suite -- released Thursday by The Document Foundation. As with any software update, bug fixes and feature enhancements are present, making this release a significant upgrade, particularly for users coming from Microsoft Office, or working with files created with those programs. LibreOffice now supports SVG-based icons for toolbars in the Breeze, Colibre, and Elementary icon sets as an experimental feature, to better support HiDPI displays increasingly found in notebook PCs. The Elementary icon set was also improved significantly, adding a 32px PNG version, and fixing inconsistencies between the 16, 24, and 32px versions, as well as adding more icons across the set to prevent reverting to defaults. In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be a default option. This interface mimics the oft-maligned "Ribbon interface" in Office 2007. The "traditional" Office-style toolbar is default, though the Tabbed interface can be enabled through the "View > User Interface" menus.

90 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. LibreOffice 365 by trb · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm waiting for LibreOffice 365, with the $0/year subscription fee.

    1. Re:LibreOffice 365 by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm waiting for them to just move to AbiWord as an OOWriter replacement.

    2. Re:LibreOffice 365 by sheramil · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm waiting for the ability to apply a style to a sentence, and not have that style applied to the entire paragraph.

    3. Re:LibreOffice 365 by DarkRookie2 · · Score: 2

      Office 2016 is 800MB before install and 1.24GB after

      --
      http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
    4. Re:LibreOffice 365 by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm waiting for the ability to apply a style to a sentence, and not have that style applied to the entire paragraph.

      Make all your paragraphs only one sentence long -- problem solved. :-)

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    5. Re:LibreOffice 365 by PostPhil · · Score: 4, Informative

      You joke, but they're half way there:
      https://www.libreoffice.org/do...

    6. Re:LibreOffice 365 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      You can already do that, and you have been able to do that for a long time. I use it all the time in my technical writing. It's very handy when you have things like inline code samples that you want to have styled all the same.

      It's called a Character Style and applies to things that are within a paragraph. Use a Paragraph Style if you want to apply the same style to a paragraph or other block of text.

      In my technical writing, let's say I want to describe the getopt() function. I might include some sample program that shows how to implement getopt() in a program. For that block of code, I use a Paragraph Style. But there are instances where I need to mention the getopt() function within a paragraph. I could just use bold for every instance of that inline code. But what if I later want to change it so that it's not bold, but uses the same monospace font that I use for the code blocks? I just update the Character Style once and LibreOffice applies that style everywhere.

    7. Re:LibreOffice 365 by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

      I'm willing to take the hit for the "format as table" feature that Excel has.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    8. Re:LibreOffice 365 by reboot246 · · Score: 1

      I just tried that and I see that I can apply a style to one sentence, one word, or even one letter within a paragraph without LO applying it to the whole paragraph. I wonder why yours is different.

    9. Re:LibreOffice 365 by kurkosdr · · Score: 2

      Realistically, a "cloud-enhanced" version of Libre office with collaboration features and seamless server-side storage would be a nice way for LibreOffice to raise money.

    10. Re:LibreOffice 365 by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      ^^^ Mod parent up!

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    11. Re:LibreOffice 365 by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      I'm waiting for LibreOffice 365, with the $0/year subscription fee.

      And your money back if you aren't satisfied.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    12. Re:LibreOffice 365 by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Funny

      You can already do that, and you have been able to do that for a long time. I use it all the time in my technical writing. It's very handy when you have things like inline code samples that you want to have styled all the same.

      It's called a Character Style and applies to things that are within a paragraph. Use a Paragraph Style if you want to apply the same style to a paragraph or other block of text.

      Dammit, now he's going to have to come up with a different reason that he hates LO.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    13. Re:LibreOffice 365 by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      I just tried that and I see that I can apply a style to one sentence, one word, or even one letter within a paragraph without LO applying it to the whole paragraph. I wonder why yours is different.

      Because he's never used LO.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    14. Re:LibreOffice 365 by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Dammit, now he's going to have to come up with a different reason that he hates LO.

      It doesn't have The Ribbon.

      Oh, bugger...

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    15. Re:LibreOffice 365 by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Dammit, now he's going to have to come up with a different reason that he hates LO.

