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LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

libreoffice.org

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Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#11

Post by JohnTHaller »

nonchalance wrote: post #2

What is the state of the relationship between OpenOffice and LibreOffice? I remember that there were some licensing issues that caused the fork in the first place. Are they at feature parity? Any chance the two projects will merge ?

LibreOffice has had more development time (both features and bugs) than OpenOffice. OpenOffice was entirely dead for over a year and then Apache put the effort into redeveloping features so they could be relicensed under the Apache license instead of the L/GPL.

The one big addition to OpenOffice was the contribution of IBM's Lotus Symphony sidebar properties dialogs. LibreOffice 4.1.0 adds these as well but considers them 'experimental' as they are new and largely untested. LibreOffice has a larger and more active development team and can pull bug-fixes and features from OpenOffice as the L/GPL 3.0 is Apache compatible. OpenOffice can not pull features and bug fixes from LibreOffice unless they re-license as L/GPL.

The projects are unlikely to merge. Every major Linux/Debian/BSD distro now ships with LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. OpenOffice may still be more popular on Windows, though, due to name recognition. I don't know what the public numbers are in terms of downloads for the same period to compare.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#13

Post by JohnTHaller »

mrng wrote: post #9

Anyone use it along with Apache's OpenOffice? Which one is (in your experience) less buggy/more stable in its current incarnation?

I much prefer LibreOffice. OpenOffice fell behind during the hiatus when a majority of their development team quit to form LibreOffice. LibreOffice has a big headstart on OO and a more active development team. Plus, they can pull features and bug fixes from OpenOffice while the OpenOffice team can't pull from LibreOffice due to licensing.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#14

Post by buovjaga »

interpol_p wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm being overly fussy. But I think they should polish their UI. For example https://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/EN-Project_images... — the "Properties" button and "Line Type" drop down are completely misaligned. These design issues add up and end up giving a poor impression of the software, regardless of its features.

The design team is always looking for more contributors: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#15

Post by donniezazen »

interpol_p wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm being overly fussy. But I think they should polish their UI. For example https://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/EN-Project_images... — the "Properties" button and "Line Type" drop down are completely misaligned. These design issues add up and end up giving a poor impression of the software, regardless of its features.

That looks like a qt-kde theme problem.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#16

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jvm wrote: post #7
interpol_p wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm being overly fussy. But I think they should polish their UI. For example https://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/EN-Project_images... — the "Properties" button and "Line Type" drop down are completely misaligned. These design issues add up and end up giving a poor impression of the software, regardless of its features.

It couldn't be any worse than inkscape's official website[1], targeting designers no less! I wonder how many thousands have chosen not to install Inkscape as a result of this home page. The first time I went I assumed it was a URL squatter. [1] http://inkscape.org/

>targeting designers no less! //

They're not targeting anyone, they're presenting their software and letting you use it under a free-libre & free-gratis license. In many ways it doesn't matter if you chose it or not. It's not being created in order to develop a need in you it's created to meet a need the creators have.

Inkscape is functional. Of course there's no problem with the website being worked on and perhaps made to answer questions one has more easily. But I wouldn't really want to divert resources towards marketing it and away from making it more usable and functional.

Maybe I've misunderstood the economics of FOSS but that's how I see it.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#17

Post by pekk »

jvm wrote: post #7
interpol_p wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm being overly fussy. But I think they should polish their UI. For example https://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/EN-Project_images... — the "Properties" button and "Line Type" drop down are completely misaligned. These design issues add up and end up giving a poor impression of the software, regardless of its features.

It couldn't be any worse than inkscape's official website[1], targeting designers no less! I wonder how many thousands have chosen not to install Inkscape as a result of this home page. The first time I went I assumed it was a URL squatter. [1] http://inkscape.org/

Looks like a bog standard CMS deployment.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#18

Post by pbhjpbhj »

interpol_p wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm being overly fussy. But I think they should polish their UI. For example https://www.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/EN-Project_images... — the "Properties" button and "Line Type" drop down are completely misaligned. These design issues add up and end up giving a poor impression of the software, regardless of its features.

The "line type" label and the value are not baseline aligned either.
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