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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

#71
post #35

I would love to see LibreOffice Calc work with XMLA OLAP servers, like Mondrian. This would be a major competitive advantage to Excel, which can only talk to SQL Server, or to others via very expensive plugins.

Excel can use any OLE DB driver or ODBC just fine to access other databases. It's not restricted to Access and SQL Server. From the dated look of the dialog windows involved I'd say it's been that way for a long time and isn't new in 2010.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#72
post #4

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.

> I think they should polish their UI. Probably. They may need help though - it's a big project with a lot of code that runs on various platforms. Did you file a bug report, or, if nothing else, drop them an email?

This image was selected and highlighted on their new features page. They must be aware of the layout issues, surely?

I'm not suggesting that this is horrible software, just that it gives a bad first impression. I am suggesting that these sorts of screenshots shouldn't be used in advertising material until they are polished.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#73
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.

They are working on it one piece at a time. For instance, they refactored the way Calc store the cells in memory to avoid lots of pointer chasing.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#74
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…

If you look at the release notes for various versions you'll see that they've been doing this already.

Note that e.g. new volunteers working on build infrastructure things are not going to be happy that they aren't allowed to work on what they're good at. They're not going to switch to coding, they're not suddenly going to care about MS Office. Any company/project can do multiple things at once.

Anyway, just file bugs! In the release notes it said they fixed 3000 in this version.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#75
post #44

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…

> The fact that a typical web-based word processor today offers only trivial formatting tools doesn't invalidate all of that previous experience and understanding; it just means that a typical web-based word processor today isn't very good at producing well-presented documents. Or it could be that for many people, "good enough" is good enough; they simply don't care about the incremental benefits of "well-presented d…

Yeah, just like people replaced their pc with a tablet that can only do 1percent of what a pc does but still live with it. That does not mean there is no need for PCs anymore.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#76
post #71
post #35

I would love to see LibreOffice Calc work with XMLA OLAP servers, like Mondrian. This would be a major competitive advantage to Excel, which can only talk to SQL Server, or to others via very expensive plugins.

Excel can use any OLE DB driver or ODBC just fine to access other databases. It's not restricted to Access and SQL Server. From the dated look of the dialog windows involved I'd say it's been that way for a long time and isn't new in 2010.

OLAP is not like SQL or ODBC. It shows things in a cube. OP is talking about OLAP, not just SQL/some database (which is of course works perfectly fine). Note: Aside from knowing that OLAP is different, not much practical knowledge.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#77
post #76
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel can use any OLE DB driver or ODBC just fine to access other databases. It's not restricted to Access and SQL Server. From the dated look of the dialog windows involved I'd say it's been that way for a long time and isn't new in 2010.

OLAP is not like SQL or ODBC. It shows things in a cube. OP is talking about OLAP, not just SQL/some database (which is of course works perfectly fine). Note: Aside from knowing that OLAP is different, not much practical knowledge.

Ah, then I got the wrong idea about them mentioning SQL Server.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#79
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...

Nothing like high speed inaccuracies.

Re: LibreOffice 4.1 New Features and Fixes

#80
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…

Could you post the bug reports?
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