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LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

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Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#391

Post by pfranz »

aryonoco wrote: post #329
pfranz wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I imagine the amount of money the US government already spends on MS Office could fund development of something as good or better than Office, while giving it away free to the rest of society improving productivity. Although, I wouldn't bet on the management of that project playing out like that.

This is exactly what Sun thought. They looked at their licensing bill for using MS Office and thought they could develop an Office suite for less than that themselves. They bought this little German company which made "Star Office" and started developing it for their own use and also selling it. Turns out, it didn't work. So they Open Sourced it, called it OO.org... it still didn't work. 20 years, many rebrands and m…

The government writing software for their own use is quite a bit different than Sun buying or writing one without customers lined up.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#392

Post by Const-me »

listenallyall wrote: post #386
Const-me wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> used to be able to do Control+Shift+V for "paste as plain text", I don't know which version removed that again Try Control+Alt+V. I have Office professional plus 2016, works here, however it opens a popup. Plain text is at the end of the list, making the complete sequence Control+Alt+V, End, Enter.

That is no shortcut, that is an abomination. Basic Ctrl-V should be simple plain text paste. honestly, how often do you want the formatting from the source, vs. seamlessly matching the target?

> That is no shortcut, that is an abomination

I can see how it's unusable on a laptop, on a full-size PC keyboard that's OK.

> how often do you want the formatting from the source, vs. seamlessly matching the target?

I don't write word documents unless I want rich text features. Just for text there's nothing wrong with plain text or markdown files.

Copy-pasting from visual studio is the easiest way to apply good quality syntax highlighting to a code snippet. The IDE is even smart enough to copy them with dark-on-white colors despite I use dark theme.

Also, I often cut & paste within the same document.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#393

Post by ModernMech »

coliveira wrote: post #288
ModernMech wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this criticism. The layout seems logical to me. If you want to insert something, go to the "Insert" tab. If you want page design options, go to the "Design" tab. What's so inscrutable?

There are plenty of problems. In the Mac, for example, menus are discoverable because you can go to "help->seach" and type what you're looking for. This cannot be easily done with the ribbon. Moreover, once you have a clue that you're looking for an "insert" option, you still need to search around in the ribbon, since there is no logic for where the option might be hiding. A menu you can read from top to bottom, but…

"In the Mac, for example, menus are discoverable because you can go to "help->seach" and type what you're looking for. This cannot be easily done with the ribbon."

I can't speak to the Mac version, but on Windows there is a search box at the top that returns a result for whatever you want.

"A menu you can read from top to bottom, but a ribbon you need to scan from left to right and top to bottom, making it much harder to use."

No, menus are 2D as well. There's 1 vertical dimension, and then there's the hidden second dimension where you have to hover over each item to see what's inside. For example, in Google Docs under the Insert menu there is an item for "Headers and Footers", which opens a menu with two items: "headers" and "footers". The ribbon flattens this and just lays both out in the tab.

"making it much harder to use."

"Much" harder? Really? Honestly, I've used both interfaces extensively over the years and I've gotten plenty of work done in both. I just don't see what the big deal is about this little war that's been going on for 13 years, and claims of one being "much" harder than the other seem greatly exaggerated. Like... oh, you had to scan in two dimensions to find functions. Okay, how much does that really impact your productivity? How much of your time is really spent scanning a menu? Once you found it.... you can make a shortcut for it. I've got a shortcut for all the common tasks I use, and it's really no different than a custom toolbar from the pre-ribbon era.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#394

Post by pfranz »

jm4 wrote: post #374
pfranz wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I imagine the amount of money the US government already spends on MS Office could fund development of something as good or better than Office, while giving it away free to the rest of society improving productivity. Although, I wouldn't bet on the management of that project playing out like that.

Do you think it would be right for the government to fund a competitor to an American business? Wouldn't it make sense for the government to just use or license Libre Office if it was good enough to meet their needs?

Eh, I don't see the problem. If the government decided not to renew a contract with SpaceX because they thought they could do it better themselves, should they not? Tax money spent on government research should be public. I do think they should follow any of Microsoft/SpaceX's IP laws (but also file their own for the public).

> Wouldn't it make sense for the government to just use or license Libre Office if it was good enough to meet their needs?

Sure, if the math and logistics worked out. I kind of think Office and Microsoft are too entrenched now.

I think the reason it wouldn't be a huge deal is you would still need some sort of business arm for it to get traction--like a Red Hat. So basically Microsoft would just lose a government contract.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#395

Post by ModernMech »

gmueckl wrote: post #317
ModernMech wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a feature designed to fit more options on smaller screens. I personally like it and find it helpful.

