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At some point LibreOffice made super weird visual design choices, icons look like they were drawn by a 5-year old and they completely botched math formula edito

by bitL 6y ago

At some point LibreOffice made super weird visual design choices, icons look like they were drawn by a 5-year old and they completely botched math formula editor. Compared to that even Star Office 5 (predecessor of OpenOffice) looked more professional. I am wondering what is going on?

mindfulhack 6y ago
I completely agree. Opening ONLYOFFICE and using it for one minute, to me it's immediately better than LibreOffice. This is the first FOSS Office I may actually desire to use when I have to do some document writing. It has a better default font, a much nicer, comfortable-feeling and inviting-to-use interface, and it saves to a more useful format like DOCX by default. LibreOffice puzzles me as to why they choose such bad-looking defaults when the options are there to make it better. My perspective is one that matters in FOSS. This is not just about advanced technical things with power users. It's about casual users too. It's about Linux having something actually comparable to MS Word. It's about the entire FOSS ecosystem. If LibreOffice want their software to be used more, then they need to make it actually look and feel good - out of the box - and not just as a configurable option. I mean this with the greatest respect. I'm a FOSS advocate. Part of furthering FOSS should be that it looks and feels nice, and not just that it's FOSS with a GPL license.
- mindfulhack 6y ago
  In fact, I'm so impressed with ONLYOFFICE's out of the box experience that IMO it should be Linux Mint's default pre-installed Office. On macOS and Linux it looks awesome.
prox 6y ago
The GUI has been redesigned in recent versions, it’s ribbon based and looks like any other package to my eyes.
- Qub3d 6y ago
  > it’s ribbon based Ehhh, kind-of. I'd put a HUGE asterisk on that, as you need to A) dig through the settings and tick a vague scary "ENABLE EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES" checkbox, then B) apply a random style called "Notebookbar" to get the ribbon UI. Fine, if you're a linux tinkerer, go nuts. If you are trying to find a FOSS option for your parents, you are a literary (but not a technical) professional, or you want to keep your tech and writing work in different silos, ONLYOFFICE seems much, much better at this moment.

by bitL 6y ago

mindfulhack 6y ago

I completely agree. Opening ONLYOFFICE and using it for one minute, to me it's immediately better than LibreOffice. This is the first FOSS Office I may actually desire to use when I have to do some document writing. It has a better default font, a much nicer, comfortable-feeling and inviting-to-use interface, and it saves to a more useful format like DOCX by default. LibreOffice puzzles me as to why they choose such bad-looking defaults when the options are there to make it better. My perspective is one that matters in FOSS. This is not just about advanced technical things with power users. It's about casual users too. It's about Linux having something actually comparable to MS Word. It's about the entire FOSS ecosystem. If LibreOffice want their software to be used more, then they need to make it actually look and feel good - out of the box - and not just as a configurable option. I mean this with the greatest respect. I'm a FOSS advocate. Part of furthering FOSS should be that it looks and feels nice, and not just that it's FOSS with a GPL license.

mindfulhack 6y ago
In fact, I'm so impressed with ONLYOFFICE's out of the box experience that IMO it should be Linux Mint's default pre-installed Office. On macOS and Linux it looks awesome.

prox 6y ago

The GUI has been redesigned in recent versions, it’s ribbon based and looks like any other package to my eyes.

Qub3d 6y ago
> it’s ribbon based Ehhh, kind-of. I'd put a HUGE asterisk on that, as you need to A) dig through the settings and tick a vague scary "ENABLE EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES" checkbox, then B) apply a random style called "Notebookbar" to get the ribbon UI. Fine, if you're a linux tinkerer, go nuts. If you are trying to find a FOSS option for your parents, you are a literary (but not a technical) professional, or you want to keep your tech and writing work in different silos, ONLYOFFICE seems much, much better at this moment.