      It doesn't have The Ribbon.

      Oh, bugger...

      Indeed! The ribbon was what got me to look at OO back in the day.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    16. Re: LibreOffice 365 by mino31 · · Score: 1

      not have that style applied to the entire paragraph. https://xender.pro/ https://discord.software/ https://omegle.onl/

    17. Re:LibreOffice 365 by strikethree · · Score: 1

      I'm waiting for the ability to apply a style to a sentence, and not have that style applied to the entire paragraph.

      Make all your paragraphs only one sentence long -- problem solved. :-)

      But but but... I was told that part of the definition of 'paragraph' was that it was comprised of at least 3 sentences. :(

      Honestly though, the bug being described seems like an odd bug. A structural definition is not as black and white as it needs to be, or else it is a simple programming error that just isn't being fixed... but the second option seems unlikely.

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
    18. Re:LibreOffice 365 by strikethree · · Score: 1

      LOL. So it is a bug in understanding, not a bug in programming. I kind of figured it had be something like what you described. Nicely done. :)

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  2. OMG! Tabs! by DarkRookie2 · · Score: 2

    This is good. I never used anything before Word 2007 so the tab grouping are a lot more familiar to me.

    --
    http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
    1. Re:OMG! Tabs! by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Funny

      I had hoped that Microsoft's patents on the ribbon interface would prevent anyone else from attempting to inflict it on their users. It looks like maybe I was wrong.

    2. Re:OMG! Tabs! by DarkRookie2 · · Score: 1

      Fuck that thing
      At least with the tabs I can set them up the way I want.

      --
      http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
    3. Re:OMG! Tabs! by Immerman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, at least it's not the default. And it may turn out that the problem isn't the "Ribbon" strategy per-se, but that Microsoft's implementation of it is miserably bad. It would hardly be the first time they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  3. Icons? Reallly? by cellocgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    With all the important capabilities that need to be in a doc processing suite, you decided that FancyShinyIcons was what matters?

    What I want, and would have hoped most users want, is improved workflow and an absolute minimum of changes to the interface. Why learn a new set of icons when we just finished learning the last set of icons? Why deal with commands getting rearranged in Ribbon submenus? Let us do our work and just facilitate interfaces and filetype conversions.

    --
    https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
    1. Re:Icons? Reallly? by Immerman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I can't say I disapprove of these icon changes, and it's certainly worth noting that new icons are likely made by artists rather than programmers - it's possible some programmers are wearing two hats, but in general the man-hours spent on icons, documentation, etc. in a big project are hours spent by contributors that you wouldn't want working on code anyway.

      I am generally annoyed with gratuitous icon changes - but in this case it seems like they (mostly) maintained recognizability, while improving legibility, which should be especially nice for those who choose to use smaller icon sizes. Can't tell you how annoyed I get about projects that go for the monochrome icon b.s. - icons are important functional components that must be easy to recognize, and they remove one of the most dramatic differentiating features for an arguable improvement in aesthetics?

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    2. Re:Icons? Reallly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Because LibreOffice probably wants to make more people happy than just the old 90's tech crowd. Like it or not, any company considering the transition to LO would probably deal with user pushback if the UI looks 20 years out of date.

    3. Re:Icons? Reallly? by mcswell · · Score: 1

      In the year 496, Rome looked 20 years out of date.

  4. Re:The Swastika by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Who's parliament?

  5. Good for them by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm grateful to the LiberOffice folks. They're been the "Office-but-better" suite on my computers for a while now, and I'm very happy with it.

    If you use LIbreOffice (like I do), you should go donate if you can (like I do) and/or contribute to improvements if you're capable (I am not).

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Good for them by fermion · · Score: 2
      I like the fact that there is a lot of development on the free front, both openoffie and libreoffice. I stoped using libreoffice when it broke on the Mac, and now tend to use the commercial Apple stuff or google docs for the simple stuff I do. More complex stuff I use LaTex as it tends to be technical.

