LibreOffice: The Next Five Years • Hacker News Board

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#21

Post by mhd » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:34 AM UTC

maxmouchet wrote: post #7

As much as I love free software, LibreOffice interface feels old and ugly (to me, at least). It would be nice if there was more focus on the UX/UI design in open source projects. Of course, most programmers are not UX/UI designers, and designers don't tend to work for free on open source projects.

On the other hand, professional UX/UI office software designers came up with the ribbon.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#22

Post by unglaublich » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:34 AM UTC

maxmouchet wrote: post #7

As much as I love free software, LibreOffice interface feels old and ugly (to me, at least). It would be nice if there was more focus on the UX/UI design in open source projects. Of course, most programmers are not UX/UI designers, and designers don't tend to work for free on open source projects.

No... the problem with desktop software is that creating a good UI/UX is a hard software problem typically solved by software developers instead of designers. Whereas, the accessibility and power of web technologies show that making UI/UX an easier software problem (HTML, CSS, JS) automatically attracts more designers yielding better UX/UI.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#23

Post by ubercow13 » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:34 AM UTC

kungato wrote: post #17

Is there any electron gpl based Word and Excel alternative? I always imagined running on top of electron helped you skip a lot of work and helped the app not look like shit/LibreOffice

Libreoffice looks like a native desktop app. How do electron apps look better than that?

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#24

Post by HeckFeck » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:34 AM UTC

maxmouchet wrote: post #7

As much as I love free software, LibreOffice interface feels old and ugly (to me, at least). It would be nice if there was more focus on the UX/UI design in open source projects. Of course, most programmers are not UX/UI designers, and designers don't tend to work for free on open source projects.

I find it reasonably straightforward to use. I can find most things easily in the submenus.

Though I'm on the side of classic menus in the infamous ribbon dispute.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#25

Post by mgbmtl » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:34 AM UTC

I hate to rant, but there is a weird sense of entitlement in many comments. An assumption that software should "just work", be completely bug free, have the best design, have developers quickly responding to bug reports, etc, while giving away the product for free.

I might not use an office suite very often, but when I do, I'm grateful it exists and is free/libre. Some orgs (gov, companies, service providers/resellers) do rely on LibreOffice, and they should really make sure that core developers can keep on going.

(I work for a free software service provider/reseller and core developer, this comes up regularly)

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#26

Post by sammorrowdrums » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:35 AM UTC

stormdennis wrote: post #4

duncanawoods wrote: post #3

Huh. I just tried Calc (6.0.7.3, Ubuntu 18.04) again this morning for the first time in a while and it crashed in seconds after right-clicking a few column headers. It's repeatable. When trying to navigate the very confusing document recovery dialogs to restart it, it then launched as Writer not Calc. I really wish it was an option but JFC. My experience with has always been so bad it doesn't even feel worth raising…

I find that calc is very good for migrating data from files that other programs, cannnot open. Import from some random file type, export as csv for example.

I've found that Calc is better for importing things like custom format CSV files etc. But has problems opening very large files, where Excel is better able to handle working with them.

Overall that makes Calc more useful to me, but then again, I mostly write scripts when dealing with data files if I can.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#27

Post by eeereerews » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:35 AM UTC

> Another pathology is that there are companies who ship LibreOffice, often claiming support, but then file all their tickets up-stream and hope they are fixed for free.

Lmao... but thinking again, given the average user's bug-filing abilities, a professional bug-filer might actually be useful.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#28

Post by jventura » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:37 AM UTC

maxmouchet wrote: post #7

As much as I love free software, LibreOffice interface feels old and ugly (to me, at least). It would be nice if there was more focus on the UX/UI design in open source projects. Of course, most programmers are not UX/UI designers, and designers don't tend to work for free on open source projects.

LibreOffice interface feels familiar (to me, at least), and I fell productive with it. My only complain is that the application itself is quite heavy and takes quite some time to start in my Macboook (late 2013)..

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#29

Post by davidhyde » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:37 AM UTC

It seems like this whole thing could be solved by renaming the tag from "Personal Edition" to "Lite Edition" or something. People want to use and "office" product for work, duh. The document foundation keep arguing that funding is needed and the users keep arguing that they want a free version for commercial use and that naming is important because "the boss won't read the license agreement but look at the name! Personal Edition"

Why are people on the defensive always so blinded by the obvious? If you understand what people are getting upset about then, on the first line of the letter, they should state, unambiguously, exactly what people are having an issue with. Instead, the introduction is about the success of LibraOffice which is not contended and actually somewhat irrelevant. Then this:

> So it is a bit surprising to see the project's core developers in a sort of crisis mode while users worry about a tag that showed up in the project's repository

This sentence just tells the reader that you still don't understand what the fuss is about because you are referring to past good will and not the simple fact that the name is wrong. Readers want to know that you understand their point of view before they are willing to read about your point of view.

Re: LibreOffice: The Next Five Years

#30

Post by ubercow13 » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:38 AM UTC

maxmouchet wrote: post #7

As much as I love free software, LibreOffice interface feels old and ugly (to me, at least). It would be nice if there was more focus on the UX/UI design in open source projects. Of course, most programmers are not UX/UI designers, and designers don't tend to work for free on open source projects.

LibreOffice has a ribbon!