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LibreOffice 6.1 released

blog.documentfoundation.org

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Re: LibreOffice 6.1 released

#31

Post by vxNsr »

Congrats on pushing out an updated UI, often one of the biggest complaints people have against OSS is the outdated UI the permeate the space because it's one of the hardest things to get right and it takes so much time to change.

I think these new icons and menus look wonderful.

It's especially impressive because LibreOffice doesn't really seem to have any big corporate backers like other OSS projects, and yet they seem to be holding on. I don't think I've seen LO installed in any corporate environment, and I'd imagine that MS Office holds like 95% of the market, so I do appreciate this alternative.

Re: LibreOffice 6.1 released

#32

Post by anc84 »

mksaunders wrote: post #15
WorkLifeBalance wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. What you've described as 'not "tracking" ' is tracking. It's not third-party tracking but you're still deliberately adding a cookie for the purpose of tracking users across your site. 2. Your privacy policy contains: > !!!add opt-out frame on the website at this position!!!

> 1. What you've described as 'not "tracking" ' is tracking. It's not third-party tracking but you're still deliberately adding a cookie for the purpose of tracking users across your site. OK, we're using open source tools to try to improve the site. Plenty of other FOSS projects do this... Not sure why we're being singled out :-)

You are not singled-out, this is a submission about you so it makes sense to talk about you.

Everyone who tracks has improvements in mind.

Re: LibreOffice 6.1 released

#33

Post by mrob »

mksaunders wrote: post #11
mrob wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I browse with Javascript disabled by default, so I didn't know they were doing this. Why does the Document Foundation need to track me? Is LibreOffice itself doing something sneaky that I don't know about? I'd expect this kind of behavior from Facebook or Google, not a Free Software charitable foundation. Seeing that pop-up when I enabled Javascript made me think less of the Document Foundation. If they have a legiti…

> Why does the Document Foundation need to track me? It's not "tracking" (in the sense of monitoring what you do on other sites). On the LibreOffice website, we use the open source stats tool Matomo (formerly Piwik) to get an overview of how people use the site, how people go from one page to another, so that we can improve it. Lots of FOSS projects do this. Also, as explained in the privacy policy, JavaScript is req…

Even if your tracking isn't directly harmful (I make no claims if it is or not), it's still indirectly harmful because it's training users to ignore warning pop-ups.

Re: LibreOffice 6.1 released

#34

Post by dspillett »

mksaunders wrote: post #15
WorkLifeBalance wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. What you've described as 'not "tracking" ' is tracking. It's not third-party tracking but you're still deliberately adding a cookie for the purpose of tracking users across your site. 2. Your privacy policy contains: > !!!add opt-out frame on the website at this position!!!

> 1. What you've described as 'not "tracking" ' is tracking. It's not third-party tracking but you're still deliberately adding a cookie for the purpose of tracking users across your site. OK, we're using open source tools to try to improve the site. Plenty of other FOSS projects do this... Not sure why we're being singled out :-)

> Not sure why we're being singled out

Someone who cares has noticed, and enough other people care that the thread is getting upvoted enough to hit the front page of HN.

Though still you are not being "singled" out as there are plenty of sites which have had their cookie/privacy/tracking/other behaviours picked apart recently. You are not the first/only and will not be the last!

Re: LibreOffice 6.1 released

#35

Post by kijin »

kqr wrote: post #25

I have grown increasingly disinterested in Office Suites, and in particular word processors, over time. When composing documents, I prefer to let the final production medium to dictate the production process. (If I don't, I tend to run into issues relating to the final product that are costly to overcome late in the process.) With this mindset, I still haven't found the use case for word processors. If I aim for some…

Office suites, as the name suggests, are for office workers. You know, the kind of people who write stern letters on official letterhead, work on Excel workbooks, and give PowerPoint presentations in front of other people.

It's probably not the kind of job that a typical programmer would like to have, but there are hundreds of millions of these jobs in governments, schools, and corporate offices all over the world. I bet they make up a much larger market than all the programmers in the world combined. We need to get out of the programmer bubble in order to see why a seemingly obsolete piece of software like LibreOffice is still such a big deal. Just one country deciding on it as the official standard means millions of people will be using FOSS in a critical part of their workflow.

I did my M.A. and Ph.D. in the humanities and wrote both dissertations using Microsoft Word. My professors would have been very confused if I had sent them anything other than .doc(x) for review.

