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

Posted by msmash on from the making-improvements dept.

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.

12 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 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. . . .
    2. Re:LibreOffice 365 by PostPhil · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    3. 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.

    4. 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.
  2. 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.

  3. 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 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. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.
  7. 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.