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.

Comments

LibreOffice 365

[trb]

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

Re:LibreOffice 365

[bluefoxlucid]

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

Re:LibreOffice 365

[sheramil]

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

Re:LibreOffice 365

[fahrbot-bot]

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. :-)

Re:LibreOffice 365

[PostPhil]

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

Re:LibreOffice 365

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:LibreOffice 365

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

Icons? Reallly?

[cellocgw]

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.

Re:Icons? Reallly?

[Immerman]

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?

Re:OMG! Tabs!

[Waffle Iron]

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.

Good for them

[PopeRatzo]

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).

Re:Good for them

[PopeRatzo]

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.

Re:Good for them

[Immerman]

>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.

Re:Good for them

[PopeRatzo]

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.

Re:Good for them

[Ol Olsoc]

>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.

What warning?

[sjbe]

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.

Re:What warning?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Too many whiners out there!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:OMG! Tabs!

[Immerman]

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.

Microsoft Word was not able to load its file!

[Futurepower(R)]

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.

Re:Ribbon

[Immerman]

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.

Re:Ribbon

[mcswell]

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.