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I don't understand why people keep comparing LibreOffice to Microsoft Office, or—God forbid—GIMP with Photoshop. Sure, my mom will have a great time writing re

I don't understand why people keep comparing LibreOffice to Microsoft Office, or—God forbid—GIMP with Photoshop. Sure, my mom will have a great time writing recipes on it and will save $10/mo., but can anyone do any real work that you'd do in Excel? Let's be realistic. Also, does no one care about design? LibreOffice's interface looks awful on all platforms, and stuck in the 90s. Same with GIMP.

jolmg 7y ago
> but can anyone do any real work that you'd do in Excel? Let's be realistic At my company, they do. They're not particularly tech-savvy users either. > does no one care about design? LibreOffice's interface looks awful Design isn't about looking pretty; it's about being usable. What's wrong with LibreOffice's and Gimp's design?
- nkkollaw 7y ago
  Gimp and LibreOffice are usable? Fonts are so broken on Linux—which is the platform that would need this the most—that you can barely select dropdown options if you're on a hidpi monitor.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    Well, I can't comment on how well things work on hidpi. While I don't have the best monitors on the market, I don't have any problems with fonts or dropdown options on neither my 104 nor on my 98 dpi monitor.
  - nulbyte 7y ago
    Daily Linux user, here, on a run-of-the-mill laptop, no hidpi display. Fonts are fully functional, as are dropdown widgets, GIMP, and LibreOffice.
  - chungy 7y ago
    HiDPI working fine for me with LibreOffice on Linux.
- Arainach 7y ago
  GIMP's UI consists of medium grey on slightly dark grey with occasional third shades of grey. It's low contrast and not particularly accessible. GIMP's UI is spread across a huge pile of small windows with overlapping jurisdiction such that you're never sure where anything needs to go. I've copied an image and would like to work on it. Let's go create a new image. Oh, it hasn't changed the size to match the clipboard - that's fine, let's pick something small and let it expand. Oh, when I paste, it doesn't offer to expand the canvas. That's unfortunate. Let's expand it manually and paste......but it still tries to paste into the tiny rectangle I originally had rather than the whole larger viewport. I give up, I'll manually guess a few sizes until I get close. OK, let's edit my picture. I click on the paintbrush tool in one window......then select a brush in the "Layers - Brushes" window, but it's too big. How do I fix that? I look for the "Brush Editor" window (different from "Layers - Brushes") and see a "Radius" selector. But it's read-only and I have no idea why. I have to go back to "Layers - Brushes" and find a tiny "Edit this Brush" button.....then go back to the "Brush Editor" window to make changes. Let's add some text to my window....oh, the text properties window appears over my image, translucent (even less contrast!) and the font select window is.......a free-form text box? No dropdown to see the names of my fonts, much less a preview of them? I'm done. Time to go to Paint.NET or Photoshop or literally any other image editor.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    > GIMP's UI consists of medium grey on slightly dark grey with occasional third shades of grey. It's low contrast and not particularly accessible. I agree that's bad. It used to have colored icons. You can change the themes in preferences so it uses colored icons, again. The background color is also changeable. So, yeah, default theme got bad, but it can be fixed in less than a minute. > GIMP's UI is spread across a huge pile of small windows with overlapping jurisdiction such that you're never sure where anything needs to go. Configuration over convention, I guess. It does remember where you put said windows for the next time you launch it, so just put them whereever is best for you. > Oh, when I paste, it doesn't offer to expand the canvas. That's unfortunate. Let's expand it manually and paste......but it still tries to paste into the tiny rectangle I originally had rather than the whole larger viewport. I give up, I'll manually guess a few sizes until I get close. I think your expected behaviour is too ambiguous. Where should it expand to, the right, the left, up, down, all sides equally? You can "Paste as > New Image" (Ctrl+Shift+v) and you'll get an image the exact size of the image you're pasting. Does that help? > OK, let's edit my picture. I click on the paintbrush tool in one window......then select a brush in the "Layers - Brushes" window, but it's too big. How do I fix that? I look for the "Brush Editor" window (different from "Layers - Brushes") and see a "Radius" selector. But it's read-only and I have no idea why. I have to go back to "Layers - Brushes" and find a tiny "Edit this Brush" button.....then go back to the "Brush Editor" window to make changes. Where are you seeing "Radius"? I see "Size" and I can't get it to be read-only. > Let's add some text to my window....oh, the text properties window appears over my image, translucent (even less contrast!) and the font select window is.......a free-form text box? No dropdown to see the names of my fonts, much less a preview of them? If you start typing the name of fonts, you do get a dropdown with names and previews. I do agree it would be better to be able to make it drop down without requiring any text input, though.