      I am sure there is a business case to continue to buy MS Office, but given the cost I don't really understand why small firms would do so.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    2. Re:Good for them by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I use LaTex

      I love LaTex. It's the one document production software that I feel really gets me since Nota Bene disappeared. I learned to use it when I was helping my mathematician wife with her PhD thesis (I was no help with the math part, but I like to make nice documents). My publications were all written in LaTex. Years later, it's still on every computer I own because if I want it to look just right, it's the best way.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Good for them by Immerman · · Score: 5, Informative

      >I don't really understand why small firms would do so.
      One word: compatibility.
      I'm not a fan of M.S. Office, but small firms often do business with big firms, and any digital paperwork that gets passed around will almost certainly be in MS Office format - which last I checked is neither fully documented, nor even fully compatible with their partially documented "open" format.

      LibreOffice, Google Docs, etc. mostly do a pretty good job of working with MS files - but mostly isn't perfect, and leaves open the possibility of costly mistakes, as well as introducing a steady stream of headaches and frustration from dealing with inevitable incompatibilities, with costly effects on morale.

      Plus, most new employees will already know their way around MS Office, and would require extensive training to use the alternatives. Not because they're any more difficult, but because most people seem to learn how to use their tools by rote memorization, so that any change requires them to relearn everything from scratch.

      When an Office365 subscription costs less than a day's wages per year, it's not really that hard a decision to make.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    4. Re:Good for them by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      I use and I like it, but I confess I haven't donated (yet). Maybe I'll go send 'em a few bucks.

      LIbreOffice is fast and clean- I wish it was the standard rather than MS Word.

      Word on Windows: Meh
      Word on Mac: Yuck

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    5. Re:Good for them by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      https://www.notabene.com/

      Honestly, they killed it when they dropped the DOS version and went with that modern Windows 95 interface that they're still using today. It's not what it once was. When I was doing my dissertation, I had every keystroke combination in my DNA. I could navigate that bitch so fast it would make your head spin.

      And I owe it all to a very great man and famous writer, Wayne Booth, who turned me on to Nota Bene in the first place. He also played a mean cello and had a heart as big as the world and the most generous mind I've ever known.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    6. Re:Good for them by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >I don't really understand why small firms would do so. One word: compatibility.

      Cool story Bro!

      Microsoft Office isn't even compatible with itself. We used to get PowerPoint files that were done on the Windows version, annnnnd...... Nope, don't look at all the same. Weird printer business, and font issues in word processing despite supposedly identical fonts. Version differences not working, and often within one platform.

      I kept a copy of OO because it could handle that kind of stuff.

      Now I have control of some Linux, some MacOS, and some Windows system. And we don't cut Linux out of the loop, so it isn't a matter of compatibility, it's no options at all.

      So here comes LO, and the work done on any platform looks like the work done on the others,

      That's compatibility, not just saying "compatibility" Because MSO isn't even compatible with itself.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    7. Re:Good for them by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Hey, you're preaching to the choir here. If I had my choice everyone would use .ODF or some other open format and we could pick our office suite based on personal preference.

      Sadly, I'm not in charge. I'm one guy in a small firm that uses MSOffice, because they can't afford any format friction with the companies they do business with. And I can say from personal experience (because I refuse to use that tripe) that at least 20-30% of the documents that cross my desktop can't be read properly by OO, LO, or Google Docs. Fortunately I'm strictly on the receiving end of those files so I can just deal with the bad formatting and broken scripting, but trying to pretend it doesn't exist is disingenuous.

      On the other hand, I'm the guy that can usually open the files from older versions of MSO that give everyone else fits. It's the old MS treadmill, break compatibility just enough with every version to pressure everyone into upgrading regularly, and prevent the competition from being able to maintain compatibility with the current version.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    8. Re:Good for them by F.Ultra · · Score: 2

      usually when that happens (firm sends me a .doc or .docx that they want filled in) I usually fill it correctly and then send them back a .odt

    9. Re:Good for them by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

      Great that it works for you, but if you have to create documents as (e.g. ppt files) and send them to third parties, knowing for certain that at least the most recent version of Office renders it properly is worth way more than the license fee.

      But it doesn't render them properly. Between MacOS and Windows, the files most of the time need reworked. And of course, nothing for Linux.

