LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

Post by nicoburns » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

edoloughlin wrote: post #183

ako wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key question is: would somebody who learned to use office after 2007 with the ribbon interface appreciate moving back to the pre-2007 interface? My guess is that more people learned to use office after 2007 than before, so the majority of people have no problems using the ribbon. I still yearn for ms-word on dos, and oracle forms on terminal interfaces, once you learned the keyboard shortcuts, nothing was faster.…

My guess is that more people learned to use office after 2007 than before, so the majority of people have no problems using the ribbon. Or, perhaps they are just used to a lower level of productivity? I've had 13 years to adapt, and I still find it frustrating.

Post by andrewshadura » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

ACS_Solver wrote: post #60

Jonnax wrote: post #10

I haven't used Libreoffice in years. Did they ever update the UI styling? I remember it had a very "java" look to it. You know that feeling when you open an app, you know it's going to be a bit janky.

It has visual class libraries that give LO a slightly different look depending on what you're running it on. I'm typing this from a Debian system running KDE Plasma, and my LibreOffice reports using the gtk3_kde5 VCL. It uses Qt5 widgets and looks, for the most part, like a regular KDE Qt5 application. It no longer looks or feels like a Java application. Because it's not - Java is optional except in LibreOffice Base.…

Post by sbuk » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #38

openfuture wrote: post #20

It's weird to me that people complain over "old and ugly" interfaces. Consistency is worth so much more than fad-chasing. Learning something is more worthwhile if you are able to trust that it won't change underneath you. Take MS Office for example, I was made to learn how to use it in elementary school, we had an exam where we got a printed out page and had to reproduce it in an hour. This was supposed to be fundame…

The ribbon interface was adopted in 2007. That's 13 years ago. What is the jank? It's a tabbed interface of buttons instead of menus and sub menus. The most common operations are descriptive buttons. Give someone word 2003 or word 2020 who has never used a word processor before. Which one would be more intuitive? It's bad UI if people just learn where to click. They should be able to think in terms of "I want to do X…

Post by zucker42 » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #194

openfuture wrote: post #20

It's weird to me that people complain over "old and ugly" interfaces. Consistency is worth so much more than fad-chasing. Learning something is more worthwhile if you are able to trust that it won't change underneath you. Take MS Office for example, I was made to learn how to use it in elementary school, we had an exam where we got a printed out page and had to reproduce it in an hour. This was supposed to be fundame…

I 99% agree with you, except that I believe LibreOffice is not just old, it's subtly bad. I didn't notice it before but it's too adhoc, just too laggy, just too crummy at times. It lack tastes, consistency and responsiveness that you got even in office 2003. I wish LO to improve everything, they came from far and did a lot. But it's not enough.. kinda like blender 2.7 to 2.8.

Post by buovjaga » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #10

I haven't used Libreoffice in years. Did they ever update the UI styling? I remember it had a very "java" look to it. You know that feeling when you open an app, you know it's going to be a bit janky.