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Not denying the amount of work gone into LibreOffice, however I'm not sure if I agree with you on the approach (this will probably be an unpopular opinion). I f

by osrec 8y ago

Not denying the amount of work gone into LibreOffice, however I'm not sure if I agree with you on the approach (this will probably be an unpopular opinion). I find the entire ecosystem of LibreOffice a bit clunky, and it wouldn't surprise me if there is a lot of technical debt that would need to be understood before we could make any sort of contribution. Don't know why, but my gut says starting afresh would allow us to build something more useful, faster. It would make sense to use the LibreOffice code base as a guide though.

adrianN 8y ago
Well, if you fail at improving Libre Office to a state where you're satisfied with it, you still improved Libre Office. If you fail to write something better than Calc, all effort is lost.
- osrec 8y ago
  I agree with what you're saying, but I'm not going to be pessimistic about the endeavour! I think, given time, we can build something that solves at least some use cases better than Calc.
  - grandinj 8y ago
    Libreoffice hacker here. Calc is one of the nicer parts of the codebase. Don’t underestimate the enormous list of features that are required in a modern spreadsheet engine. We’re talking 100s of man-years of coding. Come join us and make it better. Or task one of the available consultancies to implement the features you want.
    - osrec 8y ago
      I know I am underestimating; I have a tendency to do that, so I appreciate the warning. May I ask how many people currently contribute to LibreOffice regularly?
      - grandinj 8y ago
        There are about 20 people or so who contribute on a frequent basis i.e. at least weekly. But we have a very long tail of people who contribute less often. You can see the commit frequency here: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/ http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/ Come hang out on the libreoffice-dev IRC channel if you have more questions
fooker 8y ago
The problem with starting from scratch for an Excel alternative is the classic quote : "Everyone needs 10% of the features Excel offers, but is a different 10%."
- osrec 8y ago
  I don't disagree with you, however someone needs to take up the challenge. Perhaps by creating a base that can be plugged into more easily than LibreOffice or Excel would help encourage development by the community (much like atom and its plugins) Basically, I'm not happy with the status quo that we have no real alternative to Excel on Linux.
  - fooker 8y ago
    That's a nice idea. Libreoffice is rather difficult to extend.
  - intended 8y ago
    There is no alternative to excel period. Its like dwarf fortress or bloomberg terminals - when you are digging through what you thought was cruft, you'll suddenly find an entire project/application worth of material to handle a feature you never thought you would use. Except that feature is used by someone else everyday.
slededit 8y ago
That is maybe doable if you don't care about importing existing files. You'll spend years just getting that right. A grid of cells is the easy part. Compatibility is hard.
- osrec 8y ago
  Compatibility is actually the least of my worries. I think it's a losing battle that's not worth fighting. Better to create an open ecosystem that people adopt for that very reason - that it is open. In the early days, Excel would actually obfuscate its output, making it extremely difficult to parse. Now things are a bit better, but you're still trying to hit a moving target. If we have an open format, and a corresponding high-quality, open application ecosystem, I can see many corporates making the switch. Not easy, but I can see a future without total dependence on Excel.
  - slededit 8y ago
    In the early days Excel focused heavily on compatibility with Lotus 1-2-3 which was dominant. Excel never obfuscated their save code. I've seen it in person. They did just memcpy their data structures, which was the most efficient way to save on tiny machines of the day. Lotus did that too. I've also seen and helped implement the Open Document spec. This is not a simple problem and you are doing yourself a disservice by blinding yourself to the scale of the task. If you want to make an impact and don't have Google level budgets then leveraging OpenOffice is the only sane approach.
    - osrec 8y ago
      I was under the impression they did attempt to obfuscate their files. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_POI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_POI We don't have Google level budgets, but I think we can do something worthwhile with what we have. Might take a while, but I'm confident we will manage something good in the budget we are hoping to allocate to the task.
      - slededit 8y ago

by osrec 8y ago

adrianN 8y ago

Well, if you fail at improving Libre Office to a state where you're satisfied with it, you still improved Libre Office. If you fail to write something better than Calc, all effort is lost.

osrec 8y ago
I agree with what you're saying, but I'm not going to be pessimistic about the endeavour! I think, given time, we can build something that solves at least some use cases better than Calc.
- grandinj 8y ago
  Libreoffice hacker here. Calc is one of the nicer parts of the codebase. Don’t underestimate the enormous list of features that are required in a modern spreadsheet engine. We’re talking 100s of man-years of coding. Come join us and make it better. Or task one of the available consultancies to implement the features you want.
  - osrec 8y ago
    I know I am underestimating; I have a tendency to do that, so I appreciate the warning. May I ask how many people currently contribute to LibreOffice regularly?
    - grandinj 8y ago
      There are about 20 people or so who contribute on a frequent basis i.e. at least weekly. But we have a very long tail of people who contribute less often. You can see the commit frequency here: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/ http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/ Come hang out on the libreoffice-dev IRC channel if you have more questions

fooker 8y ago

The problem with starting from scratch for an Excel alternative is the classic quote : "Everyone needs 10% of the features Excel offers, but is a different 10%."

osrec 8y ago
I don't disagree with you, however someone needs to take up the challenge. Perhaps by creating a base that can be plugged into more easily than LibreOffice or Excel would help encourage development by the community (much like atom and its plugins) Basically, I'm not happy with the status quo that we have no real alternative to Excel on Linux.
- fooker 8y ago
  That's a nice idea. Libreoffice is rather difficult to extend.
- intended 8y ago
  There is no alternative to excel period. Its like dwarf fortress or bloomberg terminals - when you are digging through what you thought was cruft, you'll suddenly find an entire project/application worth of material to handle a feature you never thought you would use. Except that feature is used by someone else everyday.

slededit 8y ago

That is maybe doable if you don't care about importing existing files. You'll spend years just getting that right. A grid of cells is the easy part. Compatibility is hard.

osrec 8y ago
Compatibility is actually the least of my worries. I think it's a losing battle that's not worth fighting. Better to create an open ecosystem that people adopt for that very reason - that it is open. In the early days, Excel would actually obfuscate its output, making it extremely difficult to parse. Now things are a bit better, but you're still trying to hit a moving target. If we have an open format, and a corresponding high-quality, open application ecosystem, I can see many corporates making the switch. Not easy, but I can see a future without total dependence on Excel.
- slededit 8y ago
  In the early days Excel focused heavily on compatibility with Lotus 1-2-3 which was dominant. Excel never obfuscated their save code. I've seen it in person. They did just memcpy their data structures, which was the most efficient way to save on tiny machines of the day. Lotus did that too. I've also seen and helped implement the Open Document spec. This is not a simple problem and you are doing yourself a disservice by blinding yourself to the scale of the task. If you want to make an impact and don't have Google level budgets then leveraging OpenOffice is the only sane approach.
  - osrec 8y ago
    I was under the impression they did attempt to obfuscate their files. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_POI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_POI We don't have Google level budgets, but I think we can do something worthwhile with what we have. Might take a while, but I'm confident we will manage something good in the budget we are hoping to allocate to the task.
    - slededit 8y ago