      And the answer isn't to go Windows only. We have programs on each platform that are platform specific.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    10. Re:Good for them by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      I like the output from LaTex. I've learned that just hypenating gets you most of the aesthetics without the miserable interface, though, so I wouldn't recommend LaTex for anything that wasn't going to be published.

      Or anything that contains formulas or equations.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    11. Re:Good for them by mcswell · · Score: 1

      I'm with you more and more. For one, LaTeX does legal numbering out of the box; I've *never* been able to get it to work right in Word, all the way back to the 80s. (IANL, but so-called "legal numbering" is used in all the technical documents I've ever written.) And I can re-format the bibliography easily, by just choosing a different bibliography style.

      Not to mention, it just looks better.

    12. Re:Good for them by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      small firms often do business with big firms, and any digital paperwork that gets passed around will almost certainly be in MS Office format

      Funny, I find it's almost always PDFs these days.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    13. Re:Good for them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      >... MS Office, and would require extensive training to use the alternatives.

      Yeah right, like when Ribbons were introduced.

      Oops, these were introduced to MS Office, and afterwards LibreOffice and OpenOffice were more similar to MS Office than MS Office.

    14. Re:Good for them by Immerman · · Score: 1

      PDF is intentionally designed to work only for non-modifiable documents (and simple forms)

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    15. Re:Good for them by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Yep. Behold the power of institutional inertia.

      There was a brief window in which it could have changed - but unless a large percentage of institutions made the switch, you would still need to train every new employee. "Everyone" learns MS Office in school. If they went to college they probably learned how to do more advanced things... also in MS Office. If they worked somewhere else they probably also learned how to do more domain-specific tasks...in MSOffice.

      That's the problem with someone having a near-monopoly in a common tool - everyone gets used to being lazy and only learning program-specific processes rather than general procedures, and anyone who chooses to depart the captive ecosystem has to be willing to shoulder the burden of reeducating their employees.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    16. Re:Good for them by F.Ultra · · Score: 1

      That won't stop them from doing it though, instead they will keep on sending you the docx on a daily basis since they really want that damn form to be filled in. By returning a proper odt however I have complied and the problem now lies with them, and if they ever complain "why did you send me a odf" then I can just reply back "but you begun by thinking that it would be proper to send me a docx".

    17. Re:Good for them by hawk · · Score: 2

      >One word: compatibility.

      I've been using StarOffice, err, Open Office, I mean LibreOffice long enough that compatibility was a *reason* to use it instead of MS. It simply did better at importing from last year's (or next year's) version of MS than MS did.

      And it wasn't even necessarily from different versions--I had to deal with students coming in with nominally the same versions of Windows and MS Office, yet the file wouldn't work *quite* the same way for both.

      These days, for my practice, I just send what *does* need others to work with it in .doc (although LO seems to be getting up to speed on .docx).

      The last version of MS Word I used (and what I'd call the last MS product worth paying for) was Word 5.1/Mac.

      hawk

    18. Re:Good for them by hawk · · Score: 1

      I'm convinced that pdf stems from a far more malign drug experience than the LSD origins of HyperCard . . .

      When I was practicing immigration law, we had to keep three different pdf programs to work with the government documents, as they are all hostile to one another. It seems that they *deliberately* find ways to add data that won't appear in other documents . . .

      PDF is as standardized as the 16k RAM chips (for those young enough to chase off my lawn, the industry came up with a standard pinout--and then everyone did different things with them! ISTR that there *was* a pair of manufacturers whose chips could plug into the same design . . .)

      hawk

  6. Ribbon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be a default option. This interface mimics the oft-maligned "Ribbon interface" in Office 2007.

    Obligatory "you were supposed to destroy them, not join them" post.

    At least the classic view still exists and is the default.

    1. Re:Ribbon by Immerman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've heard The Ribbon has improved a lot since it's introduction, so perhaps it's getting good enough to be worth cloning.

      It would also be quite hilarious if LibreOffice manages to make a ribbon that is actually an improvement over traditional toolbars, exposing the fact that the problem is not ribbon interfaces themselves, but Microsoft's general incompetence at making UIs.