It messes up any attempt to recollect of the locations of certain features in the bar. Some iterations of the ribbon even fold groups into menus under single buttons, so the exact path to feature then depends on the width of the window. This turns the ribbon into a pretty inconsistent user experience.

I don't recollect the location of features by their spacial location, I recollect them by their place in a hierarchical ordering. The exact path to a function is always preserved, as the keyboard shortcut for that item is defined by that path.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#396

Post by pfranz »

macspoofing wrote: post #289
pfranz wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, I imagine the amount of money the US government already spends on MS Office could fund development of something as good or better than Office, while giving it away free to the rest of society improving productivity. Although, I wouldn't bet on the management of that project playing out like that.

>I imagine the amount of money the US government already spends on MS Office could fund development of something as good or better than Office No, it can't. Microsoft lives and breaths Office 365 because that is a core part of their business. There is zero chance that a government will care as much about this as Microsoft does, or the 10,000 other companies that are trying to supplant incumbents. Add to that the fact…

> Time and time again these massive government-run software project collapse on their face.

Which is why I said "I wouldn't bet on the management of that project playing out like that." I also completely agree Microsoft is way too entrenched to start something today.

> In the commercial space, government just cannot compete with private industry ... at all.

I kind of think you're overstating what I was suggesting (likely, I stated it poorly). Instead of paying Microsoft $x annually for MS Office, I think for less money they could write and maintain something that fits their own needs. Since it was developed with tax dollars, release it publicly. I doubt businesses would adopt it unless some independent companies popped up to facilitate it (like Red Hat does for OSS).

The goal wasn't to replace Microsoft Office in society, just to fulfill its own needs.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#397

Post by slavik81 »

ghaff wrote: post #316
Spooky23 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some places, not so long ago :)

I imagine a lot of big law offices still have computers with WordPerfect on them so they can read old files if necessary.

WordPerfect is still maintained by Corel. The most recent release was in May.

They also maintain PaintShop Pro, WinDVD, and WinZip. I think they're running a retirement home for distinguished software products.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#398

Post by agumonkey »

int_19h wrote: post #375
agumonkey wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, maybe old menus had some trivial adequate nature for most users and ribbon, even with all its worth doesn't tap into that. Personally I'm still incapable of deciding.. because I hated nested menus (too deep, too adhoc) but the ribbon is a bit less easy to remember than I'd hope. That said it's a good step toward keyboard shortcut memorizing.

One thing about the old menus is that they were extremely configurable. Like, you could not just hide or reorder items, but reorganize the hierarchy if you wanted. People mostly used that for toolbars, but Office menus are technically a kind of toolbar. Some of that still lives on in Visual Studio, where it is even extended to context menus: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/how-to-cus...

Were Office toolbars customizable to that extent ? Also I don't think it applies to most users .. they were rote learners (because never had the time or context to learn to use the computer as an aid but as a protocol to respect)

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#399

Post by coliveira »

ModernMech wrote: post #393
coliveira wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of problems. In the Mac, for example, menus are discoverable because you can go to "help->seach" and type what you're looking for. This cannot be easily done with the ribbon. Moreover, once you have a clue that you're looking for an "insert" option, you still need to search around in the ribbon, since there is no logic for where the option might be hiding. A menu you can read from top to bottom, but…

"In the Mac, for example, menus are discoverable because you can go to "help->seach" and type what you're looking for. This cannot be easily done with the ribbon." I can't speak to the Mac version, but on Windows there is a search box at the top that returns a result for whatever you want. "A menu you can read from top to bottom, but a ribbon you need to scan from left to right and top to bottom, making it much harde…

No way, searching items in a ribbon is much harder than on a simple menu, even if you have subitems. It is the difference between reading text (fast) and trying to decipher pictures, specially when they are not well organized. Most people have trouble with the ribbon, I am not the only one who noticed this.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#400

Post by sergeykish »

danans wrote: post #252
genidoi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the de facto complaint of open source software, and initially I thought the entitlement can really only be explained by laziness, after all why don't people just bother to read the source code and contribute the feature they want? But then I realized its way way more rudimentary than that. A substantial amount of software developers struggle w/ interpersonal communication skills, and so often what may have be…

> why don't people just bother to read the source code and contribute the feature they want? It is a bit far fetched to expect non programmer users to read the source code, much less contribute the feature (i.e. from requirements gathering to feasibility analysis, to design, implementation, testing, and release) isn't it? That is the kind of work that only a compensated team would do, especially and something as comp…

So you say most of the users can't utilize freedom to change program. Neither coding, not testing, not money, not individually, not collectively.

In other words - they take someones else work for free and give nothing back. And then they complain about quality.

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