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LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

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Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#151

Post by JadeNB »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #34
JadeNB wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted. If you want to use the ribbon-style MS UI, then use MS products. I am glad to have a place to go that allows me to read and edit ubiquitous Office documents without having to be part of the Office eco-system. I agree that LibreOffice probably reminds more of old than of modern Office—I use both as little as possible, so don't keep up with the trends—but so what? To put it differently, why should Microsof…

>> I downvoted. Don't down vote people simply because you disagree with them. Just because you don't agree with their opinion doesn't mean it should be hidden from others. Use the down vote to hide comments that don't add to the discussion.

> Don't down vote people simply because you disagree with them. Just because you don't agree with their opinion doesn't mean it should be hidden from others.

To be honest, I got angry and clicked the downvote arrow without sufficient consideration, then thought (since I couldn't undo it) that the civil thing to do was to explain.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#152

Post by rz2k »

chengiz wrote: post #127
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #2

While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it displeases me that the FOSS community is so hostile to the ribbon-style UI MS uses in its office product. Its such a great concept that using LO is like stepping back into the Office 97 days. Frankly, I'd rather just pay every few years for a home edition of Office than do all the mental gymnastic needed to properly switch to LO.

I have come to dislike all manner of menu based interfaces. They are annoying as fuck unless you are well used to the program, and then they keep changing them with different versions. What I would like is a search as you type entry field, similar to the Windows 7 start menu. I type in "cro..." and cross reference shows up, then I click on it. And it'd have the option of keeping the commonly used ones nearby for easy…

Use command-shift-/ (shortcut to help search) in OS X to find any menu items. It is nearly instantaneous.

If Windows doesn't have the same thing already built in, I'd guess there must be some add-ons that do the same thing.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#153

Post by ac29 »

berkut wrote: post #84
cheald wrote: post #56

Windows user here. It's not particularly any prettier, and Calc doesn't open CSVs correctly anymore. So yeah, there's that. http://i.imgur.com/i1YuVXA.png

Importing of CSVs is a joke in both OO and LibreOffice - I literally have to rename files to .csv to get them to interpret .txt (or other extensions) as comma-separated - there's no nice "Import" menu like Excel has had for decades. Even opening Calc first then using its menu to open a .txt opens the file in LibreOffice Writer! And then of course Gnome's (on Linux) file browsers no longer support renaming of files in…

File a bug report, it works fine for me.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#154

Post by krylon »

DanBC wrote: post #136
krylon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had to open a CSV file with about 2,000 columns. Excel failed me, OpenOffice/LibreOffice failed me, only Gnumeric managed to open the file. I'll admit that I only deal with that many columns on very rare occasions, but it does come in handy sometimes.

In theory Excel can open files with 16,384 columns so it's surprising it failed. https://support.office.com/en-nz/article/Excel-specification...

I might misremember the number of columns (could have been 20,000 - also, it had many rows), or maybe the 16,384 column limit applies to xls(x) files only, not to importing CSV files.

I remember at first cursing at Excel, then realizing what a ridiculously large number of columns the file had.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#155

Post by anonbanker »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #132
anonbanker wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I edited it, but understand I figured you were the kind of person who wouldn't barf all over a thread with your spiritual beliefs, and meant that part as a compliment. I've advocated your same guidelines in the past, as they promote a healthy site/forum, but they are not HN's guidelines. PG has actually encouraged the antithesis of your guidelines in the past, so I'm compelled to tell you as much.

Sure that's fine. It's definitely not part of the guidelines (as you said) but I think it's also fine for me to advocate what I think leads to better discussions. It's one of the reasons I enjoy HN. Unlike other sites there is less hive mind. Unpopular opinions are debated rather than just hidden.

If you're suggesting that we should, as a site, act against the guidelines and push for unofficial guidelines that promote better posting, I think this is a fantastic idea.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#156

Post by vsync »

throwaway349283 wrote: post #135
vinkelhake wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of it comes down to what a visual designer can contribute. FOSS projects are typically the sum of individual contributions from a lot of people, all scratching their itches. There is limited scope for someone to tell other people what they need to do. A designer who can't code is dependent on other people donating their time so that the design can be realized. This puts the designer at an immediate disa…

If you don't value design you're incompetent as a developer. Why would you even contribute to a project if you don't want what's best for the project?

Maybe they do value design. Maybe they just value different designs than you.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#157

Post by scholia »

ForHackernews wrote: post #69
chops wrote: post #50

While I appreciate effort put into making the interface prettier, one of the things that really detracts from LibreOffice and why I almost invariably end up installing MS Word for clients is the confusing way which the mail merge system is designed in LibreOffice. I've done it enough times now to know mostly how to get it working for myself, but there's no way in hell I'll try teaching a client how to do a mail merge…

Huh. This is an interesting example of a feature that's very important to some people, and utterly irrelevant to others. I had never even heard of "mail merge" in the context of word processing software, only mass-emailers, and it would never have occurred to me that anyone was using desktop word processing software to run their paper-mailing campaigns.

Some businesses use Microsoft Office for business processes that go far beyond Mail-Merge, but are essentially unknown to people who don't work for large corporations. Have a look at the half-dozen Microsoft Office programs you've never used, and that many people have not even heard of.

This is one reason why it took Munich a whole decade to switch most (but not all) users from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice, and they probably lost a ton of money on the switch (ie if you honestly counted lost productivity, which I'd bet is still being lost).

I'd also guess that a German city's use of Microsoft Office is probably pretty trivial compared to an American Fortune 50 corporation.

If someone wants to do a PhD on this, I'd love to read it ;-)

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#158

Post by scholia »

aceperry wrote: post #98

When I saw the headline, I thought, "Oh no, I hope they didn't implement the MS Ribbon?" Thankfully they didn't. That MS bug still trips me up whenever I fire up Word. Looks ok, I don't really notice much, mainly because I hardly use it or Word.

You should read some of the other comments here. A lot of us have spent half a decade enjoying the massive improvements brought by the ribbon, and it's quite surprising there are still a few, er, very late adopters.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#159

Post by michaelbuddy »

SloopJon wrote: post #41
jrochkind1 wrote: post #17

So it's better... but from the screenshot, I'd say myself it's design now reaches "barely acceptable", instead of the previous "pretty bad", but not "delightful" either. Of course, I think I could say the same (or worse) about MS Word, it's main competitor. So.

One thing that won't show up in screenshots is the UI interaction. On my Mac, the tools on the bottom and right edges can't keep up when resizing the window. Sometimes it's a fraction of a second lag as I drag, sometimes it simply doesn't update until I let go of the mouse. I know we're a grumpy lot here at HN, but I'd expect better than this even if it were a web app.

I'm having issues like that with several apps lately and I'm thinking it's a Java thing.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#160

Post by michaelbuddy »

aceperry wrote: post #98

When I saw the headline, I thought, "Oh no, I hope they didn't implement the MS Ribbon?" Thankfully they didn't. That MS bug still trips me up whenever I fire up Word. Looks ok, I don't really notice much, mainly because I hardly use it or Word.

too much hate on the ribbon. it's the logical choice a lot of people would make once menus get too busy. I don't love searching for things in the ribbon, but I certainly wouldn't love locating menu options either. At least the ribbon lends itself to contextual behaviors.
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