      I know the times I've used MSOffice I've felt like the ribbon had a lot of potential, if only it weren't so infuriating to use.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    2. Re:Ribbon by Immerman · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Menus hide features almost as thoroughly and are much more tedious to use. Until you click on the menu, you have very little idea what's on it (except what you've memorized), and if there's no icons, and you haven't memorized positions, then you have to read through every option to find the one you're looking for. They're made worse by the fact that functions are very often not located on the menu you would expect, or menus are named such that *none* of them would lead you to believe they hold the function you're looking for.

      Really, when you get right down to it the Ribbon is essentially a hybrid of a toolbar and a sticky-menu - click the menu header, and the associated toolbar is displayed.

      The loss of text is quite annoying though - even though you rarely use the text for frequently-used functions, it's invaluable for trying to figure out which F'ing icon is associated with the rarely-used function you're looking for.

      Hmmm, actually..., what if you made a ribbon that simultaneously displayed the tool-tips for everything on the bar whenever the mouse was over its tab? Essentially you'd get a 2D menu, where the bulky text was only displayed on demand.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    3. Re: Ribbon by zkiwi34 · · Score: 1

      Menus are generally not customisable much if at all. Ribbons seem the exact opposite. Not exactly a fan favourite when one prefers the UI to be consistent.

    4. Re:Ribbon by mcswell · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have the exact opposite experience.

      1) "Until you click on the menu, you have very little idea what's on it" Unless you keep the ribbon open all the time (in which case you're wasting a lot of screen space because of those icons), you can't see what's in them. And even when you do open a ribbon, you *still* can't see into half (my guestimate) the icons, specifically those icons that have a bunch of choices inside them. Take the Paste icon for instance; it has several sub-commands, but you can't see them without opening that icon.

      2) "if there's no icons, and you haven't memorized positions, then you have to read through every option to find the one you're looking for" Well yes, that's a skill I learned in first grade. What's wrong with that? I have to do the same thing with the icons in the ribbon, because interpreting an icon is pure guesswork. (Unless you're an ancient Egyptian, in which case maybe you're used to memorizing hieroglyphs.) In short, you have to memorize positions on the ribbon, or find the text under each icon (which is much harder than simply finding the text in a menu).

      3) "made worse by the fact that functions are very often not located on the menu you would expect": Where is the "insert row" command in Excel? It's under the "Insert" tab, right? Wrong! As I found out when I needed to insert a row in Excel the other day. I find very little logic to the layout of commands in the ribbon.

      4) "menus are named such that *none* of them would lead you to believe they hold the function you're looking for." Umm, yes. What's in the "Home" tab on the ribbon? Things that have to do with your house, right? Or what's the diff between the "Design" and "Layout" tabs? And then there's that all-important Mailings tab, which is perfect for 1980s-style mail merge.

      And don't even get me started on the Files tab, which teleports you into an alternative universe where you're not allowed to see what you're writing.

    5. Re: Ribbon by mcswell · · Score: 1

      Strange. With MsWord 2003 (and versions before, IIRC, although I am getting too old to remember that), I could customize the menus to my heart's content. One of the truly awful things about Word2007's implementation of the ribbon was there was *no* way to modify it in any way, shape or form. I think they've improved on that since then--I am told it is possible to modify the ribbon (within certain limits). But there's absolutely no reason Word, or any other program, should prevent you from modifying its menu OR its ribbon.

    6. Re:Ribbon by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      I've heard The Ribbon has improved a lot since it's introduction

      Nope. The ribbon is still a mess in the current Office 365 version. Luckily I don't have to use that pile of crap too often.

  7. Re:The Swastika by J053 · · Score: 1

    From Wikipedia:

    Parliament is a funk band formed in the late 1960s by George Clinton as part of his Parliament-Funkadelic collective. Less rock-oriented than its sister act Funkadelic, Parliament drew on science-fiction and outlandish performances in their work.

  8. What warning? by sjbe · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm going to put a hold on LibreOffice updates until I get around to loading it up in a VM for testing,

    Why would you do that if you weren't doing it before?

    I'm all for feature and security updates but after having to deal with all the UI "improvements" in the UI's of various application (Firefox, Word, Windows, etc.) over the years I am hesitant to give up what I have become familiar with if I can avoid it.

