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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

#41

Post by SloopJon »

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.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#42

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#43

Post by andybak »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #25
worklogin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try the ribbon for a week or two? I loathed it too. But then I got used to its workflow. It exposes a lot more options more intuitively than the current LO menu system.

I have to use Office at work. I have not liked the ribbon since it came out. It's not that I don't like new ideas. I am a SW dev and I embrace new. I change jobs every 6 mos just so I don't have to deal with old code, that's how much I like new things. The ribbon sucks. It mind numbingly sucks. Note: Some of this was an exaggeration to drive home the point of how bad the ribbon interface sucks.

Is it really worse than toolbar hell?

http://www.mlponies.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05...

Icons without text labels work ONLY for frequently performed tasks with an obvious visual representation.

For everything else text and icons is probably optimal.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#45

Post by scholia »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #23
scholia wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic software worked just fine, in its day. I can still remember most of the classic WordStar commands. ;-) The celebrations come when there are significant improvements, and there have been plenty of those. The (web-inspired) tabbed Office ribbon was a big one. Sorry they moved your cheese but the rest of the world isn't going to stop progressing even if you do.

> Classic software worked just fine, in its day. // So, it doesn't work now? The main question would be 'how much more productive one can be now than before?'. It would be nice if there were independent quantative studies on this - as word-processor use is a central part of most governments administrative functions I'd imagine that one can't move for the vast number of such studies ... lol. I'm guessing that the UI c…

I'd love to have answers to the same questions, but it will vary a lot according to what is being done and who is doing it.

If you're just typing simple text documents, the current Word is not going to save a massive amount of time over WordStar, but it will save some thanks to spelling corrections etc. And even a few seconds per hour per worker can represent a lot of value for large organizations.

If you're doing an essay or a brochure with headlines in different fonts, double-column text, embedded pictures, math equations etc, then the time savings will be massive. Just the ability to move a pic while text flows around it provides huge benefits.

When my son was in his early teens, I watched him use Microsoft Office to create complex documents that would have taken an IBM PROFS mainframe user weeks, or might have been impossible. His homework looked more professional than IBM's corporate documents.

I guess there are plenty of workers who use Word at the same level as they used WordStar, or who reckon that (back on topic!) LO is just as good. (Yes, LO is almost as good as Word if you just want to replace WordStar.)

But are those our criteria? Should we ignore the fact that people who have open minds and a willingness to explore (like children) can quickly and easily do new things that they can't?

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#46

Post by drzaiusapelord »

shRaj9fEc8Vith wrote: post #38

Don't OSS project has professional designer? I mean like Apple-quality designers?

Have you ever tried contributing to a popular FOSS product? I have. Expect to be downvoted, yelled at, etc for suggesting change, especially change that's an emotional issue for geeks (implementing a ribbon-like interface, you know the one started by the 'evil' microsoft). Linus's childish attitude is pretty much the poster boy for this attitude. Namecalling is the norm.

There are so many cultural and management issues with big FOSS projects, you could write 100 phd disserations about it. Its not generally a welcoming and innovating environment. Generally, from what I've seen, its the products with the very small teams (or sometimes one person) who seems to make the breakthroughs and everyone eventually just copies those guys.

Can you imagine someone with great credentials and a great portfolio trying to engage the LO team on a novel interface? Can you imagine the Linus-like comments aimed at her way? That's a major demotivator for innovation, change, and success. Oh god, heaven forbid you're a woman in FOSS telling men to make a change. That's an even worse nightmare right there.

This is why, I think, so much FOSS stuff looks like shit and has poor documentation. The artsy crowd, visual thinkers, UI nerds, and the writers are systemically kicked around to the point where they don't contribute much, so a lot of UI decisions are made by coders, who typically are creatures of habit and have a "if it aint broke why fix it" mentality in regards to interfaces and other features.

This is also why OSX is such a wonderful product. Apple took all the strong BSD code and dismissed the linux and BSD WM's and put a WM on there that didn't suck. Apple had the management structure to implement effective change without a "coder's veto" so many FOSS products suffer from. Or how Apple took KDE's khtml/webkit and wove both Safari and mobile Safari around it.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#48

Post by jpfr »

robin_reala wrote: post #47

If anyone follows this, what’s the current with LibreOffice vs OpenOffice.org? Is one objectively better than the other now? What has the community momentum?

LibreOffice has all the momentum, all the brain share and all the innovations. They made massive changes and miraculously brought a crufty code base full of technological debt back to life.

Now they started to care about aestethics. And suddenly people notice. :-)

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#49

Post by hippich »

ExpiredLink wrote: post #5

Exhaustive and seamless import and export of Microsoft formats - that's the most important and desired LibreOffice feature for me and probably for for most LO users!

while this feature makes LibreOffice gather more users, in the long term this strategy IMHO will not pay off. "Microsoft formats" is moving target and playing "catch up with microsoft" game all the time - wasting resources which otherwise could be poured into making product itself nicer, which in turn will convince users to switch based on features, not just on the fact, that it is free. I hope my idea make sense :)

I guess balance between two is necessary. You can't totally ignore MS formats, but focusing only on it - will stale this project.

Re: LibreOffice 4.4, the Most Beautiful LibreOffice Ever

#50

Post by chops »

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 in LibreOffice.

And even myself, I've had to completely scrap documents I'm working on because LibreOffice gets confused and does what I'm assuming is some kind of join, resulting in tons of duplicates when it comes time to print[1]. It's almost certainly user error, but where to fix it is unclear. That whole mechanism needs to be gutted and reworked.

But I continue to deal with it because Linux is my primary environment and it's good enough in everything else I have to deal with.

[1] something like multiple data sources used accidentally, even though both point at the same source file, and even after wiping all data sources, the issue remains.

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