jolmg 7y ago

> but can anyone do any real work that you'd do in Excel? Let's be realistic At my company, they do. They're not particularly tech-savvy users either. > does no one care about design? LibreOffice's interface looks awful Design isn't about looking pretty; it's about being usable. What's wrong with LibreOffice's and Gimp's design?

nkkollaw 7y ago
Gimp and LibreOffice are usable? Fonts are so broken on Linux—which is the platform that would need this the most—that you can barely select dropdown options if you're on a hidpi monitor.
- jolmg 7y ago
  Well, I can't comment on how well things work on hidpi. While I don't have the best monitors on the market, I don't have any problems with fonts or dropdown options on neither my 104 nor on my 98 dpi monitor.
- nulbyte 7y ago
  Daily Linux user, here, on a run-of-the-mill laptop, no hidpi display. Fonts are fully functional, as are dropdown widgets, GIMP, and LibreOffice.
- chungy 7y ago
  HiDPI working fine for me with LibreOffice on Linux.
Arainach 7y ago
GIMP's UI consists of medium grey on slightly dark grey with occasional third shades of grey. It's low contrast and not particularly accessible. GIMP's UI is spread across a huge pile of small windows with overlapping jurisdiction such that you're never sure where anything needs to go. I've copied an image and would like to work on it. Let's go create a new image. Oh, it hasn't changed the size to match the clipboard - that's fine, let's pick something small and let it expand. Oh, when I paste, it doesn't offer to expand the canvas. That's unfortunate. Let's expand it manually and paste......but it still tries to paste into the tiny rectangle I originally had rather than the whole larger viewport. I give up, I'll manually guess a few sizes until I get close. OK, let's edit my picture. I click on the paintbrush tool in one window......then select a brush in the "Layers - Brushes" window, but it's too big. How do I fix that? I look for the "Brush Editor" window (different from "Layers - Brushes") and see a "Radius" selector. But it's read-only and I have no idea why. I have to go back to "Layers - Brushes" and find a tiny "Edit this Brush" button.....then go back to the "Brush Editor" window to make changes. Let's add some text to my window....oh, the text properties window appears over my image, translucent (even less contrast!) and the font select window is.......a free-form text box? No dropdown to see the names of my fonts, much less a preview of them? I'm done. Time to go to Paint.NET or Photoshop or literally any other image editor.
- jolmg 7y ago
  > GIMP's UI consists of medium grey on slightly dark grey with occasional third shades of grey. It's low contrast and not particularly accessible. I agree that's bad. It used to have colored icons. You can change the themes in preferences so it uses colored icons, again. The background color is also changeable. So, yeah, default theme got bad, but it can be fixed in less than a minute. > GIMP's UI is spread across a huge pile of small windows with overlapping jurisdiction such that you're never sure where anything needs to go. Configuration over convention, I guess. It does remember where you put said windows for the next time you launch it, so just put them whereever is best for you. > Oh, when I paste, it doesn't offer to expand the canvas. That's unfortunate. Let's expand it manually and paste......but it still tries to paste into the tiny rectangle I originally had rather than the whole larger viewport. I give up, I'll manually guess a few sizes until I get close. I think your expected behaviour is too ambiguous. Where should it expand to, the right, the left, up, down, all sides equally? You can "Paste as > New Image" (Ctrl+Shift+v) and you'll get an image the exact size of the image you're pasting. Does that help? > OK, let's edit my picture. I click on the paintbrush tool in one window......then select a brush in the "Layers - Brushes" window, but it's too big. How do I fix that? I look for the "Brush Editor" window (different from "Layers - Brushes") and see a "Radius" selector. But it's read-only and I have no idea why. I have to go back to "Layers - Brushes" and find a tiny "Edit this Brush" button.....then go back to the "Brush Editor" window to make changes. Where are you seeing "Radius"? I see "Size" and I can't get it to be read-only. > Let's add some text to my window....oh, the text properties window appears over my image, translucent (even less contrast!) and the font select window is.......a free-form text box? No dropdown to see the names of my fonts, much less a preview of them? If you start typing the name of fonts, you do get a dropdown with names and previews. I do agree it would be better to be able to make it drop down without requiring any text input, though.