    You didn't read the summary. They didn't change the interface. They merely gave an alternative option that is NOT the default. The default is approximately unchanged. Some people like or at least are used to the current Microsoft interface so why not have an option to make those people comfortable? It won't be what I use but if it works for someone else then that is fine. My user interface preferences do not have to be universally shared.

    1. Re:What warning? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because the idiot who wrote the summary misrepresented the additional UI by saying:

      In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be a default option.

      When what he should have said was:

      In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be included with the official release. The "traditional" Office-style toolbar is still the default. The additional Tabbed interface can be enabled through the "View > User Interface" menus.

    2. Re:What warning? by Stormwatch · · Score: 1

      That sounds fine, until you think of the possibility of this progression:

      >add shit feature as optional
      >make shit feature standard
      >remove non-shit option

    3. Re:What warning? by malkavian · · Score: 2

      You forgot the "fork" option.

    4. Re:What warning? by F.Ultra · · Score: 1

      Then perhaps wait with the panic till that actually happens?

  9. Why perople don't update by Snotnose · · Score: 1

    Just last week we were talking about why people don't update their programs. Changing the UI was a biggie. LibreOffice Draw changed it's UI a year or two back, took me an hour or two to figure out where things went and, when I did, I preferred the old UI.

    Ditto ribbons. I've been using them for several years now, still don't like them, much prefer the older way of doing things.

    LibreOffice does what I need it to do, as they're changing the UI again I doubt I'll ever update it again.

    1. Re:Why perople don't update by sconeu · · Score: 1

      Did you even RTFS (much less RTFA)?

      Tabs/Ribbon are available, they are not the default interface. If you are a masochist, you can turn them on. Otherwise, it looks the same (modulo icons).

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    2. Re:Why perople don't update by samwichse · · Score: 1

      "In LibreOffice 6.2, the "Tabbed" interface is now available for Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw, and is considered sufficiently stable to be a default option."

      The problem is from reading the FS and not the FA. The summary is misleading and makes it sound like the ribbon-style interface is a default. The article says it's included in builds by default but you have to turn it on yourself in the menus.

  10. Too many whiners out there! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The world has lots of volunteers for all kinds of 'worthy causes'. If people want to donate their own time and/or money to something that they feel passionate about, then good on them! But I really wonder about all the users out there who complain when someone chooses to make changes that they do not like. It is free software! The people building it do not get paid to make it do what YOU want. They work on features that they think are fun, not ones that necessarily add value for you. You are not a customer, but rather a recipient of someone else's largesse. Take it or leave it.

    1. Re:Too many whiners out there! by DidgetMaster · · Score: 2

      It's like the homeless guy who complains about the food at the soup kitchen because it is not on par with the finest restaurant.

    2. Re:Too many whiners out there! by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 2

      It's like the homeless guy who complains about the food at the soup kitchen because it is not on par with the finest restaurant.

      It's not really like that at all.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  11. The toolbars were broken on HiDPI. That's why. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    On high-DPI screens, the icons were so tiny, the interface became unusable.

    Granted, high-DPI is already idiotic itself, as it only wastes energy to display things you can't see anyway.
    But if you're suffering from having to use such a screen, trust me, you do want scalable icons.

    I still think Lotus SmartSuite's InfoBox had the best interface, and everything else is just a half-assed clone of it. (Especially because they don't even highlight which settings were changed from the base template class.) The only change it needed, was to spread the tabs into a sidebar, once the screens became big enough to allow it.
    The ribbon interface was especially stupid, since the "sidebar" was placed at the top! On wide screens! And because there was no logic between the UI visuals and the controls to change them via keyboard.

    1. Re: The toolbars were broken on HiDPI. That's why. by jabuzz · · Score: 1

      HiDPI screens are like the difference between a dot matrix and a laser printer. If you are happy with a dot matrix that is fine, but personally I prefer a laser and a HiDPI screen too.