Re: LibreOffice 6.1 released

#36

Post by vxNsr »

kqr wrote: post #25

I have grown increasingly disinterested in Office Suites, and in particular word processors, over time. When composing documents, I prefer to let the final production medium to dictate the production process. (If I don't, I tend to run into issues relating to the final product that are costly to overcome late in the process.) With this mindset, I still haven't found the use case for word processors. If I aim for some…

People use word processors to write documents that can be easily edited by multiple people while still being easily readable the whole time.

I'd be interested to know what product you use to compose your documents in.

Re: LibreOffice 6.1 released

#37

Post by stef25 »

mksaunders wrote: post #12
stef25 wrote: post #10

Way better than any Office alternative but also extremely sluggish on my machine. I just use it to read csv files and even at that it's abnormally slow.

I use it on Linux and macOS and it's pretty fast with CSV files (although I'm not sure how large the ones you're using are!) If it's specific CSV files that are causing an issue, and you don't mind sharing them, you could attach them to a bug report: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org Also try resetting your profile in case that's an issue: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile#Resolving_co...

25MB files "work" but still abnormally slow for my 16GB RAM machine, 200MB files forget it.

I'll do some more testing and report.

Re: LibreOffice 6.1 released

#38

Post by Vinnl »

mksaunders wrote: post #11
mrob wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I browse with Javascript disabled by default, so I didn't know they were doing this. Why does the Document Foundation need to track me? Is LibreOffice itself doing something sneaky that I don't know about? I'd expect this kind of behavior from Facebook or Google, not a Free Software charitable foundation. Seeing that pop-up when I enabled Javascript made me think less of the Document Foundation. If they have a legiti…

> Why does the Document Foundation need to track me? It's not "tracking" (in the sense of monitoring what you do on other sites). On the LibreOffice website, we use the open source stats tool Matomo (formerly Piwik) to get an overview of how people use the site, how people go from one page to another, so that we can improve it. Lots of FOSS projects do this. Also, as explained in the privacy policy, JavaScript is req…

Hmm, if you don't store personally identifiable information (such as the IP address), then I don't think you even need a tracking warning?

Re: LibreOffice 6.1 released

#39

Post by txcwpalpha »

kijin wrote: post #35
kqr wrote: post #25

I have grown increasingly disinterested in Office Suites, and in particular word processors, over time. When composing documents, I prefer to let the final production medium to dictate the production process. (If I don't, I tend to run into issues relating to the final product that are costly to overcome late in the process.) With this mindset, I still haven't found the use case for word processors. If I aim for some…

Office suites, as the name suggests, are for office workers. You know, the kind of people who write stern letters on official letterhead, work on Excel workbooks, and give PowerPoint presentations in front of other people. It's probably not the kind of job that a typical programmer would like to have, but there are hundreds of millions of these jobs in governments, schools, and corporate offices all over the world. I…

>My professors would have been very confused if I had sent them anything other than .doc(x) for review.

This, in particular, is the most important point. The parent commenter says "I prefer to let the final production medium to dictate the production process". Well, in the vast majority of cases, .docx is the final production medium. Most people use MS Word as both a document editor and a document reader.

I've worked at many companies and very rarely is any of the work product "finalized" into something like a PDF or a magazine. 90%+ of our work is meant to be continuously iterated on and added to over time, meaning it needs to stay in .docx. This applies even in the tech world, where things like design documents, project plans, etc are all used as well.

Re: LibreOffice 6.1 released

#40

Post by stronglikedan »

kqr wrote: post #25

I have grown increasingly disinterested in Office Suites, and in particular word processors, over time. When composing documents, I prefer to let the final production medium to dictate the production process. (If I don't, I tend to run into issues relating to the final product that are costly to overcome late in the process.) With this mindset, I still haven't found the use case for word processors. If I aim for some…

I use word processors to specify complex systems. I can quickly navigate the document visually, without having to use Pandoc and its ilk to convert it to a format that's easy on the eyes. Other tools that live-preview markdown just aren't there yet. I also get a lot of automated functionality for complex structures like lists, tables, section numbering (in multiple formats) and tables-of-contents. I have really, really tried to be as efficient with Markdown and its ilk, but it doesn't even come close. I would also mention the interop benefit, but that would be beating a dead horse at this point.
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