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LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

libreoffice.org

61–70 of 87 posts

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#61

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 ?

> What is the state of the relationship between OpenOffice and LibreOffice? LibreOffice won, Oracle lost. Game over.

OpenOffice download daily count is going down so yes LibreOffice has won in long term http://www.openoffice.org/stats/downloads.html also the number of contributions is insane for libo http://documentfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/develo...

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#62

> Port Agenda Wizard from Java to python. Removed 11 files, 5345 lines of java code (Xisco Faulí) > Port Web Wizard from Java to python. 140 files changed, 5076 (+), 11416 (-). Removed 55 files, 10426 lines of java code (Javier Fernandez) So it looks like they're trying to scrub out the Java parts (except perhaps in Base). Does anyone know if this is the case?

Yep, and even in Base: http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/18322/is-there-any-pl...

Firebird will be the default database instead of hsql in Base so yes java will be removed in the future

http://www.ahunt.org/2013/07/firebird-now-in-master/

http://www.ahunt.org/2013/05/gsoc-2013-libreoffice-firebird-...

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#63
post #52

I would be happy if LibreOffice didn't add a single feature for the next year and did the following: * Improved MS Office Interoperability * Fixed bugs * Reduced memory usage/improved performance In fact, those are the primary reasons my company abandoned our plans to migrate from MSO to LO. I have filed several bug reports with both the AO/LO teams on issues such with incorrectly importing NetSuite generated Excel d…

> Reduced memory usage/improved performance

This is (most likely) not going to happen, at least for a (very) long time - the cause is that StarOffice was originally structured as a single giant application instead of separate ones.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#64
post #60
post #52

I would be happy if LibreOffice didn't add a single feature for the next year and did the following: * Improved MS Office Interoperability * Fixed bugs * Reduced memory usage/improved performance In fact, those are the primary reasons my company abandoned our plans to migrate from MSO to LO. I have filed several bug reports with both the AO/LO teams on issues such with incorrectly importing NetSuite generated Excel d…

> Improved MS Office Interoperability The problem is that this is a moving target (and event more in motion due to Microsoft's need to port this to some mobile platform, so no matter how much is invested in this issue, they will never get close to acceptable.

Yes, it is a moving target, but you can still get it to a very solid good level. In the past it's always been a few years between updates, and they have version details in the files, so you can say "Supports Word 2007 files" and not worry about Word 2016.

I've written a bunch of Perl code (that I should open source.. maybe some day. anyone here'd find that useful?) for creating and editing docx files. It's not that hard -- it's all XML!

EDIT: I was using a LibreOffice daemon before, but I did this code just because Libre had so many bugs / missing features when converting a document to docx.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#65

Dinosaur. We're moving towards minimal formatting, and web-based solutions (like Google Docs). The ones who need typesetting are stuck with LaTeX anyway.

I think there are quite a few users who need a local Office package storing files on their computer. Shonky internet connections, local distribution of templates, control over documents &c.

I agree this may be a shrinking number of people, aligned with the PC/Laptop numbers I imagine.

LaTeX is great, but the skill set required in use is high. I find sending people a document in LO/oOo is easier for them to change &c.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#66

Dinosaur. We're moving towards minimal formatting, and web-based solutions (like Google Docs). The ones who need typesetting are stuck with LaTeX anyway.

I use Google Docs, but I dislike them. The worst part is, that this dislike is pretty much irrational—Google Docs just seem extremely fragile to me. I don't know why I get this feeling but it is there and I am not sure I will ever trust any non-trivial documents editin within web browser. Are there other feeling the same way? Maybe you have some idea why do I have this kind of mistrust?

Feature-wise, Google Docs hasn't caught up with these Office applications; no doubt about that. However, there's nothing wrong with it objectively: plenty of people use it quite happily, and it has no serious deficiencies.

In short, I think your mistrust arises purely from familiarity with the desktop solution; don't let it cloud your judgement, because I really don't think these dinosaurs have a future.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#67
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely fast. In some cases, they load Excel spreadsheets faster than Excel 2010.

Loading != calculation. Excel has a multi-threaded calculation engine: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/bb687899.aspx Apparently LO does not: http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/5371/is-lo-calc-capab...

There is an effort on the way to use the GPU for computation, though that's still some time off.

http://www.datamation.com/applications/libreoffice-accelerat...

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#68
post #9

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

As you can see from the earlier child posts, opinions differ!

Using yum localinstall, I installed LO4.1 and oOo4.0 on a CentOS based desktop last night along with the native LO3.4 install. At present, I'm finding oOo has scrolling issues (nvidia graphics, proprietary drivers) and the 'use hardware acceleration' option is un-ticked and greyed out on installation. LO4.1 has the option ticked and editable on installation.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#69
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're moving towards minimal formatting, and web-based solutions (like Google Docs). You might be. Some of us have been moving back the other way, after discovering that doing real work using children's toys instead of grown-up tools is inefficient and frequently produces substandard results. People have written entire books specifically on how to present information effectively, on top of a vast body of knowledge ab…

> doing real work using children's toys instead of grown-up tools is inefficient and frequently produces substandard results. While I agree that Google Docs are a joke, the damage done by clueless users with Office that could be avoided by taking away all possibilities of custom formatting is not to be underestimated. I'm mainly talking about captioning images by aligning the following line at its center and creating…

Company templates provided and enforced? Works for us, except the template mistress insists on using large format logos...

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#70
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you Google or visit the website you'll notice that AOO released 4.0 a few days ago.

I meant when will it be good enough. I'm looking for anecdotes, not particulars. Several people in this thread have expressed that at present LibreOffice is much better than OpenOffice. I'm wondering how much better and if enough work is being done on AOO that its expected to catch up anytime soon.

I think you will find the current (4.0) oOo 'good enough'. The differences between oOo 4.0 and LO 4.1 seem to be minor but noticeable. I used oOo for years through the 2.x and 3.0x incarnations and produced a lot of work with it.
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