    2. Re:The toolbars were broken on HiDPI. That's why. by caseih · · Score: 1

      I've never understood why this has to be so (the small icons). Surely the UI can scale everything according to DPI, right? Even it has to scale a bitmap. In some sense this is what HiDPI does already. But sadly the dream of using vector graphics everywhere for scaling to any resolution died along the way. I'd really like if the entire desktop could be scaled arbitrarily (and look clean and sharp). If I want things a bit bigger, I can. Or smaller. Or make the text exactly 12 pt tall (actual pt). Never quite understood why they ended up using fake pixels as a basic unit when we already had pt. Or mm.

  12. Microsoft Word was not able to load its file! by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Many years ago, I was using Microsoft Word. I wrote something for more than 3 hours. I then discovered that Microsoft Word was not able to load that file! Yow!

    I was able to load the file in LibreOffice. Since then, I don't use Microsoft Word.

    1. Re:Microsoft Word was not able to load its file! by jwhyche · · Score: 1

      I find stories like this both amusing and unbelievable. Makes me wonder what kind of weird ass format you saved your file in to prevent MS Office from loading it. I just loaded a file that I wrote on WordPerfect 4.1 on the Amiga in Office 365.

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
    2. Re:Microsoft Word was not able to load its file! by BadDreamer · · Score: 2

      I've had that happen many times. Word's older file formats are really nuts. Among other things they contain raw memory dumps from Word, which are then reloaded and instantiated when the document is opened.

      It's a miracle (and a sign of the immense amount of work to fix quirks the developers put in) that it works as well as it does. Word not being able to read Word documents is very common.

      WordPerfect is well supported, on the other hand. That file format is well documented and sane. I am not surprised that can be opened in a modern word processor. The issue is with Word, not the age of the documents.

    3. Re:Microsoft Word was not able to load its file! by jwhyche · · Score: 2

      I've been using MS Word for years, since office windows 95/98. I have directories full of documents from practically every version off office. I can go down the list here and load every one of them. I plain short story documents all the way up to complex business documents. They all are loading fine.

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
    4. Re: Microsoft Word was not able to load its file! by lala31 · · Score: 1

      am not surprised that can be opened in a modern word processor. The issue is with Word, not the age of the documents. https://audacity.onl/ https://findmyiphone.onl/ https://origin.onl/

    5. Re:Microsoft Word was not able to load its file! by BadDreamer · · Score: 2

      I have the same. Lots of old documents. And mine usually load fine. The few that did not, I opened in LibreOffice and saved in a more reliable format. In the end I did that with all of them, since I don't keep Word on my personal systems any longer.

      But I have fixed countless Word documents for clients. Documents saved in the Word version they then tried to open them in, to no avail. It happens frequently enough that people know to contact me for help.

      I've encountered it once with an Excel document, but then it seemed like disk corruption. With Word files, it's just Word breaking them on its own, for the most part.

    6. Re:Microsoft Word was not able to load its file! by Trongy · · Score: 1

      To anyone who used Microsoft Word in the 1990s or early 2000s this story is entirely believable.

    7. Re:Microsoft Word was not able to load its file! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      I've had that happen many times. Word's older file formats are really nuts.

      Older word formats, Fonting issues, printer problems, where the document only wanted to be printed on the original printer, then changing it to the printer in use caused the document to fly into outer space. PowerPoint files done on a Windows machine transported to a Mac Office machine, and freaking out needing to be pretty much redone, than the same thing when it goes back to the PC.

      The amount of time my group spent fixing Microsoft Office files was more than the amount of time for their initial creation.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  13. Please fix office import formatting. by labnet · · Score: 2

    I would love to roll Libre out to our company, but it still can’t open up 10 year old word or excel docs without screwing up the formatting.

    --
    46137
    1. Re: Please fix office import formatting. by lala31 · · Score: 1

      and not have that style applied to the entire paragraph. Make all your paragraphs only one sentence long -- problem solved. :-) [url=https://audacity.onl/]Audacity[/url] [url=https://findmyiphone.onl/]Find My iPhone[/url] [url=https://origin.onl/]Origin[/url]

  14. UI not the only change by Compuser · · Score: 2

    The biggest thing for me is that they are working on the animations. Which is big because right now animations is the number one horrid thing in LibreOffice. If they can fix this aspect then the office suite will be instantly tons more usable.

