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LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

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Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#241

Post by INGELRII »

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…

If there is one thing I would suggest for all large open source projects, it's separating the functionality, data model etc. from UI as much as possible.

It should be possible to have two separate open source projects. One is just extensive framework library with good API and the another is user interface. This would allow multiple separate UI's, web interface, command line, mobile, tablet, etc.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#242

Post by ghaff »

u801e wrote: post #98
ghaff wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Don't teach anyone how to use a specific UI, teach the concepts that made the UI look the way it does. With all due respect, good luck with that. A lot of people aren't interested in learning about file systems or how DNS operates. They want to know what button to order from Amazon.

> A lot of people aren't interested in learning about file systems or how DNS operates. They want to know what button to order from Amazon. That's like saying people aren't interested in learning how to use a phonebook or how to call directory assistance. They just want to know who to talk to so they can order what they want from Sears.

And by and large people learn the bare minimum needed in order to do those things. Certainly most of us have a pretty vague notion of what all exactly happens behind the scenes when we dial a phone. If the call doesn't go through as planned we might have some idea that the cell reception is bad or something like that. But we're probably not in a position to debug what's wrong in any significant way.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#243

Post by catalogia »

jiggunjer wrote: post #216
unglaublich wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from the remarks about flat design, whitespace and information-density, which are very personal imho, I would say Google Drive, Google Docs, Microsoft Office Online, GitHub source code editor, Visual Studio code, Atom, all do a good job.

Good job? Maybe on a beefy first-world computer. The UX goes down the drain if you try to run a few of those apps at once.

Doubtlessly the programmers who work on those products use computers with dozens of gigabytes of ram and half a dozen cores or more. They're out of touch with the sort of computers a TON of casual computer owners are using daily.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#244

Post by henrikeh »

tw04 wrote: post #239
Jonnax wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The ribbon was one of the worst things to ever hit Office. I remember it was met with universal horror when it first came out, but they were fully committed (apparently not having done ANY user testing) and insisted people would get used to it and prefer it because: we paid someone a ton of money who told us it's better. Like many others, I STILL to this day have to google to figure out where things are with the ribb…

> but they were fully committed (apparently having done ANY user testing)

It is a little hard to parse what you mean, but Microsoft did a quite substantial amount of research leading up to the ribbon. A quick search on the net will lead you to summaries of it.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#245

Post by whytaka »

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…

> Consistency is worth so much more than fad-chasing.

Consider consistency across applications though. People like conformity.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#246

Post by ptx »

nicoburns wrote: post #211
edoloughlin wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the other hand I found it instantly more productive, even right after it was introduced. No longer did I have to remember which menu an option was in. It was all right there.

It's not all right there - some things are under another ribbon tab, which doesn't seem all that different from putting things in a collection of menus. (Except that visually it's now a jumbled mess instead of a clean and easy-to-scan linear list.)

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#247

Post by komali2 »

macspoofing wrote: post #218
mapgrep wrote: post #141

Democrats in the US House of Representatives just approved a $741 billion defense spending package. It will almost certainly clear the senate and be signed by the president. Imagine taking enough of that money to support these 40 LibreOffice developers and maybe say 20 more. There would be no need for these acrobatics around source availability. I understand why the companies need to do this. But there is an existing…

>Imagine taking enough of that money to support these 40 LibreOffice developers and maybe say 20 more. There are infinite ways to spend every dollar, why is LibreOffice funding worthy? In other words, why is LibreOffice's popularity so low that it cannot find a way to fund its operations? Which then raises the question - why do you want to fund an unpopular project?

I think the idea is that 1% of a b52 bomber might take LibreOffice to an unparalleled place for a libre project.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#248

Post by danans »

nickcw wrote: post #153
kleiba wrote: post #81

Do people use LibreOffice because it's open-source or because it you don't have to pay for it? In either case, the "enterprise edition" they envision will fail to service either camp. If you have to spend any money at all, you might as well spend the money that MS Office costs. Or else, the main competitor is not MS Office but Google Docs.

I use LibreOffice because it runs on my machine - MS Office doesn't. If MS made a Linux version I'd probably get that. LibreOffice is at its best if you make the docs and edit them just in LibreOffice. It's great at making structured docs. Calc is pretty good too. The PowerPoint equivalent is the weakest of the bunch, crashing frequently. However in the biz world you end up sharing docs and sheets with MS office user…

> If MS made a Linux version I'd probably get that.

What about the web based Office 365? It should run fine on Linux, and clearly paid closed-source software isn't an issue for you if you would be willing to pay for traditional Microsoft Office.

> However in the biz world you end up sharing docs and sheets with MS office users and that is where things start to go sideways.

Office 365 should work swimmingly for this use case.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#249

Post by agentdrtran »

ubercow13 wrote: post #30
maxmouchet wrote: post #7

As much as I love free software, LibreOffice interface feels old and ugly (to me, at least). It would be nice if there was more focus on the UX/UI design in open source projects. Of course, most programmers are not UX/UI designers, and designers don't tend to work for free on open source projects.

LibreOffice has a ribbon!

It's still pretty ugly and doesn't work as well as the office version, though.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#250

Post by tw04 »

henrikeh wrote: post #244
tw04 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ribbon was one of the worst things to ever hit Office. I remember it was met with universal horror when it first came out, but they were fully committed (apparently not having done ANY user testing) and insisted people would get used to it and prefer it because: we paid someone a ton of money who told us it's better. Like many others, I STILL to this day have to google to figure out where things are with the ribb…

> but they were fully committed (apparently having done ANY user testing) It is a little hard to parse what you mean, but Microsoft did a quite substantial amount of research leading up to the ribbon. A quick search on the net will lead you to summaries of it.

Sorry, I left out a *not.

I vehemently disagree, in 2007 NOBODY liked the ribbon. My wife's company refused to upgrade until absolutely forced to because it was such an atrocity. The most glowing reviews I ever saw were "I guess I'll get used to it eventually" and/or someone who used office once a year and found navigation easier when the extent of their workflow was changing font sizes.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/oh-the-horror-why-is-microsoft...

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/turn-...

https://www.infoworld.com/article/2651076/microsoft-s-ribbon...

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