    1. Re:UI not the only change by mcswell · · Score: 1

      To make the audience nauseated.

      All seriousness aside, the first animated slide I was was in 1976, using two sheets of plastic taped together on one side. The speaker showed the first slide, then overlaid the second on the first. The audience gasped. It was really quite nifty. (Yes, "nifty" was a word back then.)

  15. Re:The Swastika by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    From Wikipedia

    Parliament is an American brand of cigarettes, currently owned and manufactured by Philip Morris USA in the United States and Philip Morris International outside of the United States. Wikipedia

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  16. Re:Still in Java by F.Ultra · · Score: 1

    It was never written in Java. Back in the OpenOffice days they had some plugins that where written in Java hence Java was an install requirement but none of the actual applications where ever written in Java.

  17. Re:Thanks for the warning by mcswell · · Score: 1

    LaTeX

  18. I Have Poor Timing by mentil · · Score: 1

    I just updated to 6.1.4 yesterday, to patch a security flaw. Later in the same day they have a new major release? Bah.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  19. Re:Still in Java by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    Is it still written in Java instead of native C/C++?

    It never was written in Java, even in part. It had a bogus dependency on Java added by Sun as part of the db interface which was one of the first things to be fixed when LibreOffice was forked away from Oracle.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  20. Like Blender... by Optic7 · · Score: 1

    I am generally annoyed with gratuitous icon changes - but in this case it seems like they (mostly) maintained recognizability, while improving legibility, which should be especially nice for those who choose to use smaller icon sizes. Can't tell you how annoyed I get about projects that go for the monochrome icon b.s. - icons are important functional components that must be easy to recognize, and they remove one of the most dramatic differentiating features for an arguable improvement in aesthetics?

    You can say that again. Prime example of the moment being Blender, a massive, popular open source graphics app with hundreds of icons, no less. They are re-designing their icons in black and white designs for their major new version that is expected to make a big splash on this market segment, and it's caused pretty big arguments...

    https://blenderartists.org/t/n...

    1. Re:Like Blender... by Immerman · · Score: 1

      It sounds like they're talking about color-coded monochrome icons, which might actually be an improvement over arbitrarily colored ones. Maybe. I'll reserve judgement until I see at least some proper mockups, though I can't say I'm super hopeful.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  21. Microsoft Office (local or remote) is a bad choice by jbn-o · · Score: 2

    Microsoft Office doesn't offer the compatibility its proponents claim. I've seen a lot of documents that don't render the same way across successive versions of Microsoft Office, so forward compatibility is shot. Microsoft Office 365 won't load and render all of the documents Microsoft Office 2016 (with all updates) will generate, so compatibility across current versions is not there either. Word also isn't designed for large documents; I never would have advised using Microsoft Word to begin this documentation project, but I wasn't asked when the project began so now the question is what to do with this huge document that doesn't work as it should on Microsoft's OS (either Windows 7 or 10) running Microsoft's word processor with all of Microsoft's updates applied.

    A few weeks ago a Word user generated a multi-hundred page document with Word from Microsoft Office 2016 and she was stuck with choosing between watching Word 2016/32-bit crash relatively slowly when editing the document (so she had some time to make a few edits and then watch the app die), Word 2016/64-bit crash more quickly, or Word/Office365 render the document so far away from anything reasonable it wasn't worth using. LibreOffice Writer also didn't render the document perfectly, but it did not crash so it was wiser to spend time fixing the lack of fidelity there and continue using LibreOffice than not knowing when the entire app would die and take the last edits after the most recent save with it.

    So I'm not convinced that even within Microsoft their programmers have written code to properly support even the currently-supported variants of Word documents. I have found this to be true across every version of Microsoft Office, this is not news to me. When considering the cost of Microsoft Office365, consider how much it will cost you to lose fidelity of documents even within Microsoft's proprietary software. I believe that cost is too high: I wouldn't trust any document I cared about to a program that locked me into their way of doing things. There's just too much at risk on top of the awful anti-user problems facing all proprietary software users.

  22. Re:Thanks for the warning by Computershack · · Score: 1

    If only there was a way to go back to the old one..... Oh wait, there is. View->Toolbars

    --
    I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams